Host & Co-Creator - Emily C. A. Snyder (She/They)
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Emily C. A. Snyder is the Executive Director and Founder of TURN TO FLESH PRODUCTIONS, the founding company of TTF Audio. She is a published and internationally produced playwright and novelist, whose work has been performed from Christchurch, New Zealand to Dublin, Ireland. A NYC-based verse coach and director, she is the premiere international scholar on writing and performing new verse drama.
Emily holds her Masters in Theatre Education from Emerson College, and a double-major with her BA in English: Literature and Drama from Franciscan University of Steubenville. She studied John Barton's Shakespearean technique with members of the Royal Shakespeare Company in London and Stratford-upon-Avon, where her Rosalind (As You Like It) was compared to a young Maggie Smith.
For the past twenty years, Emily has directed the major works of Shakespeare's canon, and performed in the remainder. Favorite New York directing credits include Richard II with Hamlet Isn't Dead, King Lear with What Dreams May Co., as well as the Shakespeare adjacent material, such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and May Violets Spring: A New Story for a New Ophelia. She originated the role of Alice Ford in her own Merry Widows of Windsor, performed as Brutus in Julius Caesar, voiced Olivia in Twelfth Night for the Chop Bard podcast, and played Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest twice. Favorite regional directing credits include Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and A Midsummer Night's Dream twice, among others. In Boston, she ran Gaudete Academy, a company dedicated to providing Summer Shakespeare courses for adolescents and young adults. Emily is a much sought-out teaching artist, specializing in bringing Shakespeare to life for students of all ages.
Her new verse plays, Cupid and Psyche and The Other, Other Woman performed to sold-out audiences in New York City. Her Shakespearean homage, A Comedy of Heirors was named one of the Top 15 NYC Shows of 2017 by A Work Unfinishing, and was a finalist along with Cupid And Psyche with the American Shakespeare Center's (ASC) "Shakespeare's New Contemporaries." Her feminist sequel to Shakespeare's Merry Wives, her Merry Widows of Windsor was selected for development and a fully staged reading with The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture. Her verse plays have also received commendation from the Eugene O'Neill, Princess Grace Foundation, and Thornton Wilder Foundation. She is published through Playscripts and YouthPLAYS.
With TTF, she has written and directed The Love & Death Trilogy: Persephone Rises, The Seduction of Adonis and Cupid and Psyche, the French Farce, The Other, Other Woman, and The Table Round Arthurian duology. She directed May Violets Spring, wrote A Comedy of Heirors, and wrote and acted in The Merry Widows of Windsor (Alice Ford) and Juliet and Her Romeo (Juliet). Through The Shakespeare Forum, she offers her popular course on Writing and Performing New Verse, which is also available through the TTF Podcast, Hamlet to Hamilton: Exploring Verse Drama.
You can learn more at emilycasnyder.info, Amazon or New Play Exchange.
Emily holds her Masters in Theatre Education from Emerson College, and a double-major with her BA in English: Literature and Drama from Franciscan University of Steubenville. She studied John Barton's Shakespearean technique with members of the Royal Shakespeare Company in London and Stratford-upon-Avon, where her Rosalind (As You Like It) was compared to a young Maggie Smith.
For the past twenty years, Emily has directed the major works of Shakespeare's canon, and performed in the remainder. Favorite New York directing credits include Richard II with Hamlet Isn't Dead, King Lear with What Dreams May Co., as well as the Shakespeare adjacent material, such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and May Violets Spring: A New Story for a New Ophelia. She originated the role of Alice Ford in her own Merry Widows of Windsor, performed as Brutus in Julius Caesar, voiced Olivia in Twelfth Night for the Chop Bard podcast, and played Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest twice. Favorite regional directing credits include Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and A Midsummer Night's Dream twice, among others. In Boston, she ran Gaudete Academy, a company dedicated to providing Summer Shakespeare courses for adolescents and young adults. Emily is a much sought-out teaching artist, specializing in bringing Shakespeare to life for students of all ages.
Her new verse plays, Cupid and Psyche and The Other, Other Woman performed to sold-out audiences in New York City. Her Shakespearean homage, A Comedy of Heirors was named one of the Top 15 NYC Shows of 2017 by A Work Unfinishing, and was a finalist along with Cupid And Psyche with the American Shakespeare Center's (ASC) "Shakespeare's New Contemporaries." Her feminist sequel to Shakespeare's Merry Wives, her Merry Widows of Windsor was selected for development and a fully staged reading with The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture. Her verse plays have also received commendation from the Eugene O'Neill, Princess Grace Foundation, and Thornton Wilder Foundation. She is published through Playscripts and YouthPLAYS.
With TTF, she has written and directed The Love & Death Trilogy: Persephone Rises, The Seduction of Adonis and Cupid and Psyche, the French Farce, The Other, Other Woman, and The Table Round Arthurian duology. She directed May Violets Spring, wrote A Comedy of Heirors, and wrote and acted in The Merry Widows of Windsor (Alice Ford) and Juliet and Her Romeo (Juliet). Through The Shakespeare Forum, she offers her popular course on Writing and Performing New Verse, which is also available through the TTF Podcast, Hamlet to Hamilton: Exploring Verse Drama.
You can learn more at emilycasnyder.info, Amazon or New Play Exchange.
Audio Engineer/Sound Design & Co-Creator - Colin Kovarik (He/They)
Colin Kovarik is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist working across the Midwest and now, through this podcast, worldwide. He completed his degree in Acting in 2017 at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, finding sound design along the way, later happening to win First in the Nation from the Kennedy Center in 2018 for his first realized design, A Streetcar Named Desire. As an associate designer under his mentor, Josh Schmidt, he’s had the pleasure of working with such Chicago titans as Steppenwolf (Bug) and Victory Gardens (Pipeline). He is honored to be working with Turn to Flesh on such an important project, building a network of and platform for the verse drama renaissance ongoing in the 21st century. Remember: Shakespeare was a jazz musician and you can be too. (Find Colin’s semi-professional banter on Twitter @MultiWonk). Learn more here.
Transcriptions (S1) - Esther Williamson (She/Her)
Esther Williamson is an actor/musician/teaching artist/word nerd based in Brooklyn, New York. She holds an MFA in Classical Acting from the Academy for Classical Acting at The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC. She is a company member of DC-based Taffety Punk Theatre Company, for whom she has performed roughly half of Shakespeare’s canon along with numerous new works. Esther has performed and taught with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ford’s Theatre, Happenstance Theater in DC, Opera House Arts in Maine, Seattle Shakespeare Company, Book-It Repertory Theatre, and many others. Learn more: http://www.estherwilliamson.com/
Title Theme - Taylor Benson (He/Him)
Taylor Benson is a pianist/composer/producer based in Boston, MA. He started writing music for Emily as early as the 9th grade, where he created original themes to her adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. He then went on to write music for Emily’s original adaptation of The Light Princess by George MacDonald. Taylor currently attends the Berklee College of Music, majoring in Electronic Production and Design. While at Berklee, he has been an accompanist for many a musical theatre singer and ballet class. Last summer he was involved in Chiaroscuro, an improvisational multi-media performance written by Joy Lee. Taylor hopes to continue his studies at Berklee and pursue a creative and technological career in music. Listen on Spotify.
