"Theater to me is an extraordinary opportunity for us to engage with each other and with ideas. We spend too much of our lives alone, in front of screens of one kind or another. I have made it my mission to bring the primitive, exhilarating experience of live theater to as many as people as possible." -- Mark Plesent

Staff

Mark Plesent, Producing Director, has been associated with The Working Theater in various capacities since 1989, and has been Producing Director since 1996 He has produced numerous plays for the company, including Michael Henry Brown's Ascension Day, , Marty Pottenger's City Water Tunnel #3, the Drama Desk-Award-winning Tabletop and Ed Belling's A Drop in the Bucket (which he also directed).

As Producing Director, Plesent has overseen the revival of the company's Commissioning Program, resulting in new plays by Herman Daniel Farrell III, Linda Faigao-Hall, OyamO, Jim Grimsley and others.

Plesent is the former Development Director for Jennifer Muller/The Works and the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company. He has also produced and/or directed more than 15 independent theater and performance-art projects including Populace on the IRT #1 train from Chambers Street to 125th Street that involved 22 directors and more than 200 actors. He has a degree in Theater Arts from Brown University.

Laura Carbonell Smith, Director of Special Events and Marketing, began her association with Working Theater as an intern in 2003 while attending NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. After graduating with a BFA in Acting in 2005, she was hired part time as the company's Director of Special Events. She continues to work in the creative side of the theatre world as an actor and singer while overseeing group sales, benefit planning and marketing for the Working Theater.

Joe Roland, Arts Instructor, TheaterWorks!

An actor and a playwright, Joe Roland is a graduate of the New Actors Workshop where he studied with George Morrison, Mike Nichols and Paul Sills. On the Line, his play about the struggles of three working class friends, has been read at Lincoln Center and received a workshop reading from The Public Theater. The play was produced Off-Broadway by Mike Nichols, Boyett Ostar Productions and Jill Furman at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York.  As a founding member of the Water Theater Company (Shira Piven, Artistic Director) he has either written for or acted in each of the company’s productions, including Still/Waiting for Lefty, The Death of Ivan Illyich, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Pilgrims, Passengers, and his own play The Mexican.  He has worked in television and film, including Charlie Wilsons War, and was last seen on Broadway in The Country Girl. In addition to his career in the theater, for the last several years Mr. Roland has been dedicated to adult education. Since 2005 he has been working for The Thomas Shortman Training Fund which provides training for eligible members of 32BJ.