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Colm Summers: Artistic Director
Kylee Brinkman: Managing Director
Coryn Carson: Marketing & Communication Manager
Sanam Hashemi: Producer of Artistic Programs
Joe Roland & Joseph White: TheaterWorks! Program Directors
the watsons: Graphic Design
Mark Plesent: Artistic Director Emeritus (In Memoriam)
Bill Mitchellson: First Artistic Director
Bill Scott: Establishing Artistic Director
Colm Summers (he/him) is a director from Waterford, Ireland, based between New York and Dublin. Selected credits include: Every Brilliant Thing (Geffen Playhouse), Portia Coughlan (Abbey Theatre), La Clemenza di Tito (Grand Théatre de Geneve). Colm has worked with The Wooster Group, the feath3r theory, Milo Rau, and Pan Pan. Read Colm’s essays in Études, Blast at 100 (Brill) and in Charles Macklin and the Theatres of London (Liverpool University Press). Colm was Resident Director at the National Theatre of Ireland, inaugural Director-in-Residence at The Geffen Playhouse, and a Resident Performing Artist at BRIClab, Brooklyn. He is a Berkeley Rep Ground Floor alum, Dublin Fringe Radical Spirit Award Nominee, Dublin Theatre Festival Next Stage alum, and Pan Pan International Mentorship mentee. Colm was recently awarded the Irish Arts Council Next Generation Artists Award.
Kylee (she/her) joins Working Theater staff with a background in arts administration and human resources. Prior to joining the NYC theater scene she lived in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) where she worked behind a desk and on stage as an actor and singer for theaters such as Theater Mu, Jungle Theater, and History Theater. Having worked in the arts and the international humanitarian relief industry, she’s focused her career on supporting organizations that serve others, be that through theater making or providing essential and dignified services for the displaced. She received a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from The University of Wisconsin. In her free time Kylee and her partner produce a Dungeons and Dragons podcast, When Crit Happens.
Coryn (she/her) joins the Working Theater staff after a varied career in the NY Arts Administration including Marketing Coordinator for Samuel French Publishing Firm and Social Media Manager for various theatrical marketing companies in NYC. She is an actor and writer who continues to work and produce her own content, and she holds a dual degrees in Communication and Theater Performance from Virginia Tech.
Sanam (she/her) joined the Working Theater staff in 2021. An actor, producer, and playwright, she has a background in theater administration and is passionate about new play development. A Virginia native, she is an inaugural recipient of Cadence Theater Company’s Pipeline New Works Fellowship. Sanam holds dual degrees in Theater Performance and International Studies from Virginia Tech.
Mark Plesent led Working Theater for more than 25 years with compassion, generosity and ingenuity. He arrived first as an intern in 1989 and quickly made himself indispensable, stepping into the role of Managing Director and also assistant directing Let Me Live by OyamO, with an ensemble that included Arthur French and music by Olu Dara. After a brief absence from Working Theater from 1992 to 1996, when he served as Development Director for Jennifer Muller/The Works and the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, Mark was named Producing Director of Working Theater in 1996 and Producing Artistic Director in 2010.
Mark produced over 30 plays for the Theater including Michael Henry Brown’s Ascension Day, Ed Belling’s A Drop in the Bucket (which he also directed), and the Drama Desk Award-winning Tabletop, among many others. He is responsible for the re-institution of the Company’s commissioning program resulting in new plays by Linda Faigao-Hall, OyamO, Jason Grote, Lisa Ramirez, Manuel Borras and Ed Cardona, Jr. Mark founded Working Theater’s signature community arts education program TheaterWorks! which provides classes in writing and performance for working people. He also conceived and instituted a ticket subsidy program to provide low cost tickets to groups of working people. In 2015 he launched the ambitious Five Boroughs/One City Initiative, a collaborative, community-based theater producing project aimed at fostering dialogue about pressing social justice issues within and between the diverse working class communities of New York’s Five Boroughs.
Outside of Working Theater Mark produced and/or directed over 15 independent theatre and performance art projects including “Populace”, a performance on the IRT #1 train from Chambers Street to 125th street involving 22 directors and over 200 actors. For 15 years, Mark served on the Board of Directors of the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York, an organization serving over 400 member theater companies. Mark graduated from Brown University with a Bachelor of Arts in Theater. In honor of Mark’s commitment to bridging the gap between the arts and labor, in March 2021 Working Theater established the Mark Plesent Commission Fund, which supports the annual commission and development of new plays by working people. Thank you Mark. We miss you.