Director

Steven Dietz Directed at SCT: Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse (by Kevin Kling), Go Dog Go! (co-written with Allison Gregory), Honus & Me (also playwright). Playwright, SCT: The Rememberer, Still Life with Iris, Jackie & Me. Recent Seattle: Dracula (ACT), Last of the Boys (Seattle Rep), Lonely Planet (West of Lenin), On Clover Road (Seattle Public). Recent premieres: How a Boy Falls (Northlight Theatre, Chicago), The Great Beyond and The Ghost of Splinter Cove (Actors’ Theatre of Charlotte, Children’s Theatre of Charlotte), This Random World (Humana Festival of New American Plays, Louisville). Other directing: premiere productions at Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Northlight Theatre, Denver Center Theatre Company, Los Angeles Theatre Center, Festival of Sydney (Australia), ACT, Seattle Rep, Westside Arts (Off-Broadway), and the Sundance Institute. Teaching: professor of playwriting and directing at UT/Austin; currently a Dramatists Guild “Traveling Master” – teaching classes in playwriting, story-making, and collaboration. Thank you, Courtney. 

Jeffrey is a Washington native, working throughout the Northwest since 1989. Previous SCT designs: Naked Mole Rat: the Rock Experience, Fire Station 7, Elephant and Piggie, The Garden of Rikki Tikki Tavi. Jeffrey is the "In charge" scenic painter at SCT. Local designs include: The 5th Avenue Theater (Forum, Cinderella), Village Theater (The Gypsy King), Harlequin Productions, Book-It, Tacoma Actors Guild, Taproot.  He has designed the Winterfest décor, our cities official holiday event, at Seattle Center Armory and Ice Rink since 2008. Regional: Profile Theatre Project, Portland, and a dozen sets for Oregon Contemporary Theatre including Clybourne Park, Next To Normal, Last Five Years, and the upcoming Grand Concourse. National: three years at the Denver Center Theatre design and production studios, and touring with Thomas the Train Live on Stage.

BFA Washington State University 1991, MFA University of Oregon 1995.

Costume Designer

Sarah has been designing costumes in Seattle since 2005. She is beyond delighted to be designing Red Riding Hood. Other local favorite designs include: Balloonacy at SCT; Dracula, The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge, Jane Eyre, and Persuasion at Taproot Theatre Company; and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Edmonds Community College. This season, she will be designing costumes for The Best Summer Ever as well. Other than the pandemic induced sabbatical, she has been the Costume Shop Head here at SCT since 2017.  Prior to that, she worked at Taproot Theatre Company as their Resident Costume Designer and Costume Shop Manager. Before moving to Seattle, she taught Costume Design at Mars Hill University in North Carolina. Other regional credits include working at Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre, StageWest Theatre, and Venture Theatre Company. She is a two-time Gregory Award nominee and received her MFA in Costume Design from Temple University. In addition to being a costume designer, Sarah is an artist, writer, editor, and fairy godmother extraordinaire. Roses and parsnips to CLM. 

Lighting Designer

Rick is pleased to return to SCT, where he most recently lit The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  Previously at SCT he has designed many shows including The Wizard of Oz, Pharaoh Serket, The BFG, Honus and Me; Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse; The Red Badge of Courage; Goodnight Moon, and Sleeping Beauty. Rick’s work has been seen extensively over nearly 4 decades in Seattle and nationally. Rick is always grateful for his lovely wife, Roberta, and his daughter, Paige.

Mr. Paul arrived in Seattle in 1980, directly after two seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He then began stage managing at Seattle’s Skid Road Theatre, where he first worked with Linda Hartzell in Grease. That same year he worked with Rita Giomi on Delusions of Reference.  Mr. Paul has stage managed locally at the Seattle Repertory Theatre (most recently In the Heights), ACT, Intiman, and the 5th Avenue Theatre. National credits include The Guthrie; Shakespeare Theatre in DC; Oregon Shakespeare Theatre; Milwaukee Repertory Theatre; Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park; Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Humana Festival; La Jolla Playhouse; Baltimore’s Center Stage; Manhattan Theatre Club and the late Alaska Repertory Theatre.  For Seattle Children’s Theatre:  Addy, An American Girl Story, Night of the Living Dead, Harold and the Purple Crayon, Cat in the Hat, Pippi Longstocking, Dick Whittington and his Cat, Elephant and Piggy - We Are In A Play! and, most recently, Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Rock Experience.

Musician & Sound Designer

Rob’s previous shows at SCT include Black Beauty, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, and three productions of Go, Dog. Go! Other recent credits include: The Ghost of Splinter Cove (Children’s Theatre of Charlotte); Romeo + Juliet, The Wolves, (ACT); Richard III, Timon of Athens, Bring Down the House (Seattle Shakespeare Company); Yardbird (Seattle Opera) and Greenwood (Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater). His sound designs have also been heard at Seattle Rep, Intiman, Spectrum Dance Theater, Village Theatre, and Teatro ZinZanni.  Rob has been seen onstage in Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play, (ACT); A Doctor in Spite of Himself (Intiman Theatre, Yale Rep) and Into the West (Tantrum Theater). Rob plays with several bands, including The Love Markets, “Awesome” and the Toucans steel drum band. Rob is a Part-time Lecturer at UW School of Drama, and a member of United Scenic Artists, Local USA-829.

Stage Management Fellow/Production Assistant

After graduating from UW’s Drama department in 2020 with COVID in full swing, Emma is delighted to finally be back in the theatre for The Best Summer Ever. She played the Stepmother in UW Stage Note’s production of Into the Woods and served in crew positions for UW’s Romeo and Jules,  The Addams Family (Stage Notes), and Pippin (UW). While waiting for the resurrection of theatre, she has been busy working with young people at teen and arts centers and summer camps on Bainbridge Island and across the Seattle area. 

Assistant Sound Designer

Joseph (he/him) is a thirty-year veteran of the Seattle theatre community, and a twelve-year veteran of SCT, who also grew up seeing every SCT production at the Poncho Theatre (and others) throughout the 1980s. Previous SCT sound design team credits include The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, The Best Summer Ever!, Above-Below-Between, and numerous Summer Season productions. A few favorite Seattle sound designs include The Feast, Belleville, and Year Of The Rooster for MAP Theatre; Crime And Punishment, A Streetcar Named Desire, and To Kill A Mockingbird for the old Intiman Theatre; and a 2013 production of Cliffhouse for Macha Monkey Theatre which earned him a Gregory Award nomination. Joseph is a Seattle native, a graduate of the Art Institute of Seattle (R.I.P.), and spends most of his days making or listening to music, collecting records, and watching his teenager play basketball.