Meet the Company

KENT KIRKPATRICK

Artistic Associate

is an actor, director and writer who worked mostly in theater before following an academic career teaching in the graduate theater programs of the University of California--San Diego, and Oxford University among others. Before tenure set in, he migrated into the world of film writing, production and directing. Credits include Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, an original play which he developed and directed; a multi-lingual adaptation of The Odyssey which he wrote and directed; a multi-media stage productionDivining the Tapestry: Stories of Living and Dying Well which he wrote, produced, directed and developed; and The Legacy of Letters, a reading of important letters from New Mexico history for the New Mexico State Historian's Office which he researched, wrote and directed. He also recently directed Sam Waterston, Marsha Mason and Joan Allen in a reading of Georgia O'Keeffe/Alfred Steiglitz letters for the 10th Anniversary celebration of Georgia O'Keeffe museum entitled O'Keeffe: Speaking with Friends and Lovers. He wrote and directed the short film, Ride, which was awarded the best film award in the DigiFest Southwest Film Festival. Most recently, he has written, produced and/or directed commercial and narrative films. He is the Director of Development at Luminaria, a new film production company based in Santa Fe. Kent has created and performed with Grottesco since 1999 working in Fortune, Grottesco Shorts II, This is Life as We Know it... The Richest Deadman Alive! Keyholes, and Wenomadmen. He was co-director of The Moment of YES! and the outside eye of PIE.

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TARA KHOZEIN

Ensemble

is a graduate of The Jacques Lecoq School in Paris and holds a BA in classical vocal performance from NMSU. In Santa Fe, she has directed circus, immersive, operetta, and children's performances. She has been a TG company member since 2015, and was an original sound design and creation team member for Meow Wolf's House of Eternal Return. She moved to Budapest at the end of 2019, and established an online voice studio during COVID, where she continues to teach students from around the world.

 

Recent projects include ONCE WITHIN A TIME, a film by Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass; sound design for Stereo Akt's HOTEL OF CHANGE at Zimmertheater Tübingen, ADDRESSLESS at NYC's Rattlestick Theatre, and COLONY in Budapest; and the central role in Samu Gryllus's interactive documentary opera, GEISELOPER. She is a member of  JazzaJ's Budapest Improvisers Orchestra, Timo Kinnunen's International Experimental Orchestra, and is an active member of Budapest’s free improvisation scene.

 

Tara released an improvisation album in 2021 with contrabassist Carlos Santistevan (Santa Fe, NM), and created an original recording for Aida Shirazi’s “Yearning, Every Dawn” which premiered at Ojai Festival in 2023. Upcoming releases include improvisational albums with mult-instrumentalist Etienne Rolin (Bordeaux, FR), an all-vocal album with saxophonist/vocalist Rhonda Taylor (Las Cruces, NM), and a vocal album with visual artist and vocal improviser Brian Belott (New York, NY).

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JULIE SHAPIRO
Ensemble
Julie Shapiro is a New York native who grew up immersed in the performing arts with a focus on voice, acting and dance. Julie has a BFA in Musical Theatre from SUNY Fredonia where she received training in Stanislavsky, Meisner, Laban and Commedia Dell’arte. Since 2019, Julie has been traveling and connecting with creative work around the country from grassroot regional companies to Off-Broadway theatre. She has been developing original work including a web series titled “Asymptomatic.” Julie moved to Santa Fe in September and has collaborated with Tri-M-Productions playing Sally Bowles in Cabaret and Joanne in Godspell.

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SUSAN SKEELE
Ensemble
Susan Skeele is a performing artist and certified Action Theater teacher. She holds a master's degree from Antioch New England Graduate School in dance/movement therapy, and an undergraduate degree from Naropa University, where she studied dance, Butoh, interdisciplinary performance, contemplative movement, somatic psychology and dance therapy. Susan has been involved in the performing arts for over thirty years as a choreographer, dancer, actor, writer and director, including as an artist-in-residence in schools, with Ursa Theatre in Vermont, at Teatro Paraguas, Museo Cultural and the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, with Ecotone Physical Theater in Albuquerque, and most recently, with Theater Grottesco where she has immersed herself in mask-work, buffoonery,
clowning and ensemble performance over the past three years. For over a decade, Susan has studied the rigorous improvisation form Action Theater with its founder, internationally known performer Ruth Zaporah.

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SKIP RAPOPORT

Lighting Designer

Skip Rapoport has designed lighting in New York, Los Angeles and many points in between; at NY’s American Place Theater and Dance Theater Workshop, LA’s Vanguard Theater and Schönberg Hall, and Chicago’s Body Politic Theater. His clients have included The Acting Company, Mark Taper Forum’s New Theater for Now, Donald Byrd and the Group, and Nevada Dance Theater. In Santa Fe, he has designed for The Lensic, and Theaterwork, among many others.Recent work includes Death of a Salesman, The Moment of YES!, Bus Stop, Welcome to Arroyo’s, Theater Grottesco's PIE, and the inaugural season of New Mexico Actors Lab. 

MARC ROMANELLI
Company Photographer
Marc has been a professional photographer his whole adult life. He was the youngest photographer, at the age of 24, signed to the international photo agency Image Bank in 1982. For the past 12 years he has managed to move seamlessly between the worlds of still photography and motion. Highlights of his editorial career include a number of photo assignments for Life Magazine, Outside Magazine, Modern Photography and Popular Photography. He has traveled extensively throughout the world, a partial list of locations include: Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Thailand, Bali, Italy, Peru, Guatemala, South Africa, Senegal, Morocco, Botswana and Swaziland where he documented landscapes,cities and peoples.  A native-New Yorker, in 1989 Marc left the concrete canyons of the city and headed west for the brilliant blue skies and light of the high desert of New Mexico.

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KARYNA SWING
Lighting Designer
earned her BFA in theater from the University of New Mexico in 1987. Her lighting and design includes work with Tom Moore, David Schweizer, Susan Jayn Weiss, Herbie Mann, Branscombe Richmond, the Bellamy Brothers, St. Petersburg Ballet, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, The Red Thread Collective, ThaMuseMeant, The Gluey Brothers, Los Lobos, Judas Priest and Iron Weed Productions. Karyna has been in the Grottesco ensemble since 1999 running tech in The Angels' Cradle, This is Life as We Know it..., Fortune, The Richest Deadman Alive! Shorts II! A Dream Inside Another, Wenomadmen and Keyholes. She designed lights for Winter One Acts.

ELIZABETH WISEMAN
Former Associate Artistic Director
has been a principal creator and performer with Theater Grottesco since it's founding in 1983. Elizabeth studied at Whitworth College in Spokane, the Cornish Institute for the Arts in Seattle, with Phillip Gaulier in Paris, and is a graduate of the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, France. She taught voice at Arriane Mnouchkine's Theatre de Soleil in Paris and has taught at theaters and universities throughout the U.S. She has been an ensemble member with the Sundance Playwriting Laboratory, has developed 6 children's librettos for the Santa Fe Opera's Outreach Program, and taught with the NEA Artist-in-the-Schools program for 8 years. Elizabeth has performed in numerous regional theater productions and several independent films. She recently completed her first full length adult opera, Ciconia Ciconia, and has begun research on a second project. Elizabeth recently started Real Life Rituals, and works with people in transition to create personalized ceremonies for important life events.