LITERARY MANAGER

John T. Aney is an actor and director with over 40 years of professional stage and academic experience. A native Portlander, John was a founding board member and inaugural company member of Tygres Heart Shakespeare Company. He holds a BA in Theatre from Lewis & Clark College, an MA in Theatre History and Dramatic Literature from Indiana University and a dual-Certificate in Acting and Directing from the Moscow Art Theatre Stanislavsky Summer School in Cambridge, MA. He also earned a MDiv from Pacific School of Religion and is ordained clergy in the United Church of Christ.

Favorite roles have included both Claudius and Polonius in Hamlet, Jacques in As You Like It, Medvedenko in The Seagull, Oscar Wilde in Gross Indecencies: The Trials of Oscar Wilde, Felix in Humble Boy, Van in Holy Name (with Salt and Sage). Off the stage, John is a Major Gifts Officer at Lewis & Clark College.

MARKETING DIRECTOR

Kelsey Glasser is a Portland-born restaurateur, sommelier, and wine educator. She is the owner of Arden, one of Portland’s most acclaimed restaurants, and the creator of Raise a Glass, a wine education platform through which she has taught thousands. She has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, SevenFifty Daily, Forbes and Eater. She also hosts Her Way, a podcast spotlighting women in wine, now in development as a television series.

Alongside her work in hospitality, Kelsey has a lifelong background in theatre. She earned her BFA in Acting from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, training at the Atlantic Theater Company, and studied classical theatre at the British American Dramatic Academy in Oxford. She has performed leading roles in Shakespeare in Love, A Few Good Men (earning an OTAS Award for Best Actress), Dial M for Murder and more.

ASSOCIATE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Ariel Puls is a Portland-born actress and MFA graduate of Columbia University’s Acting program, where she trained with Kristen Linklater, Anne Bogart, Andrei Serban, and attended the Stella Adler Shakespeare Intensive with Royal Shakespeare Company voice director Andrew Wade. Before Columbia, she earned her BA in Theatre from the University of Portland and trained for ten years at Oregon Ballet Theatre. Locally, her favorite roles include Sister James in Doubt, Poppy in Noises Off, Margot Wendice in Dial M for Murder, and Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie.

Beyond the stage, Ariel has worked for over seven years with Marquam Agency, supporting fundraising efforts for nonprofits and schools across the region.

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Grant Turner has been a driving force in Pacific Northwest classical theatre for more than 30 years as an actor, director, and producer. He is the founder and former Artistic Director of the award-winning Northwest Classical Theatre Company, where he led the company for 16 years. Grant has collaborated with esteemed theatre artists including Royal Shakespeare Company directors Bill Alexander and Barry Kyle, and English actors Joseph Marcell, Michael Pennington, and Dame Janet Suzman.

He has performed in or directed more than 60 Shakespeare productions and is among the few American directors to have presented the complete Shakespeare canon.

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Brian Trybom is a husband, father, small business owner and theater artist.  Originally from Santa Cruz California, he found his love for theater in High School, and is a graduate of The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.

Classical work is what drew him in.  His hometown Shakespeare festival was the first theater he really enjoyed.  The timeless stories that have become part of the world's collective unconscious, leave so much room for interpretation that they feel old and new at the same time.