Cast 

Maurice (Chef Reese) Dixon (He / Him) - Voice of Charlie's Dad

Chef Reese is a Community Advocate with Voices Unbarred, the programming arm of Ally Theatre Company. In 2017, Chef Reese started Reese's Catering Services, LLC, a community-based company that hires and trains returning citizens. He's been a local favorite chef in the Washington, DC area ever since. He is passionate about motivating others to use their gifts and talents to create better opportunities for themselves. His ultimate goal is to one day have a training facility that can offer Culinary Training to Reformed Citizens as a skill set before they are released from prison. You can learn more about him by visiting his social media pages. 

IG: @Chefreese210
​FB: Reese's Catering Services

Skye Sivoné Ellis (She / He / They) ​- Cam

 Throughout her childhood adventures and equally imaginative adult life, Skye Sivone Ellis has been led, shifted, and shaped by curiosity. She moved from MA to D.C. to further question and explore the social rules that she’s expected to follow. 

Here, Skye has been exploring the depths of community care, identity, free play, the art of organized rebellion, and the layers of ecosystems she lives within. Her days are often full of cooking, reading, writing, healing, wandering along the Anacostia River, and always listening for the exchange of stories that happens across cultures and tables. 

Marley Kabin (She / Her) ​- Alex

Marley is a DMV-based actor and collaborator and is so excited to be working with Voices Unbarred again! Previous work with local companies includes Ally Theatre, the Kennedy Center, Rorschach Theatre, and Avant Bard.

When she’s not onstage, Marley can be found event coordinating for Theatre Washington, voice acting for true crime podcasts, and collaborating with screenwriting students at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda. She has her BA in Theatre from the University of Maryland College Park and currently studies with Tom Todoroff in NYC. Website: MarleyKabin.com; Instagram: @marleykabin

Rah Matthews (They / Them) ​- Charlie

Rashaud - Newly known as "Rah" Matthews (They/Them), BSU Grad; B.S. Theatre Arts (2020) - is a proud black, non-binary DMV theater artist. Rah's artistic mission is to be the voice for the voiceless. Currently, Rah is Full-Time Drama Teacher for Prince George’s County Public Schools.

Their recent credits include both performative, directorial, and administrative credits:
Young Playwriting Theatre (DCPCS), Rock Paper Scissors (Soulshine Theatre), Voices of Now (Arena Stage), Mojada( 1st Stage)
Touring: Fences( National Players), Much Ado About Nothing (National Players)
Director/Assistant Director: A Different Cinderella Story (Diamonds Unite), Duck Harbor(1st Stage), What to Send Up When it Goes Down (BSU Theatre)
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You can follow Rah on their artistic journeys/endeavors:
​Instagram: @Rahtheartist FB:@Rah Matthews. “Keep on shining; you beautiful beings.”

Jane Petkofsky (She / Her) ​- Janie

An Artistic Ally with Ally Theatre Company, Jane helped launch the company’s first season as Martha Washington in The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington, as Sham/Nur in Dhana and the Rosebuds, and as Ilene in Rasheeda Speaking (before that show’s early closing because of the unfortunate pandemic lock-down of 2020). She was also a Keegan Theatre company member, where she appeared in numerous productions, including the U.S. premiere of The Dealer of Ballynafeigh (Ma) and Cabaret (Fraulein Schneider).

She has worked throughout the region with Theater Alliance, Venus Theatre, Creative Cauldron, ArtsCentric, Annapolis Shakespeare Company, The American Century Theater, The Washington Rogues, Pallas Theatre Collective, Charter Theatre, Spooky Action Theatre, Signature Theatre, and Round House Theatre. In the Fall of 2024, Jane will appear in Richmond, VA’s Cadence Theatre Company production of True West. Among Jane’s film work is The Henchman’s War, available on Amazon Prime, and Christmas at the Greenbrier, streaming on Fox Nation. Stay tuned for upcoming independent feature films: The Hurtz Brothers; Come Into My Arms; and Beyond Your Consciousness—The Beginning. Jane is a proud graduate of the Honors Acting Conservatory at the Theatre Lab School of Dramatic Arts.

Production Team

Sisi Reid (She / Fae / They) 
​Director / Writer 

Sisi Reid (she/fae/they) is an internationally touring multidisciplinary theater maker, dancer, and director from Norfolk, Virginia and Wheaton, Maryland who practices theater as tools for collective liberation, healing, and youth empowerment. Sisi’s art is grounded in the values of justice, community building, and education instilled by her family and upbringing. As a creative visionary, Sisi is an actor, writer, playwright, dancer, director, spoken word poet, Emcee, facilitator, teaching artist, educator (including English language arts) and an applied theater practitioner. Sisi is a graduate of University of Maryland and The Theater Lab’s Life Story Institute. She has taught and performed in Washington D.C., Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, Michigan, Colombia, London, and Brazil. As an applied theater practitioner, she has facilitated theatre workshops in prisons with University of Michigan’s Prison Creative Arts Project, Voices Unbarred, and University of Rio's Theater in Prison program. Sisi was a Producing Playwright of The Welders 3.0 (2019 - 2023) and a board member of the Pride Youth Theatre Alliance (2018 - 202). She is a Maryland States Arts Council (MSAC) Independent Artist Awardee, Teaching Artist on the MSAC Roster, and an ArtEquity BIPOC Leadership Circle Alumni. Sisi continually curates and facilitates joyFULL spaces that are queer, Black and abundant. She is the founder of Black Joy Creatives DC and Soul Shine Theater Garden, a performing arts community that gathers, produces dance-theater plays, and teaches performing arts centered in embodied practices of joy, play, travel, healing arts, and liberation.  As a playwright, her plays have been performed with The Welder 3.0, Imagination Stage’s Pegasus Ensemble, University of Maryland’s Second Season and Next Now Festival; Young Playwright’s Theatre’s Silence is Violence: LGBTQ + You and Silence is Violence: Who Earth Is This DC?, and  Previous DC director credits: Macbeth (The Theater Lab), The Rainbow Fish (Anacostia Playhouse),  Indefinition and Respirations (FRESSH Inc.’s Next To Kin Festival), Assistant Director: Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi’s KLYTMNESTRA: An Epic Slam Poem (Theater Alliance),  and Keith Hamilton Cobb’s American Moore (Anacostia Playhouse). IG: @soulshinetheatergarden

Charles Franklin IV (He / Him) 
Assistant Director 

Charles Franklin IV is a native of Southeast, Washington, DC and proud to be working professionally as an actor and emerging director in his community, Anacostia. Charles just closed the world premiere Look Both Ways at both Theater Alliance and The Kennedy Center. Other credits include Helen Hayes winner of Outstanding Ensemble and Outstanding Production, Blood at the Root at Theater Alliance and Day of Absence, Klecksography at Rorschach Theatre, and Snow Queen at Imagination Stage.​

Charles recently directed a stage reading of the play, Where Eagles Fly, in partnership with Events DC and will direct a full production of the play / musical in 2024-2025. Charles currently holds a Bachelors in Theatre Arts -acting & directing from Bowie State University, a Master's in educational technology from University of Maryland, and has also trained four years in acting and directing at The Duke Ellington School of the Arts.

Lori Pitts (She / Her)
Producing Artistic Director 

Lori Pitts (she/her) is a facilitator, Theatre of the Oppressed Joker, teaching artist, actor, director, and improvisor in the DMV area who is passionate about creating platforms for voices that often go unheard. She is the Artistic Director of Ally Theatre Company, and the founder of Voices Unbarred, the main advocacy programming that envisions a justice system radically reimagined by people directly impacted by that system. The organization uses theatre as a tool for changing policy and social attitudes, growing and healing community, and centering the voices of people both currently and formerly incarcerated. Pitts was the Artist in Residence at James Madison University in February 2023, and has most recently been seen on stage with Second City, Rorschach Theatre, and Washington Improv Theatre (Teams: Hellcat, You’re Invited, Earth Wind and Tired, Imagine Wagons). She completed Georgetown University’s Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate program, was a member of the inaugural cohort of the Culture Caucus with The Kennedy Center, a graduate of the 202Creates Fellowship, a graduate of the Movement Matters Community Organizing & Popular Education Institute, and a five-time recipient of the Arts and Humanities Fellowship Program grant through the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her work within the community. 

Paige Washington (They / Them)
​Stage Manager (Devising into Tech)

Paige Washington is a local DMV stage and production manager. Recent credits include Albert Herring with The Maryland Opera Studio; Alceste with INSearies; The Wilting Point with Keegan Theatre; Requiem with INSeries; and Tempered: A Cabarage with 4615 Theatre Company. In addition to their management work, they are a director and choreographer. Credits include There is No Hope in the City of Chaos with Keegan’s Boiler Room Series; By the Hands of a Woman with Keegan’s Boiler Room Series; and The Headwound with Post Shift Theatre. They are also the Executive Director at 4615 Theatre Company and Associate Production Manager at Imagination Stage. They are thrilled to be doing work that puts queer, brown, and indigenous bodies and minds at the center. Upcoming: The Niceties with Perisphere Theatre

Alyssa Hill (She / Her) 
​Stage Manager (Tech through Production)

Alyssa Hill is a Stage Manager in the DMV area. She has worked as a Stage Manager for the American Girl Live in Concert National Tour. As well as with GALA Hispanic Theatre for their entire 2023 season. She also works as a Residential Stage Manager at THEARC and Bowie Center for the Performing Arts. Her passion for the arts started on stage at the age of 8 and has recently found a new passion and appreciation for the entire behind the scenes production process. 

Thom J. Woodward (He / Him)
​Sound Design

Thom J. Woodward is a multitalented sound designer and audio producer/engineer. He is an audio storyteller who is especially gifted at editing, mixing, and designing sound for live theatre and scripted and unscripted, fiction and non-fiction, audio stories. Thom is the Director of Audio at Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, DC where he teaches sound design and audio engineering to high school students. Thom earned his BA in Mass Communications (Radio) from Howard University and holds two master’s degrees in Entertainment Business and Instructional Design & Technology, respectively, from Full Sail University. Thom’s professional memberships include the Audio Engineering Society and the Theatrical Sound Designers and Composers Association.

Tavish - Bird City Improv (They / He)
​Devising Consultant

Tavish is the Director of Bird City Improv and a practitioner of Theatre for Social Change. He is a queer artist and educator with Celtic roots. They enjoy directing, poetry and ensemble-generated theatre. They are also a Buddhist, Yoga practitioner, and Tarot card reader. Tavish was born on Penacook Land, in New England, under a Virgo moon. Since 2011, they have lived in Baltimore and DC, which are the ancestral lands of the Piscataway people, where they became the founder of Bird City Improv, a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University, and an educational consultant for the Maryland State Department of Education. Now, he facilitates the Arts & Social Justice Fellowship at Strathmore Music Center and the Queer Youth Soloist Project at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. They are a faculty member in the Kennedy Center’s Opera Institute and in the Creative Aging program at Art Works Now. Through his theatre company, Tavish also offers in-school residencies, corporate workshops, and private coaching for queer folx and artists who are interested in re-imagining their relationships and channeling their creative power in ways that are meaningful, just, and authentic.

Tavish holds two degrees in theatre, but more importantly, is a seasoned artist with many years of lived experience. He is versed in multiple styles of improvisation, embodied practice, and comedic theory. Centering healing, queerness, and connection in his work, Tavish empowers individuals to listen, adapt, and respond. Their hope is to co-create in ways that are joyful, patient, and honest. In this production, Tavish served as an improvisational director, guiding Sisi Soulshine and the devising ensemble in play design, active analysis, and embodied dramaturgy through improvisational techniques.

Previous directing credits include Two Rooms by Lee Blessing at Green Globe Theatre, Singularity: Eccentric Solo Comedy at Baltimore Improv Group, and A Game by Denis E. Noble at Bird City Improv. Writing credits include Whatlaw at 10x10x10, Evangelisaurus at Baltimore Improv Group, and Dovo Sono i Peni? at Stevenson University. Previous acting credits include A Streetcar Named Desire at Everyman Theatre, Cloud 9 at Iron Crow Theatre, Leveling Up at Interrobang Theatre Company and The Brother(s) at New York Stage & Film. Connect with Tavish by visiting www.birdcityimprov.com. 

Chris Gooden (He / Him) - Not Pictured
Lighting Designer

Additional Devising Ensemble (not performing)

Thomas Bradley (He / Him)
​Voices Unbarred Community Advocate & Deviser

Makia Green (They / Them)
​Deviser

Makia Green is a queer non-binary fat Black liberation organizer with Working Families Party, Harriets Wildest Dreams, co-chair of the Defund MPD Coalition, and a former core organizer of Black Lives Matter DC. They are also a co-founder of the Movement 4 Black Lives DC Money Pot. Makia fights to abolish the prison state and diet industry, end intra-community violence and eliminate wealth inequality by facilitating community dialogues, mutual aid, leading direct actions, and building coalitions centered on Black joy, healing & abolition. 

They joined the movement by co-founding an activist collective in Rochester, NY during the aftermath of the Ferguson Uprising, and have since been an active member and leader of Movement 4 Black Lives in DC since 2015. As a movement leader, Green's passion is using radical honesty to give others the permission to be themselves, unapologetically so that we all have the power to manifest the world within which we want to live.
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Makia has been featured and quoted in The Forge, NY Times, Essence, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, VICE News, The Intercept, The Hill, Mic, The Root, Blavity, Roll Call, BBC, Bustle, WIRED, and the book, Fat Girls in Black Bodies, authored by Joy Cox.

ChelseaDee Harrison (She / Her) 
​Deviser, Cam

ChelseaDee Harrison is a theater-maker, artivist, and public arts engagement specialist. She has facilitated community-based arts workshops with The Kennedy Center, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, Carnegie Hall, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and for survivors of human trafficking and their families. She is a tenured Teaching Artist with the New Victory Theater, a former New Victory Theater LabWorks artist, and a Teaching Artists Guild National Advisory Committee Member. She is a 2024 Arts and Humanities Fellow with the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and a Practitioner Award Recipient from the Canady Foundation for the Arts. Most recently, her creative work includes researching and piloting the Free Black Chesapeake Project- a community, art and history experience. She is the executive producer, writer, and host of the warrior queen podcast, Vanguard of the Viragoes. She is the creator of the virtual healing experience, The Ritual of Repair and the writer of Home is Where The Fund Is: A Story of Southern Synergy, a new theater piece centering the work of abortion funds in the American South. In 2022, she launched her public arts education and production company, Wild Seed Productions LLC. Her inspiration is crafting multi-platform public engagement experiences that highlight history, challenge dominant narratives and ensure that art is a tool in the hands of the people. You can follow her work at linktr.ee/ChelseaDee

Devin Smith (He / Him)
​Voices Unbarred Community Advocate & Deviser, Mr. Riley