Mission
Lightning Rod Special is a Philadelphia-based original performance company that creates raucous and contemplative works to ask questions of ourselves, our audience, and the world at large. Like scientists, we begin each project with a hypothesis and, following artistic investigations, find our way to complete pieces of theatre that twist the ordinary into alien, provoke debate, and stir what lies dormant in the corners of an audience’s mind. With big hearts, we tackle lightning rod topics in ways that scramble theatrical conventions and intellectual assumptions. Exploding complex questions with precision and play, Lightning Rod Special makes live performance from the ground up.
Co-Artistic Directors
Scott R. Sheppard
Scott R. Sheppard is an Obie Award-winning theater artist and a Co-Director of Lightning Rod Special. He was a lead writer and performer in LRS’s The Appointment (“Should have been nominated for a Tony” - NY Times 2023, Best of 2019 Theater in NY Times, NYMag, Time Out NY) and he was the lead writer and performer of SPEECH. He was a co-creator and performer of Underground Railroad Game (Best of 2016 NYTimes and Time Out NY), which toured in 5 countries and 11 cities earning an Edinburgh Fringe First Award and an Edinburgh Stage Award. URG was named by the NY Times as one of the 25 Best Plays of the past 25 Years. Other credits: Theater in Quarantine - Writer of Blood Meal (NY Times Critic’s Pick) and Topside. Pig Iron Theatre Company - Period of Animate Existence and 99 Breakups (deviser/performer) and Gentlemen Volunteers (performer); George & Co. - Holden (co-creator/performer); Arden Theatre Company - The Stinky Cheeseman (performer, Barrymore nomination). Scott is a proud graduate of Pig Iron’s School for Advanced Performance Training. He was an Independence Foundation Fellow, BRIC Lab Resident, Guild Hall Resident Artist, and a member of Page 73’s I-73 writer’s group.
Alice Yorke
Alice Yorke is a Philadelphia-based actor, creator, director, and producer. She is a Co-Director of Lightning Rod Special and the lead artist on their latest piece, The Appointment (NYTW: Next Door) (Best of 2019 Theatre, NYTimes, NYMag, TimeOutNY). With LRS: Hackles, Let the Dog See the Rabbit and Sans Everything. Performance credits include The Gap (Azuka Theatre) (Barrymore nomination, outstanding supporting performance), Down Past Passyunk (InterAct Theatre), Alex Bechtel's The West, Pig Iron Theatre Company’s 99 Breakups and Pay Up. Recent directing credits include White Feminist (Ars Nova ANT Fest) and Art Perv with Lee Minora. In 2019 she was named the Best Theatre Talent in Philadelphia by Philadelphia Magazine. Proud graduate of the inaugural class of the Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training.
Associate Artistic Director
Mason Rosenthal is a performance maker, director, actor, and teacher from Skokie, Illinois. He is the Associate Artistic Director of Lightning Rod Special and a founding member of The Medium Theatre Company. With these two companies, and in his work as an independent artist, he has created over 50 original performance works. Mason holds a BFA in Drama with a minor in Art and Public Policy from New York University. He was on faculty at NYU's Atlantic Theater Company Acting School from 2007 to 2011, and has studied improvisational dance with his teaching mentor George Russell since 2006. In 2011 he moved to Philadelphia to be the Headlong Performance Institute's first teaching fellow. In 2017, he moved to Austin to pursue a MFA in Performance as Public Practice with The University of Texas at Austin. Recently, Mason's original work has been supported by Austin's Rude Mechs with a 2020 Rude Fusion co-production, by The Ground Floor at Berkley Rep as part of their 2019 Summer Residency Lab, and by Haverford College as a Tuttle Creative Resident. Mason is currently on faculty at Virginia Tech's School of the Performing Arts as part of a Post-MFA in Applied Performance.
Company Members
Alex Bechtel is a multidisciplinary artist dedicated to the creation of new works of music, theatre, and musical theatre. Recent credits include: Music & Lyrics for Lightning Rod Special’s The Appointment (NYTimes Critics’ Pick & Best of 2019 List), and original music for People’s Light & Theatre Company’s Shakespeare in Love, Arden Theatre Company’s The Light Princess, Treasure Island and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival’s Two Gents, Henry V, Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. Bechtel has received Barrymore Awards for Music Direction, Leading Actor in a Musical, and Original Music. In 2015, he was awarded an Independence Fellowship in the Arts. He is the creator/composer of The West, Philadelphia Nocturne, Cheer Up, Dostoevsky, and Penelope. Bechtel is a member of the theatre faculty at University of the Arts, and is currently in development on several new plays and musicals.
Oona Curley is a lighting and scenic designer from New York City. Their work has been seen in New York (NYTW, BAM, ArsNova, Atlantic Theater Co., The Vineyard, The Cherry Lane, Clubbed Thumb, LCT3, Joe's Pub, JACK, La MaMa, The New Ohio, NYU/Tisch, PlayCo), Philadelphia (The Arden Theatre, Opera Philadelphia, Curtis Opera, The Bearded Ladies Cabaret, Team Sunshine Performance Co., Theater Horizon, FringeArts), and regionally (The Guthrie, Long Wharf, Trinity Rep, People’s Light, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas). Oona received their MFA from NYU/Tisch, where they were awarded the J.S. Seidman Award for Design Excellence, and was NYU's nominee for a Princess Grace Award. They hold a BA from Brown University, where their designs earned the Zonta Award for Theatre Arts and the Weston Award for Theatre Design. In 2019, they were a recipient of the Lotos Foundation Prize. Oona is an associate artist with the Bearded Ladies Cabaret in Philadelphia, and a company member of Lightning Rod Special, creators of the multiple-award-winning Underground Railroad Game, which they designed. Oona is also a proud member of USA 829.
Katie Gould is a founding member of Lightning Rod Special. She is also a member of the inaugural class of the Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training, where she met her LRS collaborators. Katie has worked as a performer/creator with many Philadelphia theater companies including Lightning Rod Special, Pig Iron, Theater Exile, EgoPo and Azuka. Katie is also the owner of KG Strong, a woman-powered, body-positive strength training studio in the BOK building. Lightning Rod Special is Katie’s creation family and home where she gets to explore and explode her special kind of crazy.
Rebecca Kanach is a NYC and Philadelphia based costume designer that specializes in new and devised work. She has worked with Opera Philadelphia, Ballet X, Swarthmore College, The Medium Theatre Company, Bristol Riverside, Drexel University, Interact Theater Company, The Lantern Theater, Philadelphia Theater Workshop, Rutgers-Camden Campus, Temple University, The Walnut Street Theatre, The Wilma, various Philadelphia Mummers groups, and is proud to be the resident costume designer with The Bearded Ladies Cabaret. In 2017 she received a Barrymore Award for Outstanding Costume Design for her work on Peaceable Kingdom. She is currently pursuing her MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in costume design.
LRS Usual Suspects
ARAM AGHAZARIAN | RENEE BLINKWOLT (Producing Consultant) | DOM CHACON | JUSTIN JAIN | JILLIAN KEYS | JENN KIDWELL (Founding Company Member) | JES LEVINE | SARA MARINICH | JAIME MASEDA | LEE MINORA | BRETT ASHLEY ROBINSON | EVA STEINMETZ | ANDREW THOMPSON | MASHA TSIMRING
History
Since 2012, LRS has created seven professional works which have toured to 5 countries and 15 cities. In 2019 LRS won the Wolfson Award for Evolving Theater Company. Notable highlights include:
The Appointment (WP Theater in 2023, FringeArts and NEXT DOOR at New York Theater Workshop in 2019), NYTimes and Time Out NY Critics’ Pick, seven Barrymore nominations (including Outstanding New Musical), and Best of 2019 Theater Pick in New York Magazine, Time Out NY, and the NYTimes.
Underground Railroad Game, by Jennifer Kidwell and Scott R. Sheppard with Lightning Rod Special, (Ars Nova Production 2016) selected by the New York Times in 2017 as one of the 25 best plays of the last 25 years, OBIE Award for Best New American Theater Work, Edinburgh Fringe First Award, Edinburgh Stage Award, three Lucille Lortel nominations (including Best Play), two Helen Hayes nominations (including Outstanding Visiting Production), and Best Theater of the Year lists for NYtimes, Time Out NY, Time Out Melbourne, and Washington Post.
LRS has collaborated with Anne Carson and Haverford College to produce a staged reading of her unpublished play KRAPP Hour. Other projects include Sans Everything (‘16 AS220, ‘16 Charlestown Working Theater, ‘17 FringeArts) a science fiction thriller where future intelligent life forms become dangerously obsessed with Shakespeare, made in collaboration with Strange Attractor Theatre Company; Let the Dog See the Rabbit (‘15 The Rotunda Sanctuary) a performance looking at looking at animals; Go Long Big Softie (‘13 Philadelphia Fringe) a wild look at the mythopoetic men’s movement; and Hackles (‘12 Philadelphia Fringe) a teen girl’s journey to the underworld and back.
LRS has taught original performance creation at NYU, Swarthmore College, Haverford College, Roger Williams University, Colgate University, University of Pennsylvania, and Radford University, Friends’ Central School, The Philadelphia School, and Arthur P. Schalick High School. LRS’s work has been supported by residencies and grants from Wyncote Foundation, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Network of Ensemble Theaters, BRIC Lab Residency, Orchard Project, Berkley Ground Floor Residency, White Pines Productions, North American Cultural Lab, FringeArts, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, Puffin Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts, and the Tuttleman Family Foundation.