Ellen Beckerman
Producing Artistic Director
Ellen Beckerman is the founding artistic director of LightBox, where she has directed Milk-n-Honey, Week 17 of 365 Days/365 Plays by Suzan-Lori Parks, Ajax: 100% Fun, Shutter, Gull, Fanatics, Charles Mee’s Orestes, Hamlet, Embarkation and Mother Courage and Her Children. Other directing credits include The Public Theater, Soho Rep, the Ontological Theatre, New Dramatists, Chicago Dramatists Center, the Playwrights’ Center, New Georges, New York Theatre Workshop, Louisiana State University, New Dramatists, Syracuse University. Ellen is a recipient of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors, a Drama League Directing Fellow, a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, a 2005 member of the Soho Rep writer/director lab, and a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect. Ellen was the first literary manager of Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and spent 8 months living in Thailand, creating new Thai language plays and teaching at Patravadi Theatre and Chiangmai University. Ellen performed in Richard Foreman’s I’ve Got the Shakes and worked with Mabou Mines on The Mother. Drawing from her experiences in Asia, India, Europe, and South America, and working in collaboration with the artists of LightBox, Ellen has developed the LightBox Approach, a physical actor training method which has been taught at Princeton University, the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, New York Theatre Workshop, LSU, Syracuse University, Chiangmai University, St. Paul’s School, and The Artists’ Crossing. Ellen’s article, Finding the Boy Band in Chekhov’s The Seagull, will be published this year by Slavica Press. She has an A.B. in history from Princeton University.
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Nicole Betancourt
Producing Director

Nicole Betancourt comes to LightBox with over fifteen years experience in media production and non-profit management.

In 2006, with the support of The Harp Foundation, I.N.S.O. and Casa de la Ciudad, she directed Partes de Agua, a multi-media performance piece about water in Oaxaca, Mexico. From 1999-2005, she was the Creative Director and then Executive Director of MediaRights, a non-profit organization dedicated to media for social change. During that time, MediaRights launched an online community of over 10,000 members and created the award-wining Media That Matters Film Festival which travels across the country every year.

Betancourt was a Producer and Videographer of 90 MILES, a feature documentary by the Cuban-American Director Juan Carlos Zaldívar. 90 MILES premiered on POV (PBS) in 2003 and won Best Documentary at both the New York Latino International Film Festival and at the Festival de Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano in Cuba. In March 1996 Nicole Betancourt’s first film, Before You Go, premiered on HBO, played in over twenty film festivals around the world and won numerous awards including an Emmy and a Golden Spire at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Prior to that, she worked as Field Producer on The Quiet Revolution, a six-part series on international development for SCETV.

As an advocate for effectively using media and the arts for social change, she has consulted with nonprofit organizations, produced workshops and spoken on panels for numerous organizations including the Sundance Film Festival, Independent Feature Project, National Black Programming Consortium and the Museum of Natural History. She served on the board of New York Women In Film and Television, as a panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts and on the Advisory Council of The Florida Room. She was recently awarded a Donella Meadows Leadership Fellowship.
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Shawn Fagan
Associate Artistic Director
With the company Shawn Fagan has played Ajax in AJAX: 100% FUN, Andy Warhol/Peter Beard/Himself in Shutter (which he co-wrote with Artistic Director Ellen Beckerman), Konstantin in Gull, Pylades in Orestes, Laertes/Guildenstern (and later Claudius) in Hamlet, and various characters in 365 Days/365 Plays, Embarkation, and Fanatics. With Anne Bogart/SITI Company he has appeared in Intimations for Saxophone (Arena Stage), The War of the Worlds/Radio Play (U.S. Tour), Reunion (Sundance Theatre Lab), and Alice’s Adventures (Wexner Center for the Arts). Regional credits include: Marchbanks in Candida and Edgar in King Lear (Utah Shakespearean Festival): Romeo in Romeo & Juliet, Christy in The Playboy of the Western World, London Assurance, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, The Matchmaker (American Players Theatre); The Wizard of OZ, A Christmas Carol (Actors Theatre of Louisville); A Moon for the Misbegotten (Delaware Theatre Company); The Tempest (Stonington Opera House). New York credits include: Apparition (understudy, Connelly Theatre); Peninsula (Soho Rep); Dearest Eugenia Haggis, Freakshow (Clubbed Thumb); Cats Talk Back, Pale Idiot (FringeNYC); Wonton Destruction (3-Legged Dog); The High Priest of Bad Math (Ontological BluePrint Series); Antigone (Horace Mann Theatre/Columbia University). Shawn is a founding member of LightBox.
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Corinne Neal
Program Director
Corinne has been with LightBox since fall of 2007, when she served as Director of Marketing and Outreach for the ongoing Food Theater Project. She is also the founding Artistic Director of a small theater company called The Henge, and works as a freelance director and stage technician throughout the NYC area. She is a 2007 Lincoln Center Directors Lab alum, and holds a degree in theatre from Vassar College.
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Wilburn Bonnell
Production Manager

Wilburn Bonnell is a graduate of Vassar College and an experienced production manager and lighting designer.

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Signe V. Harriday
Education Consultant
Signe V. Harriday has extensive experience using creative dramatics to work with youth from elementary age children to college age young adults. She has developed different programs to meet the needs of collaborating arts organizations, diverse youth, and her own desire to be a positive agent of social change through the arts in her community. Her straightforward and sincere approach has enabled her to work with students who have a wide range of abilities, skills, and interests in performing arts. She currently teaches for New Victory Theater, Theatre Development Fund, and Lincoln Center Theater. She earned her MFA from the A. R. T. Institute at Harvard.
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