HALF STRADDLE makes plays, performances, videos and music—often about girls and usually an attempt to portray the weird, sometimes unsettling ecstasy that emerges in the everyday. Half Straddle’s The Knockout Blow, a girl-glam musical mashup, had a sold-out run last summer at the Ontological Hysteric Theater and ran at HERE Arts Center in February 2009. In the past year, Half Straddle has also shown work at Dixon Place (Corey and Pam) and in the Catch! performance series (Amazing Miracles, or Nurses in New England).
TINA SATTER (ARTISTIC DIRECTOR) attended the graduate playwriting program at Brooklyn College under the tutelage of Mac Wellman. She is a writer and director who grew up in New Hampshire and has shown her work in Portland, Oregon; Iowa; Colorado; and New York City.
CHRIS GIARMO (RESIDENT COMPOSER) is an artist based in Brooklyn. He has composed original music for all of Half Straddle's productions and is also a founding member of NY-based performance group, The Red Terror Squad. He has performed and toured internationally with Brooklyn-based Big Dance Theater since 2005 in The Other Here and Comme Toujours Here I Stand, and will perform in and compose music for their upcoming production of Alkestis, translated by Ann Carson. Chris has a BFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts' Experimental Theater Wing and is currently pursuing his Masters of Science for Communication Design at Pratt Institute. He also made this website. chrisgiarmo.com for more info
ELIZA BENT Half Straddle: Family (Ontological), Sliding Whores (Dixon Place), Nurses in New England (Catch!) The Knockout Blow (Ontological and HERE). Other New York credits: Babes in Toyland (Ice Factory 2009), The Less We Talk (Hoi Polloi) The Three Sisters and Clocked (Columbia University). Readings and workshops with Target Margin, Clubbed Thumb and New York Theatre Workshop. Her adapted play, She of the Voice, had a sold-out run at the undergroundzero festival at PS 122. Upcoming: Asleep at the Wheel a musical about her boss.
JULIA SIRNA-FREST is a founding member of Half Straddle and performed in The Knockout Blow (Ontological and HERE) and Amazing Miracles, or Nurses in New England as part of the Catch Series. Other recent credits include: Rocky Philly (The Bushwick Starr), Babes in Toyland (Ice Factory 2009), She of the Voice (PS 122), The Deluge (The Bushwick Starr), Lies I Wish I Told You (Dixon Place), Church (The Public). With Target Margin: Aria Da Capo (The Chocolate Factory), The Beautiful Pooper Scooper (The Ohio), The Boar Hunt (The Kitchen), Public Spirited (HERE). She has also performed in readings and workshops at New Dramatists, Soho Rep and The Soho Think Tank.