Steering Committee Chair, Producer, Festival Instigator, Choreographer

Annie (she/her) is a Philly-based choreographer, performer, and death doula. Her dances focus on the experience, rather than the appearance, of the body in its fragility, neuroses, and grief. Her work as a death doula focuses on supporting people to make end-of-life plans, witnessing them in their grief, and offering grief rituals. She is obsessed with keening, the Irish tradition of ritual wailing at a funeral. She is a 2017 Pew Fellow, and her work has been supported primarily by the community of artists, bartenders, elders, and end of life professionals in Philly and beyond. Some dances you may recognize: Always the Hour, At Home with the Humorless Bastard, and Lovertits.

Steering Committee, Producer, Program Director Friends of Laurel Hill

Brittanie (she/her) has collaborated with artists, community organizers, death workers, schools and museums to develop and deliver public programs for more than a decade. Prior to her role as Public Programs Manager with the Friends of Laurel Hill, she was the Program Director for One Book, One Philadelphia, an annual citywide reading and civic dialogue festival at the Free Library. She is a writer and a rower. 

Steering Committee, Producer, Artistic Director Headlong Dance Theater

David Brick collaborates broadly in making dance, participatory installations and community. The experience of growing up hearing in a Deaf family influences his thinking about how bodies perform as both subjects and agents of culture. Losing his hearing as an adult continues to contribute to his holistic and innovative practices that understands inclusivity as a resource for making work that is more meaningful and excellent in every sense. 

David is Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Headlong Dance Theater, a platform for performance research founded in Philly in 1993. David also directs the Headlong Performance Institute, a trans-disciplinary performance practice and training residency whose graduate fellows are leaders in creating experimental and community-based work around the US.

Steering Committee, Professional Swiss Army Knife

Cat Ramirez (they/he/she) is a queer, mixed race, Philly-based, neurodivergent performance director and producer who loves logistical puzzles, community meals, and bisexual lighting. Their work empowers the person inside them who was socialized to be quiet and ashamed of having opinions.  Some of their favorite directing projects include Space Opera with Obvious Agency, Everybody with Temple University, She Was a Conquistawhore with Rachel O’Hanlon Rodriguez, Today Is My Birthday with Theatre Exile, Letters to the Moon with Mel Hsu and Intercultural Journeys, Half Magic with Joseph Ahmed, and Meet Murasaki Shikibu with Tiny Dynamite (Barrymore Nominated for Outstanding Direction). Cat currently serves the Creative Director for Philly Asian Performing Artists (PAPA), the Cooperative Operations Manager for Obvious Agency, and a board member of the Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation.

Steering Committee, This Hallowed Wilderness

Naila Francis is a certified grief coach and death midwife, who’s also completed psychotherapist and soul activist Francis Weller’s Grief Ritual Leadership Training. She helps people transform their relationship to grief and loss through one-on-one coaching, workshops, and as a community grief tender. Naila is a founding member of Salt Trails, a Leeway Foundation award-winning Philadelphia collective working to normalize grief through community rituals. She is also a wedding officiant and poet.

Steering Committee, Threshold Collective

Rebecca Maury MD FACP (she/her) is board certified Internist and Hospice/Palliative Care physician with over 20 years of clinical experience. She is a co-founder of Threshold Collective, where she provides clients with support in medical decision making, medical systems navigation, end of life planning, direct support to the dying, home vigils, grief support, and celebrations of life.

Accessibility Coordinator

Reflective Space Coordinator

Shannon Brooks is a multisensory artist working across movement, sound, sculpture, installation, action, moving image, and long-term embodied practices. Their work combines the heightened ritual of performance with the imperfections of process. They love the natural world and the unreal. As a Disabled/low-vision person, they understand accessibility as a creative force that can transform time, space, and power structures. Shannon is fresh from a residency at the Soil Factory in Ithaca NY where they experimented with compost and soil scientists, artists and activists. 

Production Manager

Stage Manager, Laurel Hill East

Sophie Koester (Production Manager) is a stage manager, dramaturg, Yiddishist, and writer based in Philadelphia. She is passionate about facilitating art in her professional life, and cooking and browsing Wikipedia in her personal. She is very excited to be a part of this amazing team putting up beautiful work. Notable credits include: Lead Stage Manager for Cannonball Festival 2024, Dramaturg for The Dybbuk: or, Between Two Worlds with Open Theater Workshop, Production Manager for the Philadelphia Gay Men's Chorus.

Festival Stage Manager, Laurel Hill West

Kel Fleming (they/them) is a Philadelphia-based stage manager, director, and writer. Kel is the Resident Stage Manager at the Academy of Vocal Arts, returning for another season this Fall. They are also a lead artist with sketch comedy group Impulse Control Freaks and work with local company Applied Mechanics as an administrative assistant. Along with another season at AVA, Kel looks forward to stage managing the world premiere of Space Opera with the Obvious Agency and performing in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival as a solo artist this coming fall. 

Recent Credits include:L'Amico Fritz(SM, AVA),Cosi Fan Tutte(SM, AVA),Faust(SM, AVA),Cabaret(SM, UArts).

Sound Engineer

Natali Merrill is a sound and technology designer and engineer. Based in Philadelphia, she has been the sound designer for productions including Ghost Ride (Agile Rascal Bike Theatre), Siluetas (Power Street Theatre), Broads (1812 Productions), Spring Awakening (Bryn Mawr College), High Noon (Ninth Planet), Shakespeare’s R&J (New Light Theatre Company), and Fucking A (Swarthmore College). She has worked with Theatre Exile, the Bearded Ladies Cabaret, New Century Theatre Company in Seattle, and the Williamstown Theatre Festival. A graduate of Haverford College, she researched and wrote a thesis on acoustics in performance halls. She is also a singer and composer.

Publicist and Social Media

Grayce Carson (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and marketing professional based in Philadelphia. She is a co-founder and performer with Paper Doll Ensemble, and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (C’16). As a performer, she has worked with ArcheDream for Humankind, White Box Theatre, White Pines Production, GoPuff (commercial), and more. In marketing and PR, Grayce collaborates with a range of clients including InterAct Theatre Company, Gretna Theatre, the historic Christ Church, Applied Mechanics, Broken Mirror Studio, and the All Bones Considered podcast. She is passionate about connecting creativity and strategy.

Ryann Elise (they/them) is an actor, painter, theatre practitioner, and performance artist with a background in musical theatre and stage management. They are also a recent graduate of the inaugural MFA in Devised Performance Program at Pig Iron School with Rowan University. They are excited to be part of the Death and Arts Festival, and hope everyone enjoys the performances and workshops. -Vita Brevis, Ars Longa