People

Natalia Mar Urzua is a Latine actor, writer, combatant, and D&D enthusiast based in Brooklyn. They’re proud to have helped bring some Serials favorites to the stage, including Watagatapitusberry and Egg Quest. They are an SAFD certified Actor Combatant with certifications in Unarmed, Single Sword, Two-Handed Sword, Rapier/Dagger, and Sword and Shield.

Nathaniel Stornelli an NYC based actor and props designer. They are passionate about new work, old stories, and making old stories into new work. Themes of metamorphosis are often at the heart of their narratives; they seek to create spaces where changéd stories change our selves, while maintaining deep safety and care for everyone involved in the process. When neither onstage performing nor backstage tinkering with props, Nathaniel can usually be found telling stories with friends through tabletop role playing games.

Paige Esterly is an NYC based playwright, producer, and director. A grad of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Dramatic Writing, Paige’s work has been developed with Theater for the New City (NYC), The Space at Irondale (NYC), SERIALS (NYC), The Tank (NYC), Murmation Theater Co. (NYC), TheatreWorks (Mountain View, CA), American Lore Theater (NYC), The Little Theatre of Alexandria (Alexandria, VA), Equity Library Theater (NYC), The Road Theater (Los Angeles, CA), the Workshop Theater (NYC), and the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing (NYC). She is the creator and producer of Fucked-Up Play Fest, a recurring theatrical festival showcasing new work by local playwrights, performed as a drinking game for the audience! Member of The Road Theater’s Under Construction 5 Playwriting Group & The Workshop Theater’s Fall 2024 Playwriting Intensive.

Michael Ortiz is an actor, director, writer, and producer based in New York City. He is a co-founding member of The Fled Collective, as well as a resident artist with Breaking & Entering Theatre Collective. He currently produces SERIALS, a late-night short play competition series. Michael is passionate about the cultivation of new work and creating opportunities for underrepresented artists. He is an avid gamer and loves scary movies, craft beer, Dungeons & Dragons, home cooking, and trash TV! Off-Broadway: Puffs, or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic (New World Stages), Asleep at the Wheel (The Players Theater), Loverspy (Breaking & Entering Theatre Collective), The Fez (The Flea Theater), Screenplay by Stalin (Theater at St. Clement’s), Rule of 7×7 (The Tank). Regional: Drunk Shakespeare (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Gator Tales (Edinburgh Fringe)

Emani Brielle Simpson is a multi hyphenated theatre artist. She is the founder of the production company, The Real Artists (TRA), whose mission is to create an inspirational environment where artists can hone their crafts, thrive and network to build a career out of their passions. Emani is passionate about bringing artists together and collaborating on new works. She is on the Artistic Programming Committee for Breaking and Entering Theater Collective. Some of her recent credits include: Night Witches produced by PickPocketProject, Loneliness Was a Pandemic at Theater Lab (production stage manager), Project Sankofa in the Broadway Bound Theater Festival (director), WAAFRIKA 123: A Queerly Scripted Tragedy produced by the National Queer Theater (stage manager), Pecong at BMCC/CUNY (stage manager), Dust of Egypt: Sojourner Truth’s Story at the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture (producer), and Francois & The Rebels: A Punk Rock Musical at the Public Theater (stage manager).

Cody Hom is a Brooklyn based designer, stage manager, and production manager. Cody is an alumnus from Brooklyn College with a concentration in sound design and stage management, and is also a member of their staff as their Assistant Production Manager and the Faculty Sound Design Advisor.  In addition to producing, Cody is the lead programmer / designer for lights and sound for Serials and is getting his feet wet in playwriting.  Outside of theater in his spare time, Cody is a cartoonist, graphic designer, manages wholesale for a local chain of cafés, and is a Dungeons and Dragons content creator on TikTok.  Cody’s goal is to become a jack-of-all-trades, master of some.
All socials: @C7Animatics

Nicholas Louis Turturro is an Artist, Producer, and Marketing Generalist based in Brooklyn. He works throughout New York’s theatrical landscape, frequently on new works, and has been seen at Classic Stage Company, Soho Playhouse, The Tank, Lenfest Center for the Arts, and The Flea Theater. He is an experienced film and commercial actor, having worked on festival-screened shorts and commercially with brands like Simplisafe, Bumble, and Yahoo. He paints in his own time, creating works ranging from large cosmic surrealist pieces to smaller contemporary figure studies and cityscapes. He self-produces live painting performances focused around his visual art practice.

“My love for theatrical collaboration is one of the biggest reasons I’m a producer at SERIALS (@serialsnyc), to create as many moments for us to work together as possible.”

“From where can this renewal come?…in short, a few [lunatics] who have nothing to lose and are not afraid of hard work.” –Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre

Kristan Seemel came up in the theater working on new plays, serving as dramaturg on a score of premiere productions and developmental workshops in Portland, Oregon where he worked for almost a decade. He is passionate about new writing and his directing projects include the recent premieres of HYPE MAN by Idris Goodwin, Mary-Kate Olsen is in Love by Mallery Avidon and The Electric Lighthouse by Ed Himes (all at The Flea). Other new plays Kristan has directed include Bars and Measures by Idris Goodwin (urbanStages), Mutt by Lava Alapai (Many Hats Collective) and The Verspiary by Matthew Zrebski (Stark Raving Theatre) as well as Pacific Northwest regional premieres of Carlos Murillo’s Mimesophobia (Sand & Glass Productions), The Long Christmas Ride Home by Paula Vogel (TheatreVertigo) and Mac Wellman’s A Murder of Crows (defunkt theatre). Recent favorite revivals include Bad Penny by Mac Wellman (The Flea), Brecht & Weill’s The Threepenny Opera and Hamlet (CoHo Productions).
Kristan is always on the lookout for new ways to make new plays– drop him a line with your ideas!
All theater is post-apocalyptic.