Bluebeard

Lane is thrilled to join Bag & Baggage for the first time in this wild production. They received their BFA in Bachelor Performance in 2019 and was an Acting Apprentice at Portland Playhouse for their 2019-2020 season. They have been seen in The Wolves, Women of Will, and A Christmas Carol at the Portland Playhouse, Stop Motion! at Broken Planetarium Theatre, and is a founding member of Witch Hunt Theatre. They are represented by ZTA Agency. When not creating theatre, they can be found playing with their two rescue dogs, teaching a wild group of 5th graders, and spending time with their lovely fiance, Ash.

 Elsa holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Lewis & Clark College and is an alumna of The Institute for Contemporary Performance. This is Elsa’s first show with Bag&Baggage. Favorite past projects include Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd; directing new work such as ab intra and R.E.M.; soloing in Mozart’s Mass in C Minor; and singing anything by Tchaikovsky. Elsa enjoys exploring extended voice techniques as a way of communicating personal and shared histories. She is forever grateful to her slew of teachers and mentors including Sue McBerry, Kathy FitzGibbon, Rebecca Lingafelter, Amber Whitehall, and Cristi Miles.

Ty received a BA in Philosophy and Political Science from the University of Oregon. This is his second production with Bag&Baggage, last performing in A Clockwork Orange during their 2019 season. He feels lucky to have participated in a few projects over covid lockdowns this past year, filming Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream with The L.A. Troupe. Ty is also involved with community theatre in Salem; working with Pentacle Theatre and The Verona Studio. His favorite roles include Straight White Men (as Matt); Spamalot (as Lancelot) and Dracula (as Dracula).

Bluebeard marks Tyler's debut at Bag&Baggage! As an actor, he was most recently seen as Matt in The Fantasticks, an Artist Repertory Theatre’s RA Project production that toured Egypt as a part of the CIFCET Festival; and stateside, as Jack in Into The Woods at Broadway Rose Theatre Company. His play, The Marks You Leave, produced in part with Ronnie Lacroute and the WillaKenzie Estate, premiered at the 20th Annual International New York Fringe Festival. Additionally, Tyler is the Associate Producer of the BLAQ OUT Festival, where this past summer he co-directed Apologies to Lorriane Hansbery... You Too, August Wilson. Film credits include; Nurse Ackerman in Stop and Go, which premiered at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival, which you can catch on demand and in select theaters October 1st! Tyler would like to thank Kailey, Samson, the whole Bluebeard ensemble of artists, and of course, Austin.

Claire holds a BA in Theatre Studies and Psychology from Emory University. She has also trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, and most recently with the Institute for Contemporary Performance in Portland, OR. This is Claire’s first show with Bag&Baggage, and she is thrilled to be part of such an amazing cast and creative team. You may have seen Claire bopping around town at Artists Rep, Portland Center Stage, Portland Playhouse, Oregon Children's Theater, or in a fountain in Peninsula Park with Portland Experimental Theater Ensemble’s ’20-21 Institute for Contemporary Performance cohort. Claire feels most alive when she’s devising experimental performance, and she is so thankful that you came to play! 

This is Kailey's directorial debut and first time working with Bag&Baggage, and she feels so honored to work alongside Samson and this incredible team to build a new world and way of experiencing theatre. Other companies Kailey has worked with include Portland Center Stage, Artists Repertory Theatre, Portland Playhouse, Third Rail, and Broadway Rose Theatre.

Rachel holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre Arts from Southern Oregon University, where they also minored in both Shakespeare Studies and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. This is Rachel’s first production with Bag&Baggage. Other companies with which they have worked include the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Puppeteers for Fears, the Oregon Fringe Festival, and the GreenHaus Drag collective. Notable past roles include: Elektra (as Chorus); She Kills Monsters (Lilith/Lily); Cthulhu: The Musical (Cthulhu/Burt the Shoggoth); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Oberon); Shakespeare’s Other Women (Rosaline/Hippolyta/Margaret); and As You Like It (Jaques). Most recently, Rachel voiced the character Willow on the podcast Average Folks, which is available wherever you listen to your podcasts. When she’s not making art in front of an audience, Rachel spends her time making art in front of her cat. She would like to give special shout-outs to Carlos-Zenen Trujillo, her parents, and the aforementioned cat, Hotspurr.

Samson Syharath is a Laotian-American actor, director, writer, and educator based in Portland, Oregon. After receiving a B.A. from the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith, Samson trained at the Portland Actors Conservatory. He was part of the Theatre Communications Group's Rising Leaders of Color Cohort in 2017 featured by American Theatre Magazine and was the recipient of the Portland Civic Theatre Guild’s Leslie O. Fulton Fellowship that same year. He is the Board President of the Portland Area Theatre Alliance (PATA) Board, Associate Producer of MediaRites, Managing Artistic Director of Theatre Diaspora and part of the PDX Accountability Collective