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CAST & CREW FOR UNDER THE PAVEMENT
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CHRISTINE BONANSEA
Lead role in "The Pendulum Heart"
 
Christine Bonansea is a French dancer, choreographer and actor, living and performing in the Bay Area for the past four years. She has studied in La Sorbonne (France) and three national choreographic dance centers: C.Diverres, Regine Chopinot -ENMD, and Mathilde Monnier -Exerce 99.  She has been exploring diverse visual arts and physical performing techniques over the past fifteen years in Europe and the USA.  She's has danced internationally with various companies among which: Faustin Linyekula, Compagnie Alias, Avy K Productions, Lisa Townsend, EmSpace Dance, Paige Sorvillo/blindsight, Kim Epifano, Dance Monks, Catherine Galasso, Jess Curtis/Gravity.  This will be Bonansea's second collaboration with the filmmaker having appeared as a disgruntled concubine in the comedy "Neurotique No.5", a film directed by Nara Denning in 2009.  VIEW EXCERPT
 
 
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WILL FRANKEN
Lead role in "Dogmatique"
 
Will Franken is celebrated as one of the most innovative performers to come out of the Bay Area in recent years.  His work is what The New York Times describes as a "highly developed sense of the absurd".  Franken douses his audiences in a surreal tidal wave of psychedelic humor and brings the underlying absurdity of the subconscious to the fore, creating a bizarre panoply of characters and one-man sketches that satirize and skewer postmodern society's most sacred cows. 

During his time in San Francisco, Franken was awarded "Best Comedian" of 2005 by the SF Weekly and "Best Alternative to Psychedelic Drugs" by the SF Bay Guardian. He recently made his television debut on BBC America's “The World Stands Up,” a showcase of UK, American and Australian comedians. Franken has also appeared at Montreal's prestigious "Just For Laughs" Festival and on Air America’s “Marc Maron Show”, was a finalist in the San Francisco International Comedy Competition as well as the Las Vegas Andy Kaufman Award competition, and most recently enjoyed a successful series of performances at San Francisco's renowned SF Sketchfest and Portland, Oregon's "Bridgetown Comedy Festival".  Franken has written and performed numerous theatrical solo shows to capacity crowds in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.  He has performed with the Upright Citizens' Brigade Theatre, Ars Nova, and the Collective Unconscious.
"Dogmatique" is currently in progress. View it HERE.

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Ms. MOMO
Supporting role and vocals in "Dogmatique"

Songbird Festival Founder and Vocals
Prior to moving to California Therese aka Momo lived in Denver , CO and was an active performance artist, human rights activist, promoter, set and costume designer.   She spent six years working on Shakespeare and African American plays and received NPR recognition for her costume designs in “Mahaila’s Song” directed by Donny Betts.

She is an active performance, visual, and vocal recording artist and has been a community member of the Mission District for 13 years and has lived in the Bay Area for 15 years. As a multi-layered producer and artist she spends her time performing as a vocalist in various music projects, constantly exploring the connection between community and art.  She has performed in diverse venues from garden porches to Madison Square Garden and has received international recognition and acclaim for her vocal work on the Sound Capsule's Mar del Plata . Her vocals can be found on compilations in the States and the UK .
(photo by Greg Crane) 
 
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NIRMALA NATARAJ
 Writer & Lead of "Narcissus"
 
Nirmala Nataraj is a San Francisco-based critic and playwright. She has written about arts, entertainment, and lifestyle for publications including ArtWeek, ColorLines magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, SF Weekly, Theatre Bay Area magazine, and American Theatre magazine, which granted her a 2008/2009 Bay Area Commissioning Fund. Nirmala is also a former board member of San Francisco 's Kearny Street Workshop, the nation's oldest multidisciplinary Asian American arts organization. As one of the original members of grassroots theatre company No Nude Men Productions, Nirmala's work has been featured at the Climate Theatre, EXIT Stage Left, Femina Potens, the San Francisco Theater Festival, and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. She is also the producer, director, and writer of two short films: "Respectable Hedonism" (2001) and "Identify My Destiny" (2005).
 
 
 
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EMI STANLEY
Lead role in "Still Life"
 
Emi Stanley was born in the West of Ireland in 1972.  At the age of five she immigrated to Northern California where she has resided since.  In New York City  she studied under Geraldine Barren renowned method acting coach from The New School.  Emi has just completed her BFA, specializing in documentary photography at the San Francisco Art Institute.  Nara Denning gave Emi her first film role as a swindling Gypsy Fortune teller in "Neurotique No. 4".  She also played a socialite on pet medication in George Kuchar's film "Libido Lagoon" and in 2009 Emi stared as a angry ex-girlfriend in "Afterlife Radio", a play by Patrick Simms.  
 
 
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JULIA ZEFFIRO
 Lead role in "Star of Tyche"

Julia Zeffiro is a graduate of HELIKOS (formerly Kiklos) a Lecoq-based physical theatre school in Padova, Italy. Prior to that, she majored in some amalgam of liberal arts at Smith College for young ladies in Northampton, MA. A native daughter of San Francisco, born to a rag-picker and a dreamer, her bohemian/"aristocrat-en-pauvre" beginnings led her to stumble upon two things that would change the course of her life forever.

A Buster Keaton retrospective at Castro Theatre (complete with live-organ accompaniment) and the bay area debut of an amazing circus from Canada, -back when they still had a sawdust floor...but the clowns!!!!, a music conductor on a spring-loaded podium. In a joyous gasp, 10 year old juju decided her fate: an itinernant physical comedienne with musical, dance, classical theatre and stage-voice chops. Julia made her theatrical debut at 16 with CalShakes. She was cast as the Duke in Measure for Measure. Thus mercilessly freed from the shackles of ingenue type-casting, she readily understood her acting career would be anything but an ordinary one. She is thrilled to be working with Nara Denning again, and will continue to make silents well after many catch on that "talkies" are just a passing phase.

This is Zeffiro's 2nd collaboration with the filmmaker.  VIEW EXCERPT   Zeffiro's website: gojujugo.com 

 

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WYLIE HUEY
Supporting role in "Star of Tyche"

Wylie Huey is a San Francisco native and has been acting for more than seven years. One of his favorite projects was a short film in which he played an Asian American civil rights activist. More recently, he played the role of Rex in Robillard Theaterworks' original production of Laughter in the Dark, a San Francisco dance theater project based on the novel by Nabokov. Wylie studies acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, holds a bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley, and is a member of SAG.  He will play the role of the Siren in "Song of Tyche", a reinvention of the "Odessey".

 

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MARGARET BELTON
Supporting role & vocals: "Star of Tyche"
 
Margaret Belton was born in Indiana and started out her career sneaking into night clubs to perform Patsy Cline covers.  She studied Fine Arts and Art History at the Indiana University of Bloomington.  During these years she curated many art salons as well as founding "Women Exposed", a woman's arts  collective and salon which is still active today.  She studied voice and performance with Faith Winthrop (SF) and Suely Mesquita (Brazil).  In Rio de Janeiro she  performed with esteemed composers Marvio Ciribelli and Rafeal Garcia.  Ms. Belton looks forward to expanding her experience in film as "Tyche", the singing goddess of fortune.
 
 
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STOO ODOM
Composer for "The Pendulum Heart" film series
 
"organic, free-range, non-MIDI"  Odom's experimental soundtracks mix jazz, psychedelic, noise, and roots music. Performing and composing professionally since 1990, Stoo first entered the international public eye as bassist for Thin White Rope, a "cult" alt-rock band with a cinematic sensibility. [Thin White Rope compositions are heard in the movies "Loser" (1996) and Lina Wertmuller's "On A Moonlit Night" (1989).] Following Thin White Rope, Odom formed his primary band, the Graves Brothers Deluxe.  Odom's dramatic and diverse sound has attracted the attention of television (Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, TVE in Spain, and DirecTV, for example) and film, most notably Nara Denning's acclaimed silents "Madalien the Small" and the "Neurotique" series. Odom steadfastly refuses to adopt modern MIDI soundtrack composition, opting instead for recording real instruments with real microphones and a minimum of editing. Odom's current collaborations (with members of the Boredoms, Acid Mothers Temple, and '60's icons the Monks) promise to further enrich his future work for film.
 
 
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OLIVER FERRASCI
Cinematographer
 
Oliver Ferrasci is a bay area filmmaker that believes in the spirit of storytelling above all else.  He has written, directed and produced Internet favorites such at The Exorcism of Mittens, Connections and The Bat Man.  His no-budget narratives have graced many local film festivals including multiple engagements with The San Francisco Underground Film Festival and Berkeley Community Media Film Festival.

 Currently, he is collaborating with Nara Denning in bringing her pendulum heart series to life as well as assisting Christopher Leonard with A-town, a dramatic police project. 

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