The Creative Team
Artists Behind the Garden
Jenny Waxman
Book & Lyrics
Jenny is a Canadian-born artist who held an O-1 Visa for Individuals of Extraordinary Ability or Achievement under the title of “collaborative theater artist" before trading it in for a student visa in pursuit of her MFA and JD. Like a crazy person, Jenny is currently enrolled at both Columbia University and Georgetown University Law Center. She has produced workshops and productions in the United States and Canada, including workshops and concert readings of Leaving Eden. Jenny’s project, Scrap Mettle Arts, advocates for emerging artists, helping them gain resources through their work rather than their resume (www.scrapmettlearts.com). Jenny was the founding Managing Director of the Hess Collective under the artistic direction of Elizabeth Hess and was Hess' teaching assistant at Barnard College. Jenny earned her honors BFA in drama from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
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Ben Page
Music
Ben Page is an emerging composer/actor from Toronto, Canada and the fastest shawarma eater east of the Don Valley. Ben has played piano for virtually his entire life but refused to practice until he ambitiously butchered the score of “Into the Woods” at age 13. He has worked as an actor and music director to develop new works; performing in The Preposterous Predicament of Polly Peel, The Crack of Doom, Going Under and numerous others. He has also attended Bravo Academy’s writing workshop and The Performing Arts Project. He is currently studying musical theatre performance at Sheridan College.
James Monaghan
Dramaturg
James is a theatrical collaborator currently completing his MFA in dramaturgy at Columbia University. With a background in acting, directing, and teaching, he believes that theater able to reach an audience results from the connections between people and ideas, regardless of traditional disciplines or identities. Originally from Texas, James holds a BFA from New York University and works backstage frequently in carpentry and electrics. Recent collaborations include Antidote, a project co-developed as part of a Fellowship with the National Theater of Croatia in Rijeka, [Blank] a work in verse inspired by Shakespeare’s Gravediggers, his first full length play, A shot and a Beer, set in a storage unit just outside nowhere, and of course Leaving Eden.
Ada Westfall
Music
is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, actor and proud trans woman who is a member of Actors' Equity Association and the American Federation of Musicians (Local 802). As a composer, her original music for A Play On War (Connelly Theater) earned a 2010 Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Music in a Play. She has composed music for shows by Theater Mitu, The Civilians, NAATCO, and Built For Collapse and wrote/starred as punk burlesque alter-ego Minq Vaadka in Minq Vaadka’s Narcischism: Un Cabaret d’Adieu (Robert Moss Theater). She has taught as a guest artist at NYU and Tamagawa University and has spent 11 years as an Associate Artist with Theater Mitu, with whom she participated in residencies at New York Theater Workshop, NYU Abu Dhabi, and Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center. She holds a BFA in Theater from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where she attended Playwrights Horizons Theater School and CAP 21, and is currently writing/composing a new piece called Woyzeck and Herself, a queer adaptation of Georg Büchner's seminal classic.