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Meet the Axial Ensemble

Catherine Banks - Actor, Director, Artistic Director Emeritus

Catherine began acting with her local award-winning children's theater at the tender age of 11. She continued acting with the local children's theater, musical theater, and high school productions through graduation. She is a proud graduate of the Youth Performing Arts High School in Louisville, KY.  She continued her theater studies at UNC Chapel Hill where she received a BA in Theater and a BA in Film Criticism.  After graduating college she lived and worked in Chicago, studying the Stanislavski method of acting and then moving into intensive Meisner work. She then moved to New York City where she founded Bombshell Productions and produced two main stage shows: Hamlet and Escape From Happiness, in the heart of New York City. Catherine was most recently seen as Audrey in the world premiere of Katie Baldwin Eng's Nectar at Axial Theatre.

Rachel Jones - Founding Member, Actor

Rachel Jones toured the U.S. and Canada in the first Broadway national tour of David Henry Hwang's M Butterfly and has acted in several films (Fresh HorsesDracula's Widow) and commercials. She was a founding member of New York's Avalon Repertory Theatre where she both acted and directed. Axial directing: Persephone Rising, The Kiss. Axial Acting: Today's Specials, Cherrie, All That's Fair, Billy Bubblehead, The Contract, Lost In Paradise

Marilyn Collazo - Actor, Company Liaison

                                    
Marilyn has performed in several monologue and performance workshops.  Axial Theatre credits include the role of Lisa in Gin Joint in the 2017 production of Twisted Valentines and as Maria in Words in a “Book in Hand” reading of Evelyn Mertens’ plays.  She has also appeared in Westchester Collaborative Theater’s (WCT) mainstage production, Your New Neighbors, and in several WCT staged readings. 

Anthony Barresi, Jr. - Actor

Anthony was most recently seen in Axial's 2018 Twisted Valentine's production as Pete in Lisa Kimball's Miss Pudding Doesn’t Work Here Anymore and as Brian in Dear Crossing in the Spring 2017 production of Glass Ceiling Breakers.  Other recent stage credits include: Lawrence in For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls, Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Yakov in Chekhov's The Seagull, and several one-act plays, including All’s Fair in Love and Science, Stray Gloves, Balls, One-Hour Martinizing, and Three. Anthony is a proud veteran of the United States Air Force.

Lori Franzese - Actor


A SUNY Purchase graduate she has performed with many area theaters, as well as producing and co-hosting the local cable show, "Lights Up!"  Numerous theatre roles include:  Charlotte, Moon Over Buffalo; Lois, Wonder of the World; and M'Lynn, Steel Magnolias; countless episodes of The Play's the Thing on Cablevision; and a featured role on the Canadian paranormal series, Creepy Canada.  She has also done radio spots for Gold's Gym, a LanguageMate infomercial, and had film roles in Runaway Overture and Wandering Off, among others.

Gail Greenstein - Actor

Gail has performed as Inez Pierce, in Peter Kelly’s Windows on the World at the Schoolhouse Playhouse in Croton Falls; as the nurse in Brian O’Neill’s Grass Island at HERE in NYC; as Stella in Linda Giulani’s Shroud of Turin; as Miriam in Tony Howarth’s Vigil at the American Globe Theater in NYC; as Nancy in Gabriella Fox’s Freedom Towers; and triple roles in Ryan Mallon’s Woes of the Unwittingly.

Other plays include: Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Mame, Sweet Charity, Fiddler on the Roof, and Westchester Broadway’s Damn Yankees which also toured throughout the Northeast United States, as well as an extensive United States tour of Stop the World---I Want to Get Off!. A former member of the Westchester Ballet Company, Gail has also choreographed and been dance captain for many shows. 

Anne Hammond - Actor

Anne Hammond has appeared in The Forced Marriage, The Doctor in Spite Of Himself, and Rhinoceros at Cincinnatti Playhouse-in-the-Park; The Playboy of the Western World, The Tempest, and Under Milkwood at Milwaukee Repertory Theatre; The Maids at Poet’s Theatre, Cambridge; Dos Passos’ USA at Provincetown Playhouse; the film of Tolstoy’s Power of Darkness, and the upcoming films Last Fall and Spotless.

Evelyn Mertens - Actor

Evelyn has had plays and monologues produced through Axial Theatre’s Life on Earth, Twisted Valentines, Gaslight Tango and Performance and Monologue Workshops; WCT’s one-act and monologue festivals; Irvington Town Hall Theater’s Stage Door series; the Aery 20/20 Festival where she was a finalist in 2015 and 2016; and Manhattan Rep. 

Patrick McGuinness - Actor

 

Patrick has a theater degree from Binghamton University with post-graduate study at Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence. He appeared in film as Junior in One Eyed King, directed by Academy Award-winning director Bobby Moresco. Theater credits include:  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Godspell, South Pacific, Macbeth, Brigadoon, Rope and Arsenic and Old Lace, among many others.  Patrick has performed on the Axial stage as J.P. in the world Premiere of Katie Baldwin Eng's Nectar and Charlie in Gabrielle Fox’s The Second Coming

Duane Rutter - Actor

A graduate of the University of Evansville theatre program, Duane has always worked on both sides of the curtain.  He hails from Ohio, where he worked in production at the Cleveland Play House and Cain Park for three seasons before moving to New York as the Production, Stage and Operations Manager at Eisenhower Hall Theatre.  Duane is also an avid musician, singing and playing throughout the region at clubs and weddings.  Duane was most recently seen as Michael in Albi Gorn’s Double Date.

Mickey Pantano - Actor 

                                   
Mickey trained with Robert Neff Williams (Voice and Diction), William Esper (Meisner Method and Master Class), Nikos Psacharopoulos (Williamstown Theater Festival), Joanne Zipay (Shakespeare), Deena Kaye (Singing), and Lloyd Williamson (Actor's Movement Studio). NY credits include:  Hamlet (Nuance Theater); The Comic Artist (June Havoc Theater); The Skin of Our Teeth (Playwrights Horizon); Agave (NYC Fringe Festival); The Inner Circle (Sande Shurin Theater); Measure for Measure, The House of Bernarda Alba, and Trick or Treat (Kraine Theater); Burnt Sugar Cake (The Triad); The Secret Language of Circumstance (Ensemble Studio Theater); Court of Two Sisters (The Belt); Sin Chronos City (Raw Space). Regional credits include: Mame; Snow Angel; Anything Goes.  Film: Return; Happy Birthday Lady; and The Little Man of the House.

Dan Walworth - Actor

                                       
Dan's most recent stage performances include Axial's productions of A Doll's House, The Seagull, and the 2017 production of Twisted Valentines.  Dan is now a resident of South Salem, where he resides with his wife and two children.  He is a graduate of Yale University and Northwestern University. 

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