Sanctuary City

Aaron is the Producing Artistic Director of Harlequin Productions. As an actor, he has worked in Seattle for Village Theatre, Taproot Theatre, Book-It Repertory Theatre, and Seattle Shakespeare Company, and has worked regionally throughout the country. Aaron was awarded a Seattle Critics (Footlight) Award for his work as Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband at Taproot Theatre, the Memphis Critics (Ostrander) Award for Best Actor as Jerry in The Full Monty at Playhouse on the Square, a Kennedy Center award for Best Actor for his work as Samuel Coleridge in Grasmere, and an OC Weekly Award for his work as Peck in How I Learned to Drive. Aaron holds an MFA in acting from California State University, Fullerton, a BA from Washington State University, and is a member of the Actors’ Equity Association.

Emily A. Rollie is an Associate Professor of Theatre Studies, Performance, & Education at Central Washington University. Her work spans theatre practice and scholarship, finding ways for each area to fuel the other. Dr. Rollie completed her PhD in Theatre from the University of Missouri and received her Master’s degree in Theatre Production at CWU, where she directed The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a touring children’s production, for her MA thesis project.

Dr. Rollie’s primary research areas include intimacy choreography and consent-based practices, directing practice and theory, and feminist and queer theatre.  Her article on directing feminist solo women performers appeared in the edited volume About Directing (edited by Anna Migliarsi). She is currently working on an edited collection in milestones in staging modern and contemporary genders. She also has several forthcoming articles, including “Relaxed Readiness, Increased Awareness, and Intimacy Protocols: Increasing Actors’ Agency and Authenticity in Stanislavsky’s System” as part of an edited collection on Stanislavksi and Intimacy, and an essay on the intersection between consent-based practices and antiracist theatre practices, co-written with Dr. Natashia Lindsey.

As a director, Dr. Rollie has directed in venues around the country and spent five years as the artistic director of Independent Actors Theatre (IAT), a “purposefully nomadic” theatre company, which became known for its annual short Women’s Play Festival (the plays are short, not the women!). She also was the associate director of the Troubling Violence Performance Project (TVPP), a group dedicated to opening lines of communication about issues of relationship violence through the performance of personal narratives, for four years, and she began a second branch of TVPP in 2014.

Dr. Rollie also works professionally as an intimacy choreographer and is an associate faculty member with Theatrical Intimacy Education (TIE) as well as a founding member of PNW Theatrical Intimacy Collective, a group of intimacy professionals in the region. Emily has choreographed intimacy on productions such as Spring Awakening, Stupid F**king Bird, Nora: A Doll’s House, Fefu and her Friends, and more.

An active member of multiple professional organizations, Dr. Rollie has served as the focus group representative for the Directing Program, part of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), as well as an ATHE Member-at-Large.  She also has been a member of the Executive Board of the Canadian Association for Theatre Research (CATR) and currently coordinates the CATR Grants and Scholarships Committee. She regularly attends and has held positions for the Mid-America Theatre Conference. She is also an associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society and serves as an co-editor for the SDC Journal Peer Reviewed Section.

Other favorite roles include Roger in Rent, Claude in Hair and Jamie in The Last Five Years. Bruce also works behind the curtain. He has designed and built sets for over 300 productions, including some here at Harlequin.  He is very proud and honored to be a part of this beautiful and significant show.