The Bravo Cast

The BRAVO TEAMBUILDING Cast

Laurel Raczka has been the Executive Director of the Painted Bride Art Center since 1999. Previously, serving as Program Director of the Bride, Ms. Raczka was responsible for all performance and gallery presentations, educational and community events. She received her B.F.A. from the University of Arizona and her M.F.A. from Rutgers University. She continues to work as an artist. Laurel has served as a panelist for the Alpert Award, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She is currently a board member of the National Association of Artists Organizations and served four years on the board of the National Performance Network.

Tania Isaac is a Philadelphia-based dancer, choreographer and video artist and the Painted Bride Art Center’s first ever two-year Resident Bride Artist (2004-05). Her original dance, Standpipe, premiered at the Bride in October 2005. Earlier this year, she was selected as a US/JAPAN Exchange Artist. Originally from St. Lucia, West Indies, Tania is a Caribbean artist who brings a blend of the traditional, contemporary and post-modern to the concert dance stage. She received a BS in dance from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where she graduated with honors and a National Dance Association Outstanding Graduate Award. Tania completed her MFA at Temple University, where she served as Teaching Assistant, Adjunct Faculty and was awarded a prestigious University Fellowship.

Paul Santoleri has shown his work at a variety of local venues, including solo exhibits at Hyder Gallery, Nexus Gallery and Fleisher Art Memorial, among others. He has created over 50 large-scale public works - several of them murals - throughout Philadelphia and the United States, and in countries such as Mexico and the Dominican Republic. He received a BFA from Tyler School of Art and an MFA from the University of Arizona. Additionally, he studied at Maine’s Skowhegan School, where he would later apprentice with the school’s fresco teacher.

Deborah Block has been working in professional theater in Philadelphia since the late eighties. Primarily as a director and dramaturg she has been involved in the creation of over 50 professional productions with an emphasis on new plays and movement based theater. She is extensively involved in educational theatre having directed approximately 40 productions and has been lecturing and teaching at institutions including Rowan University, University of the Arts, University of Pennsylvania, The Walnut Street Theatre School and Temple University where she is currently an adjunct professor.

Sara Felder is a juggler, solo theater artist and newly-transplanted Philadelphian. Best known for her previous play, June Bride: the story of a traditional Jewish lesbian wedding, Felder has been called “hilarious and triumphantly heartwarming” by the Philadelphia Inquirer and described as someone who has “chutzpah up the wazoo” by the San Francisco Weekly. She has toured internationally with Jugglers for Peace in Cuba, the Women’s Circus in Nicaragua, and at festivals of Jewish/Yiddish Culture in Berlin, London, Amsterdam, New York, Los Angeles and Toronto. National tours include Joel Grey’s Borscht Capades and three years with San Francisco’s Pickle Family Circus where she was featured as a juggler, object manipulator and dancing gorilla.

Jeff Cohen is the principal of Performance Leaders, LLC, a Philadelphia-based consulting firm founded on the idea that leadership coaching and team development, focused tightly on bringing value and results to the business, are optimal ways to accelerate organizational performance and build organizational capability. Jeff’s coaching work is often with experienced leaders looking to expand their capabilities and demonstrate increased readiness for a current or more challenging assignment, and with leaders transitioning to new, and significantly more challenging positions. His team effectiveness work has recently been focused on helping senior management groups operate as a team when they needed to be team. Jeff has worked in several premiere organizations including Pfizer, Rhône-Poulenc Rorer, Chase Manhattan Bank and People Express Airlines. Jeff holds a Masters degree in Organization Dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Political Science from Drew University.