ABOUT US
Powerful Storytelling,
Evocative Music.
HISTORY
Tales of the Alchemysts Theatre was founded in 2016 by a group of artists who had a long history of collaboration in a wide range of performing pieces. Our initial productions wove compelling Jewish storytelling with evocative live music in simple staged readings that successfully toured to spaces large and small. Since then, we have expanded our repertoire from audio plays that can be enjoyed in the comfort of home to full scale productions. Through it all, our mission remains unchanged: to illuminate classical and contemporary Jewish voices—through literature, oral histories, song, and music. Shellie Shulkin, the founding and now former Executive/Managing Director, was at the helm of the company until 2023. Since then, Board Chair Marcy Bloom has gracefully continued to nurture and shape our evolving legacy.
BOARD
OF DIRECTORS
MARCY BLOOM
Marcy Bloom, MHA currently serves as the president of the board of directors of Tales of the Alchemysts Theatre. With an extensive background in non-profit management, her focus is fund-raising, social justice activism, and organizational growth and change. For twenty years, she was the executive director of Aradia Women’s Health Center, Seattle’s first feminist women’s health clinic. In 2006, the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington awarded her their William O. Douglas Award “for a lifetime of staunch advocacy for civil liberties and the fundamental right to reproductive freedom.” In addition to her work with the Alchemysts, Marcy’s other volunteer commitments are as a counselor and advocate for women coming to Washington state for safe abortion care and as a docent/museum educator at the Holocaust Center for Humanity. An avid arts lover and supporter, she joined the Alchemysts board in 2021 and is excited to see this unique theatre group continue to grow and thrive with its powerful mission, talented team, and innovative performances.
LAURA FERRI
Laura Ferri is a freelance performing artist, whose work as an actor, playwright and director has been seen in theatres across the country. Deeply interested in the stories of immigrants beginning with the histories of her three immigrant grandparents, Laura was thrilled to adapt and direct Dreaming In American for our company. As a founding member of Book-It Repertory Theatre, she has adapted and directed multiple novels for their mainstage and touring programs and selections of novels for the Seattle Public Library and the King County Library in conjunction with their Big Read programs. Her direction of Prairie Nocturne won a Seattle Times Footlight Award for Best Production in 2012 as did her adaptation for A Tale For The Time Being, which won for Best Production in 2016. Specializing in transforming primary source documents into performing pieces, her work has been commissioned by both the Seattle and Tacoma Arts Museums, Seattle Arts and Lectures, the Women’s University Club, the JT News, and the O.S.P.I. where she was awarded a Kip Tokuda grant to write and direct Friends Across the Wires, an original play about the American Incarceration of the Japanese during WWII. Laura has directed multiple musicals for the Anything Is Possible Theatre Company. Most recently co-wrote and directed their productions of Flying Blind!—both the audio play as well as the live theatre reiteration—about the joys and challenges of life in the blind/low vision community featuring a cast of mostly blind and visually impaired actors. For TOTA, she wrote and directed the Monsters, Magic and Mysticism and Somewhere Very Far Away audio plays as well as our most recent production, Surviving Survival. Profoundly moved by the literature from women writers on the Holocaust, Laura adapted and directed The Ruins of Memory, for our return to live theatre in the fall of 2022. She was recently awarded a US/UK Fulbright and spent the first half of 2022 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, researching, writing and directing a play about the American Military presence in the province during WWII.
LEXI JASON
Lexi Jason has been a proud board member of the Alchemysts since 2023. She enjoys theatre and earned a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Acting/Directing before a career shift into the field of Holocaust Studies, where she wrote MA thesis on Yiddish theatre in the displaced persons camps of the American zone. Now happily playing the role of audience member, Lexi is a Holocaust educator in Seattle where she works with Holocaust survivors and their descendants, educators, and students.
DAVID S KLEIN
David S. Klein has been a working theatre artist for 50 years, performing in over 150 professional productions, as well as directing and teaching. Before moving to Seattle in 1985, highlights included running a touring children’s theater in rural New England and performing at international avant-garde festivals in Baltimore and in Wroclaw, Poland. He has helped start five theaters, both here and in Boston, including Book-It and Tales of the Alchemysts. He has performed at all of Seattle’s major theaters and many, many smaller ones. Seattle roles include Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman at CHAC; Shylock in Merchant of Venice at Seattle Shakespeare Company; Solomon in Arthur Miller’s play The Price; and Jack in Neil Simon’s autobiographical plays Broadway Bound and Brighton Beach Memoirs at the Tacoma Actors’ Guild and at the Stroum Jewish Community Center. He has also performed with Music of Remembrance at Benaroya Hall and read Chanukah stories with NPR’s Susan Stamberg, also at Benaroya. He has performed in all of our shows – “Lost and Found in Love;” “Dreaming in American;” “The Ruins of Memory;” our audio shows, “Somewhere Very Far Away” and “The Golem of Prague”; and currently, “Surviving Survival.”
CARL SHUTOFF
Carl Shutoff is a retired teacher with a formal educational background in French Literature and Special Education. He has been a professional musician in the Seattle area for almost 30 years. In addition to being the musical director for the Alchemysts, he has played clarinet for the last 22 years in a local Klezmer duo, Kesselgarden, with friend and associate, Laurie Andres, performing Eastern European Jewish folk music throughout Western Washington and annually at the Northwest Folklife Festival. Carl serves as a Museum Educator at the Holocaust Center for Humanity and has been a French interpreter for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and the Jewish Coalition for Immigrant Justice. Other volunteer activities include working with students at Highland Terrace Elementary School and serving as a Volunteer Client Advisor for End of Life Washington.