Angelina Fiordellisi Founder and Board President

Angelina Fiordellisi, Proprietor of Cherry Lane Theatre since 1996, has served over 4,500 artists and countless non-profit theater companies. Fiordellisi co-founded and established Cherry Lane Alternative as the company in residence in 1997, creating a number of new play development programs including Obie Award-winning Mentor Project, co-founded with Edward Albee, Charles Fuller, A. R. Gurney, Tony Kushner, Wendy Wasserstein, Michael Weller and Susann Brinkley. Garnering numerous awards and nominations, she has produced over 100 plays, including first plays by Katori Hall and Rajiv Joseph.

As Co-Producer on Broadway, she won the Tony®, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League Awards for Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a Drama Desk Award for The Realistic Joneses by Will Eno, and 7 Tony® Nominations for Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enough. Fiordellisi has commissioned new plays by Charles Fuller, Israel Horovitz, Lisa Ramirez, Daisy Foote, Renita Martin, Eduardo Machado, Kristina Poe, and Anton Dudley. Additional new play development: 8 seasons with the New Harmony Project, 4 seasons with Carnegie Mellon Showcase of New Plays and New York Stage and Film, Labyrinth Theatre Co’s summer intensive at Bard and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.

As an actress, Ms. Fiordellisi has played on Broadway, Off-Broadway, national tours, regional theaters, holds a BFA in Acting from The University of Detroit, and received an MFA scholarship to the Asolo Conservatory of Theater. Professional Teachers/Mentors include Jose Quintero, Joseph Chaikin, Edward Albee, Sanford Meisner, Stella Adler, Charles Nelson Reilly, Gretchen Cryer, Alfred Uhry, Jean-Claude Van Itallie and Billie Allen. Ms. Fiordellisi is married 35 years to Matt Williams and has three children, Matisse Williams, Emily Farr, and Fred Emerson Williams.

From The New York Times, July 2021:
“Under Fiordellisi, Cherry Lane has mentored writers including Katori Hall, who won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The Hot Wing King; Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu, whose play Pass Over will begin previews on Broadway in August after being produced at the theater in 2016; and Jocelyn Bioh, whose Merry Wives, a contemporary take on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, is running at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.”

Margarida De Brito Chair

Margarida De Brito is the managing director at Société Générale and was previously executive director and head of fixed income compliance at Morgan Stanley. In 2015, she founded Sola Lupa Productions, producing original theatre and independent film. Her previous theatre credits include Second Sun (Signature Theatre), Dead Dog Park (59E59), Traveling Lady (Cherry Lane), Actually, We’re F*cked (Cherry Lane), and Out of the Mouths of Babes (Cherry Lane). Her film credits include A Call to Spy (IFC Films).

Mary Geerlof Secretary

Carol Lippert Gray is an award-winning public relations professional and a longtime journalist and editor. Her career has spanned books, newspapers, magazines, broadcast and online media in fields as diverse as crafts and corporate finance, parenting and philanthropy. She holds a B.A. in history, an M.S. in broadcast journalism, and a certificate in American fine and decorative arts. She is passionate about the two performing arts boards of which she is a member and is happy to talk at length about her two daughters and three grandchildren. She is an associate editor and frequent contributor for Sanctuary Magazine.

Mary Vetri

David Youse is an accomplished actor and producer. As the latter, he founded Four Things Productions to bring awareness and funds to various non-profit organizations through the art of theater. His premiere piece, a celebrity-driven staged reading of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, directed by Academy Award winner Joel Grey, was the inspiration for the 2010 Broadway revival. Other productions include Charles Busch as Katharine Hepburn in Matthew Lombardo’s Tea at Five, and Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias, directed by Judith Ivey. These productions have raised thousands of dollars for charities including The Ali Forney Center, The Goodman Special Care Clinic, The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center.