The Speakeasy SF
by Bennett Fisher
The Speakeasy SF- 2024
The fully immersive/choose-your-own-adventure 1920’s Speakeasy experience. Hidden under a whole block in SF’s Chinatown; the space consists of a cabaret, two bars, casino, and multiple hidden rooms. I will directing 70 scenes in the two-hour story arc.
Circle Mirror Transformation
by Annie Baker
Custom Made Theatre Co- 2022
Directed as the first show back post-COVID, this play was an exploration on reconnection. Emphasizing themes of loneliness, isolation, and self-discovery, and growth; I used moments of design and movement as representations of internal conflict that has no choice but to bleed out onto the stage around them.
Video-Marty’s realization- This is the moment where Marty has just found out that her husband is in love with a student in the class she is teaching. This is a look at her internal moment.
The Waiting Room
by Lisa Loomer
University of California, Santa Cruz- 2016
A dark comedy about the timeless quest for societal beauty—and its cost. Three women from different centuries meet in a modern doctor’s waiting room (an eighteenth-century Chinese woman with bound feet, a nineteenth-century English woman suffering from “hysteria, and modern day woman from New Jersey with silicone implants). Husbands, doctors, Freud, the drug industry and the FDA all come under examination. The play is a wild ride through medical and sexual politics, including the politics of the ever-present battle with breast cancer
The Children’s Farm
By Sean Dunnington
Town Hall Theatre New Voices Series- 2021.
Developed- The Custom Made Theatre Co 2021 | Magic Theatre 2020.
After being deemed ‘unfixable’ by conversion therapy, Sam is sent to live with her Aunt and Uncles in Pennsylvania. There is meets her cousins Lauren and Joey who through years of therapy, games, and one unintentional outing will be the ones to save her. This magical play traverses a decade and a half of therapy, role-playing, puppets, forced verses chosen family, and finding freedom on the farm.
Tonight We Feast
by LENTIL
3030 Visions- Shotgun Players 2021
Music Video 1: Tonight We Feast (Music Video)– Grab a seat at the table because you’re invited to the feast! San Francisco based band Lentil stars in a music video inspired by Sheila Callaghan’s “Women Laughing Alone With Salad”. Can skip to 0:51 seconds in video.
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992
by Anna Deveare Smith
BarnStorm Theater 2017
This immersive piece monologue play comments on the racial and economic tension that exploded into the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King verdict in 1992.
Set in the streets of LA after the wake of the riots. I took the piece and divided the characters between 10 actors. Audiences could listen to up to 5 actors monologue at a time. Each actors would do their monologues 2-4 times, then change into their next character. I used all spaces available in the theatre; from the crawlspace under the seating banks to the catwalk.
“Springing Forward” Magic Theatre 2020 Gala
Directed and Produced by Ciera Eis
Springing Forward: Magic Theatre 2020 Gala, was a virtual hour long event, hosted by Mfoniso Udofia. The video reflected on the past 50 years of Magic history, including its playwrights, legacy, and departing Artistic Director Loretta Greco.
Featured artists: Taylor Mac, Ed Harris and Amy Madigan, Mfoniso Udofia, Octavio Solis, Llyod Suh, Ricardo Pérez González, Sean San Jose, Loretta Greco, Sarah Nina Hayon, Julia McNeal, Zöe Winters, and Liz Duffy Adams.
Every Brilliant Thing
by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe
Saint Mary’s College- 2021
Set in the sacred space of a redwood grove, this plays takes an intimate look at mental health and familial relationships, reminding the audience that even the smallest things in life can make it worth living. The show was as interactive as intended by the playwright, and utilized found objects. This show was produced in 2021 right after the lockdown was lifting. I set it in a redwood forest to encourage growth and healing.
The Lost Ballad of our Mechanical Hero…
by Madison Wetzell
Shotgun Players Champagne Series- 2022
Hero, a Prometheus-like android AI, decides to share his gift of consciousness with the office appliances around him, wrecking havoc for his programmer Allyson. With their existence under threat, the newly conscious machines – a radio, a printer, and a coffee maker – must band together to escape human persecution. Power and privilege tied to bodily ability, as well as disagreements on revolutionary strategy, creep in and threaten to tear the group apart.
This performance was done on the set of another show.
3030 Visions
Shotgun Players- 2021
Shotgun Players asked for Bay Area artists to apply for funds to pitch and create short videos using inspiration from past plays they’ve produced. I directed three of the thirty projects chosen.
Music Video 1: Rise and Fall (Music Video)- Inspired by ‘Dog Act’ by Liz Duffy Adams we used original lyrics from the show to visually explore the beauty of nature juxtaposed by the destruction of the environment and apocalyptic fall of man. The performer leads the the audience on a journey of how often we take Mother Nature for granted, and how doomed she will be if we do not change and unite towards a common goal.
Short Video 2: Faust: Alt Shift Control– Based off the Faustian concept of selling your soul, we used screen capture to analyzing the alt-right radicalization of young people through the YouTube rabbit hole. Our central goal is to make the audience wonder, “could that have been me?”
cieraeis.com 