The Rink at the End of the World
by Megan Tabaque

Director | Risa Brainin
Scenic Designer | Chika Shimizu
Costume Designer | Adriana Lámbarri
Lighting Designer | Michael Klaers
Sound Designer | Randall Tico
Choreographer | Christina McCarthy
Dramaturg | Liz Engelman

featuring guest artists Mitchell Thomas, Annie Torsiglieri

Meet the Creative Team...

Megan Tabaque (she/her) is a playwright, director, and educator who grew up in the suburbs of Florida’s Gulf Coast.

Megan writes to create new mythologies using pop cultural tropes as accessible entry points. Her play Britney Approximately (an adaptation of Medea remixed with the Britney Spears conservatorship) played to sold-out audiences in Atlanta as part of Theater Emory’s 2023 season. Only Reason (co-written with Tony nominated playwright, Kimberly Belflower) was nominated for Best New Play by Austin’s Critic Circle and follows six obsessed teen girl fans of fictional boyband Only Reason. 

Among her other plays are Cycle Play (a two woman thriller that takes place in a Soul Cycle), The Rink at the End of the World (following a synchronized skating team during a global nuclear crisis) and Batman Returns Returns, Edward Normal Hands, and The Summer Sauron Turned Pretty—a series of queer-indie-holiday-musical parodies which she created with installation artist Terror Pigeon and composer Zac Traeger for Austin’s Museum of Human Achievement (MOHA). Her plays The Melvin Invention, Antigone’s Last Birthday, Phaeton’s Driving Test, and Brain Freeze (co-written with Drew Paryzer) have been staged for youth and family audiences in Atlanta and Los Angeles. 

Megan’s plays have been developed, commissioned, and/or produced by the Alliance Theater, Great Plains Theater Commons, Seven Devils New Play Conference, Tofte Lake Center, Theatrical Outfit, Salvage Vanguard Theater, Paper Chairs, The Road Theater, Rogue Machine Theater, UCSB’s Launchpad Program and The Workshop Theater.

Awards include the Michener Fellowship, Kundiman Fiction Fellowship, Emory Playwriting Fellowship, 4 Seasons Residency, Sewanee Writers’ Conference Scholar. She has been a finalist for the O’Neill Playwrights Conference and Seattle Public Theater Emerald Prize. She’s been a Semifinalist for the New Dramatist Residency, Princess Grace Award, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and Playwrights’ Realm Scratchpad Series.

She’s taught creative writing at Bennington College, Emory University, UT Austin and at non-profit programs for youth across the U.S. including Inner City Arts, Rude Mech’s Off Center Teens, the New South Young Playwrights Conference, and the Austin Bat Cave. She has also assisted award-winning TV writer Sheila Callaghan, and developed projects for the immersive weirdo-giants at Meow Wolf. 

Megan has an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, TX. She currently resides in Los Angeles, where she works as an Assistant Professor of Playwriting , Screenwriting, and Acting at UC Riverside.

Risa Brainin is a freelance director, professor and Founder/Artistic Director of LAUNCH PAD which was featured in American Theatre magazine for its innovation and contribution to new play development. Since 2005, Brainin has developed and directed 20+ new works by distinguished writers including recent plays by Jami Brandli, Mia Chung, Yussef El Guindi, Anne Garcia-Romero, Idris Goodwin, Enid Graham, Arlene Hutton, Jenny Mercein, Joyce Carol Oates, James Still and Cheryl L. West. She pioneered, along with Annie Torsiglieri, the groundbreaking Zoom Festival Alone, Together, a collection of 39 new short plays and monologues written by LAUNCH PAD alums and published by Dramatic Publishing Company.

Prior to UCSB, Brainin served as Artistic Director of Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Associate Artistic Director for both Kansas City Repertory Theatre and Indiana Repertory Theatre, and Resident Director at the Guthrie Theater. Other directorial credits include plays at American Players Theatre, Actors' Theatre of Louisville, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Clarence Brown Theatre, Commonweal Theatre, Denver Center Theatre, Elements Theatre Collective, Ensemble Theatre, Great Lakes Theater, Gulfshore Playhouse, History Theatre, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Illusion Theatre, Kansas City Actors' Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Mixed Blood, New Harmony Project, Pittsburgh Public Theater, Portland Stage Company, Red Bull Theatre, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis, Skylight Theatre, Syracuse Stage and TheatreSquared.

A graduate of the Carnegie-Mellon University Drama Program, Brainin is a member and Past President of the National Theatre Conference, and a member of The College of Fellows of the American Theatre.

Chika Shimizu is a Scenic Designer based in New York. OFF-BROADWAY: WP Theatre, Irish Repertory Theatre, The Pond Theatre Company, Epic Theatre Ensemble, The Barrow Group, Yangtze Repertory Theatre. REGIONAL: Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Geffen Playhouse, Pasadena Playhouse, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Alliance Theatre, Signature Theatre (DC), Paper Mill Playhouse, Cleveland Playhouse, Geva Theatre, Portland Center Stage, TheatreSquared, Northern Stage, Yale Repertory Theatre. OPERA: Calgary Opera, Arizona Opera, Opera Grand Rapids. AWARDS: SXSW Innovation Award and Emmy Award for Un(re)solved AR installation, NAACP Theatre Award for Furlough's Paradise. Henry Hewes Design Awards and CT Critics Circle Awards nominee. chikashimizu.com

Adriana Lámbarri (Costume Designer) is delighted to return to UCSB to make her LAUNCH PAD debut with The Rink at the End of the World. She previously designed costumes for The Last Days of Judas Iscariot and Dance Nation. Adriana’s designs have been seen on stages for A.D Players Houston, Deaf West Theatre, The Laguna Playhouse, Ensemble Theatre Company Santa Barbara, Antaeus Theatre Company, South Coast Repertory, Center Theater Group, The Getty Villa, and Pasadena Playhouse to name a few. She had the unique opportunity to design costumes for the NFL Hall of Fame’s A Game for Life, an immersive exhibit featuring a holographic Joe Namath. Adriana occasionally works with other costume designers as a costume illustrator. Clients include Disney, Marvel Studios, Guthrie Theater, Norwegian Cruise, Royal Caribbean, La Jolla Playhouse, Cleveland Opera, and most recently, Utah Shakespeare Festival. She resides in Houston, Texas and is a proud member of USA Local 829.

Michael Klaers' regional theatre credits include the Guthrie Theater, Seattle Children’s Theatre, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Syracuse Stage, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Great Lakes Theater, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Pacific Conservatory Theatre, Ensemble Theater Company and more. Michael was the lighting designer for Triple Espresso – A Highly Caffeinated Comedy, which played in 50 cities in the US and Europe. He has been the lighting designer for UCSB's Santa Barbara Dance Theater since 2014. The Rink at the End of the World marks Michael’s 16th preview production for LAUNCH PAD. 

Randall Tico (Sound Design) is happy to return to UCSB and work with Risa Brainin and Michael Klaers again. Locally, Tico’s sound design and/or scores for ETC include Justice, The Children, Sleuth, The Legend of Georgia McBride, and Baby Doll, directed by Jenny Sullivan. Others with ETC include Measure for Measure,Everything is Illuminated, The Invisible Hand, and Macbeth, directed by Jonathan Fox. Also with Sullivan are Jackie Unveiled at the Wallis, The Baby Dance: Mixed Center Stage (PCS), directed by Chris Coleman. More with Coleman and PCS are Othello, Anna Karenina, Shakespeare’s Amazing Cymbeline, The Imaginary Invalid, and Snow Falling on Cedars. With director Nancy Keystone and Critical Mass Performance Ensemble are Mariology, Alcestis and The America Play (Theatre @ Boston Court), After Iphigenia at the Getty Villa, Apollo at the Kirk Douglas Theatre (Garland Award and an Ovation Award nomination), Ameryka (2016 Ovation nomination), Antigone (Portland Center Stage for which he won a Drammy Award), The Ahkmatova Project, Dr. Faustus, The Rover, and Measure for Measure. Further works include Hamlet, The Winter’s Tale, the vocal score for David Hare’s version of Mother Courage, and music and sound design for The Glass Menagerie, all directed by Jessica Kubzansky.

Liz Engelman is a freelance dramaturg and the founder and Executive Director of Tofte Lake Center at Norm’s Fish Camp. She most recently taught in the Playwriting and Directing Program in the Theatre and Dance Department at the University of Texas-Austin.

List lived on Whidbey Island where she was the Alumnae Relations Coordinator of Hedgebrook, a retreat for women writers. Liz has served as the Resident Dramaturg at Mixed Blood Theatre, as the Literary Director of the McCarter Theatre, the Director of New Play Development at ACT Theatre in Seattle, Washington, Literary Manager/Dramaturg at Seattle’s Intiman Theatre, and as Assistant Literary Manager at Actors Theatre of Louisville. She has worked on the development of new plays at The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, ASK Theatre Projects, New York Theatre Workshop, the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, South Coast Rep, Denver Center, and Florida Stage. She has directed new plays at The Illusion Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, and Carleton College. She studied dramaturgy and new play development at Brown and Columbia universities, where she received her BA and MFA in theatre and dramaturgy, respectively.

Liz has served as President, Board Chair, Board Member of LMDA, Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. She’s been a Board Member of the National Theatre Conference (NTC) and is on the Board of the National New Play Network (NNPN), Producer Hub, and serves on the Executive Committee of the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council (ARAC).

Liz has been the co-editor with colleagues Michael Bigelow Dixon, Tori Haring-Smith, and Christine Sumption on several collections of plays, playwriting exercises, and monologues. She has written articles published in Theatre Topics and Theatre Forum.

Liz was the 2024 recipient of the Lessing Award for Lifetime Achievement in Dramaturgy.