Core Company Members
Juliana Frick
Founder and Director
Juliana Frick is an award-winning physical theater artist, acrobat and former musician based in Berkeley, CA.
She grew up touring with acclaimed youth-troupe Circus Smirkus from ages nine to fifteen. Juliana received a BA in music and storytelling from Hampshire College in Western, MA, completed the professional training program at Dell’Arte International, and studied at the Flying Actor Studio. Juliana is a founding core member of the dramatic acrobatic troupe UpLift Physical Theatre.
Her work has been supported by Theatre Bay Area’s CA$H Creates program and the NET/TEN virtual exploration program. In 2022 she received an award for “Original Application of a Physical Language” at the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theater in Egypt for UpLift Physical Theatre’s original acrobatic show Through The Waves.
In 2017, Juliana was diagnosed with a rare illness that caused profound hearing loss and vestibular dysfunction. As a chronically ill and late-deafened adult, Juliana is a proud Disabled artist who strives to make the creative process and performance accessible to all.
She is also a mother to an endlessly inspiring and delightful 9-year-old.
You can read more about her work here.
Jessica Ferris
Producer and Artistic Board Member
Jessica Ferris is an admirer of pebbles and twigs whose life-long theater practice sprang from her elaborate childhood games of make-believe. Her work has orbited around solo and ensemble devised theater, and she has worked as a producer, director, writer, choreographer, and performer. She has created immersive theater in collaboration with Juliana Frick since 2011; their projects have included an adaptation of A Wrinkle In Time as well as Project Elijah, a months-long bespoke story/adventure for a pre-teen boy. In addition to helming her own productions, Jessica has trained in immersive set design and choreography with Punch Drunk, and she has orchestrated the logistics of an Odyssey Works production, a bespoke, immersive performance for author Rick Moody. The performance was expansive, taking place over the course of three months and encompassing distant locations including Saskatchewan, Canada, New Jersey and New York City. Locally she has taught with the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s youth education program, and she has collaborated with Deborah Slater Dance Theater, Thirteenth Floor Productions, and Uplift Physical Theater. She believes there’s nothing more important than nurturing kids’ imaginations, open hearts, and connection to nature.
Jessica is an expert in organizing narrative threads into an immersive format so that audiences have a meaningful, magical experience.
You can read more about her here.
Liz Woolford
Producer and Artistic Board Member
Liz Woolford is a director, devisor, and theatre educator. She makes and facilitates otherworldly and boundless plays that invite kids and adults alike to remember that magic is all around us, if we just look hard enough.
Liz is the Director of Theatre at Mid-Peninsula High School (go Dragons!) and is on the teaching staff at Contra Costa Civic Theatre. She is happiest when her performance work is staged in and with the world around us.
Liz began her career in environmental education and advocacy, and her creative work is often informed by the ongoing climate crisis, landscape, and ecological wisdom.
You can read more about her here.
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