Jim Nieb

Laurie Burke is a San Francisco native and comes from a family of professional actors and musicians (think “The Partridge Family” meets “This is Spinal Tap”). With an adventurous spirit and a genuine joy of all things creative, she decided to also turn her creative passion into a full-time career. For over fifteen years, Laurie has been a professional Actress, Voice Over Artist, Host and Singer.

With an un-quenching thirst to learn her craft, Laurie has studied Dramatic Arts in London (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts), Paris, Berlin, Los Angles and San Francisco (American Conservatory Theater).

Her many TV Credits include playing lawyer Alice Kaye opposite Hugh Laurie in Chance, staring roles in Wives with Knives and I (Almost Got Away With It) and numerous commercials for major companies including Blackberry, Volkswagen, Raley’s, Walmart, Metro PCS, Nokia and Wells Fargo.  Currently she is playing Sheriff Laura Stevens in the Rosario Dawson based web series The North Pole.

Her many Film credits include “Mr. Invincible”, “The Mendoza Line”, “Redwoods”, and numerous award winning Short Films including voicing the main role of “Hisayo” in Roadside Assistance. Recently she worked opposite Adam Devine in the feature film “Jexi” - providing the “on-set” (behind the scenes) voice of Jexi.

Known as the “Original Voice of Google Voice”, Laurie has lent her voice to such varied productions ranging from The Emmys to countless radio and T.V. commercials including Channel 36(L.A.), Cisco, LinkedIn, Kaiser Permanente, 24 Hour Fitness, Symantec, First Republic Bank, Wells Fargo, TV.com, and voiced for all Raley’s/Nob Hill commercials.

Theater credits include the role of "Amy" in Stephen Sondheim's musical "Company", "Gal" in the touring production of "Just for Laughs", and starred in countless Sold-Out performances as “Claudia Roe” in Lucy Prebble’s “Enron”.

For over eight years, Laurie has been an On-Air TV and web Host for Common Sense Media, a company she is very proud to represent. She’s also their go-to for Voice Over and Award shows.

As a professional singer, Laurie has fronted many different bands of different genres as well as performed in many musicals, films, jingles and Voice Over projects.

Laurie always feels extremely happy and grateful for every opportunity she has been given and believes sharing her creative passion and helping others is her true purpose in life.

Kristen: An independent casting director for over twenty years in San Francisco, Los Angeles and nationally, Kristen specializes in commercials, industrials, short films, print, and music video. She has an extended database of SAG/AFTRA actors and non-union actors as well as a comprehensive selection of real people.

Gregg: Gregg Cohen has been casting in San Francisco for 25 years. She casts for commercials and industrials and the occasional short film and music video. Gregg is also co-owner of Das Studio casting studios.

Elaine A. Clark has spent over 35 years immersed in the voice-over business as an actor, author, app creator, director, coach, audio engineer, producer, casting director.  She is the owner of Voice One and Voice One Productions and the Founder of the first full-time voice-over training academy, Voice One in San Francisco. Her best-selling book, There's Money Where Your Mouth Is, is used as a text book in colleges and universities and with individuals around the world. The two apps she created are designed to improve diction, breath support, resonance, melody, and precision.  Activate Your Voice is an effective and powerful 5-minute voice warm up.  Adding Melody To Your Voice includes a 16 minute training video and an interactive listen, record, and playback practice area. Elaine's newest book, Voice Overs for Podcasting, will be available in the latter half of 2020.

You can currently see Elaine on-screen as the futuristic game show host in the movie, Sorry To Bother You. Gamers can hear her as the dispatcher in Mafia III. Over her long career she's recorded hundreds of commercials, narrations, and toys. She's cast, directed and/or performed in close to 100 video games a couple anime series [JoJo's Bizaare Adventure and Saikano], looped several movies such as Super8, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Master, and Titan A.E., and a handful of audiobooks.

Elaine has trained and launched the careers of 1000s of voice actors and looks forward to seeing many of her past and current students and meeting the rest of you!

Hailing from Boston, Stephen began pursuing his acting career during his college years in Atlanta. Completing small films, he moved to California enrolling in Academy of Art University. From there he enrolled in The Meisner Technique Studio completing the 2 year program and business class in 2012. Since then, Stephen has made a completed numerous short films and stage plays. In 2015, Stephen signed with and has since been represented by NYLO Model & Talent

Amy Huckabay is a writer, director, comedian, and trained dramatic actress who realized she was funny. Her feature screenplay, Sam Dean Can't Die, won the Screenplay Contest at the Napa Valley Film Festival and was a top ten finalist in Screencraft's Comedy Contest.

She wrote, produced, and starred in her award-winning webseries, Managed, screened in competition at the 2018 ITV Fest. You can catch her around town on various stages attempting to make strangers laugh.

When she's not writing her own roles, she can be seen in the Sundance award-winning Advantageous and practicing her SNL monologue in the mirror.

D.J. is the founder of Hub Strategy & Communication, an integrated advertising, design and production company based in San Francisco. At Hub, D.J. oversees the brand and creative development efforts for all clients as well as directing much of the television work. DJ and Hub work with and have worked with Dropcam, The Oakland A’s, The San Francisco 49ers, Slingbox, Nike, Google, Microsoft, Oculus from Facebook, Levi’s, the University of San Francisco, Monterey Bay Aqaurium, Blue Shield of California and LinkedIn. DJ is a writer, creative director and director. D.J. was an adjunct professor of integrated marketing and advertising at both graduate and undergraduate levels at the University of San Francisco for 3 years. Previously, D.J. co-founded Seidel, O'Neil & Partners Advertising in 1995, where he worked for seven years as Co-President.

Lisa Steindler (Executive Artistic Director, Z Space) joined Z Space in 2007 and has been at the helm since 2008. Under her leadership, Z Space has become a multifaceted venue that supports risky new work by local and international artists. In 2009, Lisa engineered a long-term lease on Z Space’s first venue, the 244-seat warehouse space known as Theater Artaud, and guided the expansion in 2014 to encompass Z Below, an 85-seat blackbox theater. Lisa has commissioned and developed notable new works such as Hundred Days (The Bengsons), The Lucky Ones (The Bengsons), House Tour (Peter Nachtrieb), and Weightless (The Kilbanes). Lisa has served on numerous national panels and now serves on the Board of Directors of the Zellerbach Family Foundation. Lisa is a graduate of A.C.T.’s MFA program after which she joined the company and started the ArtReach program, which she ran for 17 years. She then went on to serve as the Artistic Director of Encore Theatre Company. Through her artistic direction with Z Space and Encore, Lisa has produced over 45 world premiere productions.

Santiago Rosas was born and raised in the state of Arizona to immigrant parents from Sahuayo, Michoacán, Mexico.  Santiago, a graduate of the Meisner Technique Studio in San Francisco, has called the Bay Area home for seven years.  He’s been in such roles as Jeremy from the theatrical production of Home Front. Benny from the “The North Pole Show”, Raymundo from “Driving while Undocumented” and starred, co-wrote, and produced the short, Indulto where he won the Best Actor award in the 2017 Sanford Meisner Film Festival. In his leisure time, he is actively involved in his communities in Phoenix and SF/Oakland and loves to play and listen to music.

Kevin Rasted is the Director for the On Camera and Voice Over divisions at MDT Agency in San Francisco, CA. He has been an agent for the last 7 years in San Francisco and has represented talent in a variety of major motion picture, network television and national commercial projects.

*Catch Fred in his solo show, The California Missions and Race Tour, directed by ShawnJ West August 17 and 24 at PianoFight*

Fred Pitts has been performing in the Bay Area for 20 years. He is a company member of African-American Shakespeare Company and Custom Made Theatre Company and has worked with numerous theatres throughout the Bay. Regional credits include All The Way, A Streetcar Named Desire, Jitney, Julius Caesar, Clybourne Park, Middletown, The Heidi Chronicles, Eurydice (Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle nominee for Best Supporting Actor). He can be seen in upcoming productions of One Man, Two Guvnors (Palo Alto Players-June 2019), Sweat (The Pear Theatre-October 2019) and Never The Sinner (Exit/Black Ice Theatres-March 2020). He also has numerous film and commercial credits. He is a member of SAG and is represented by JE Talent. 

Fred’s first solo show, The California Missions and Race Tour, dramaturgy by David Ford, had its debut at PlayGround Solo Performance Festival this past winter. It was featured as part of The Marsh’s program Marsh Rising in May 2019 and will be presented at Dragon Theatre’s Solo Festival and at PianoFight in August 2019. 

Fred is in recovery from 20 years as an Emergency Medicine physician. He now runs an Occupational Medicine clinic in San Francisco and has regained some of his sanity. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Kelly Rinehart, who is speech language pathologist and also an actor. Remarkably, they have been in 10 shows together.