ROiL's Directors, Facilitators, Staff

Caitlin Corrigan, Creative Director
Caitlin has been involved in theatre and youth work for several years. A graduate of the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing arts, a public magnet school in her upstate NY hometown, she went on to study theatre and creative writing at Goucher College in Baltimore, actively participating in a new Slam poetry series and co-ordinating a student writers' collaborative, Word for Word. In 2004, she moved to Portland to study documentary writing at the Salt Institute. Most recently, she co-founded ROiL, co-wrote Close to Home, and began freelance writing for national alternative media outlets. She now makes her home in New Orleans, freelancing for The Gambit Weekly, performing with newly formed NOLA Playback, and managing Social Policy, a quarterly journal on community and labor organizing.

Joanna Horton, Programming Director / Teaching Artist
Joanna was turned on to acting after the Maine Summer Dramatic Institute and various Shakespeare and modern plays. Her involvement in social change work began as a workshop presenter with Young Adult Abuse Prevention Program. She has gone on to work with youth in theater and the arts in New York with the Poughkeepsie Program for Youth in the Performing Arts, on the Sisseton-Wahpeton reservation in South Dakota, and as program coordinator/teacher for a homeless youth education program in Lewiston, Maine. One of ROiL’s founders, Joanna facilitates youth programming and writes/produces/acts in ROiL productions including ROiL’s first touring production in fall 2005, Close to Home. She facilitates locally in New York, and travels to facilitate workshops in Maine and Louisiana. Joanna most recently studied Meisner's "emotional honesty" acting technique with Eliza Van Cort in the Actor's Workshop in Ithaca, NY. She currently resides in Baton Rouge, LA where she continues youth work at the city's premiere teen center.

Tessy Seward, Managing Director / Teaching Artist
Tessy grew up in downeast Maine, and first found her way to the stage as an actress, designer and director with the drama club at Sumner Memorial High School. She performed with the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Hancock County and studied acting with Tina Shepard in the theater department of Williams College, where she also got her first pair of steel-toed boots and learned to wield a wrench. After working for five years in Boston and then Dallas as a director with a start-up educational company, Tessy returned to Maine and helped found ROiL in the winter of 2004-05. She co-wrote and performed in ROiL's first production, Close to Home, co-facilitates "Staging a Revolution" at the Bioneers Conference, and leads youth theater workshops in various settings around southern Maine, including the Riverton Park public housing development and the Preble Street Teen Center. Tessy also co-facilitates ROiL's youth workshops in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Christopher Reiling, Assistant Facilitator
Christopher grew up in Topsham, Maine and was introduced to theater at the age of nine. After a year in Americorps and an internship in environmental education, he became devoted to environmentalism. A graduate of University of Southern Maine with a BS in science, Christopher is now a caseworker at the Preble Street Resource Center, a low-barrier non-profit serving people experiencing homelessness and extreme poverty. Christopher became a member of ROiL during the late spring of 2005 and helped develop Close to Home. He performed in the touring production during the fall of 2005, and became a facilitator for youth workshops in the spring of 2006. He currently facilitates ROiL youth workshops in Portland, ME.

Mimie Laurant, Facilitator-In-Training
Mimie has been involved in the performing arts since the age of three, starting off with dreams of being a dancer/choreographer. By being lucky to have teachers who supported the youth in arts she also discovered singing and acting and found her way to musical theater. While in high school she started to volunteer to help out with the middle school musicals and found her calling was not to be on stage but to work in technical theatre/ stage management/directing. Mimie is originally form Baton Rouge, Louisiana but considers herself a "citizen of the world" since she has lived and traveled extensively outside of the US. After completing her freshman year at Howard University in 2006, she decided to transfer to Louisiana State University to complete her degree B.F.A. in Theatre Arts Administration upon realizing that home is truly where the heart is. She currently facilitates workshops in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Aliya Levine, Web Designer
Aliya was raised in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts where she attended a Rudolf Steiner school, paving the way for an affinity for the arts as well as an awareness of social issues. After receiving her undergraduate degree in sociology from the University of Southern Maine, she chose a deductive route to a career, which led her through a variety of employment venues. She has worked for Fortune 500 companies, been involved in real estate management and investment, worked as a free-lance graphic and web designer, and trained to be a yoga teacher. Currently she is traveling throughout India and Southeast Asia to train extensively in yoga, Ayurveda, and Thai massage. Aliya is a founding member of ROiL, and has drawn on her skills and love for design to create the ROiL logo and website.