Ashley Straw is a name that you're going to want to remember. A true renaissance woman, she has accomplished in her early twenties what most strive to accomplish in their whole careers.
Straw began her career as an actress at the Gateway Playhouse and with the Long Island Play Project in Rebecca Gilman’s Boy Meets Girl. While at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy’s Musical Theatre Conservatory Program, Straw studied under such artists as Philip George, co-creator of Forbidden Broadway. After her graduation from AMDA (she is also a graduate of the Contemporary Drama Programme at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), Straw found herself a part of the national tours of George's musical, Shout! The Mod Musical, as well as the world premiere of the musical Turandot: The Rumble for the Ring, which had its debut at The Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor.
Straw returned to Bay Street to lead the cast of Fate & Furies by Carey Lovelace, and then worked under the direction of Michael Mayer on the workshop of The Flamingo Kid alongside Broadway veterans Marc Kudish, Randy Graff, and John Dosset. After a short break from performing, Straw decided to pick up the pen. Her one-act play Why We Come Back enjoyed its first staged reading in June 2008, and was then featured at The University of Fredonia’s 2009 One Act Festival.
It was while in London that Straw found inspiration, studying closely with playwright/director/teacher Che Walker, the first playwright to have a contemporary piece up at Shakespeare’s Globe since Shakespeare himself. From this inspiration came Onlything East, Straw’s first full-length drama, which debuted at The City in Manhattan to oversold audiences and opened the Friends & Neighbors Festival at The Strand Theater Company in Baltimore, MD.
It was after the success of Onlything East that Straw began to work fervently to develop a small theatre company, which brings us to the birth of SANDRep. The company is dedicated to satiating the urban American palette with new and raw material. With the company, Straw has developed Spring Juice, a collection of four one-act plays, for which she contributed Otto & Eury. Aside from penning that piece, she served as editor, director, and composer of an original score for it.
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