Woodcutters

Woodcutters transforms profound disappointment into creative fuel through a theatrical adaptation of Thomas Bernhard’s biting 1984 novel. Designer Sara Brown, Director Shira Milikowsky, Actor Adrianne Krstansky, dramaturg Lauren K. Wolfe, and a team of dedicated theater makers explore how artists cope with disillusionment without becoming paralyzed by frustration.

Bernhard’s novel vividly depicts the damage of festering cynicism on the artistic spirit, drawing from his own frustrations with Vienna’s artistic community in the 1980s. For Brown, a set designer expanding beyond conventional practices, these themes resonate deeply with contemporary American theater’s retreat into conventionalism—shrinking ambitions, uninspired programming, and failure to meaningfully connect with audiences.

Rather than “stew in the wing chair” of disappointment, this collective of artists channels this frustration into adapting Bernhard’s novel into a theatrical work that promises both biting humor and cathartic release. Together they shape the performance through their combined expertise—Brown’s immersive stage environments, Milikowsky’s darkly comic and innovative direction, Wolfe’s insight into Bernhard’s work and world, and Krstansky’s depth as actor and theater maker converge to bring the narrator and the piece to life. 

The project represents an opportunity to work outside traditional theater roles while addressing the urgent question: How can contemporary artists find meaningful creative expression in a world that uplifts the superficial and self-obsessed?

Shira Milikowskyis a director and producer specializing in original collaborations and innovative imaginings of musicals and classic texts. In 2017 she co-founded a performance and production company, The Neon Coven. The Coven’s flagship production, OSCAR at The Crown, had successful runs in New York, Edinburgh, and London, and was hailed by the New York Times as “a party-inducing Rocky Horror transplanted to a 1990s Madonna video.”

Milikowsky spent six years as the artistic associate at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where, among other projects, she directed Taylor Mac’s five-hour epic, The Lily’s Revenge. Recent favorite projects include A Guide for The Homesick by Ken Urban (New York’s DR2 Theatre); Distant Star by Javierantonio González, adapted from the novel by Roberto Bolaño (Abrons Arts Center); and co-producing Broadway’s Liberation by Bess Wohl (Tony Award, best play). Milikowsky holds an M.F.A. in directing from Columbia and a B.A. in theater studies from Yale University. 

Website: therevolutionwillnotbeboring.com and theneoncoven.com
Social: Facebook | Instagram | SoundCloud | YouTube

Originally from Minneapolis, Sara Brown is a Boston-based set designer for theater, opera, and dance. She is an associate professor in Music and Theater Arts at MIT. Through her teaching, she encourages students to see stage environments as a means to shape action and provide visual context for performance. Her recent work includes Carousel at the Boston Lyric Opera, Common Ground Revisited at the Huntington Theater Company, and Aristotle Thinks Again at the La MaMa Experimental Theater Club in New York City. 

Biography: MIT Music and Theater Arts
Website: sarabdesign.com 

Adrianne Krstansky is a professional actor, director, and tenured professor of Theater Arts at Brandeis University, where she teaches acting and improvisation. Theater credits include Hartford Stage (Death of a Salesman, The Art of Burning); Shakespeare Theater, Washington, DC  (Leopoldstadt); Huntington Theater (Leopoldstadt, The Art of Burning, Doll’s House, Come Back Little Sheba [Elliot Norton Award]); American Repertory Theater (Paradise Lost, Britannicus, Ubu Rock): Speakeasy Stage Company (Places and Things, Every Brilliant Thing, Tribes, Body Awareness, Snakebit); Steppenwolf Theater (A Clockwork Orange, Twelfth Night); Kitchen Theater (Tribes); Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse (Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Woodcutters, Overcome); Boston Playwrights (Gary, Black Cat); Commonwealth Shakespeare (Othello); Lyric Stage (The Roommate, Barbecue); and Gloucester Stage (The Glass Menagerie, The New Electric Ballroom). Film and television credits include Little Women, American Woman, Olive Kitteridge, and Company Men. Krstansky holds the Louis, Frances, and Jeffrey Sachar Chair in Creative Arts and is a Professor of Theater Arts at Brandeis University.

Biography: Brandeis University
Website: adriannenkrstansky.my.canva.site

Tony Torn is an actor and director based in New York. His more than one hundred stage and screen credits include “Ubu” in Ubu Sings Ubu (also adapted, and co-directed with Dan Safer), “Paul Swan” in Paul Swan Is Dead and Gone at Torn Page, “Cyclops/Mother” in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus at The Signature Theater, “Rusty Trawler” in Breakfast at Tiffany’s on Broadway, “Lear/Oswald” in Karin Coonrod’s experimental staging of Shakespeare’s King Lear at La MaMa, “J.G. Conwell Senior” as a member of the original cast of in the immersive show Life and Trust, and in multiple shows by legendary experimental theater artists Richard Foreman and Reza Abdoh. 

In spring 2026, Tony Torn appeared in the title role of Spider Rabbit by Michael McClure, directed by Dan Safer. Torn was a founding director of Reverend Billy and The Church of Stop Shopping, and his recent staging of Romina Paula’s The Whole of Time was described as “beautifully directed” in the New Yorker. On screen, he can currently be seen opposite Willem Dafoe in Kent Jones’ feature Late Fame and with Eric Andre and John Cena in Little Brother for Netflix. He manages Torn Page, a salon space and classroom in Chelsea dedicated to the artistic legacy of his parents, Rip Torn and Geraldine Page.

Website: tonytorn.com

Lauren K. Wolfe is a Brooklyn-based translator, editor, and educator. She teaches courses in literature and cultural history with Brooklyn Institute for Social Research; she is a founding editor of Barricade—A Journal of Antifascism and Translation, publishing political literature from around the world; and her translations have been published or are forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press, University of Minnesota Press, MIT Press, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Grey Room, Asymptote, Hard Pack, and elsewhere. 

Wolfe holds a Ph.D. from New York University, an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a B.A. from Grinnell College. Her scholarly interests include twentieth- and twenty-first-century Austrian and German literature and the practice and theory of translation.

Biography: The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research

Abigail Hoke-Brady is a New York-based lighting designer whose work centers primarily in opera and classical music.  As a designer, Hoke-Brady is interested in the ways light functions as a visual score to the work onstage. Some of her most valued design projects include Pagliacci (Seattle Opera); Roméo et Juliette (Central City Opera); The Night Falls (Peak Performances/BalletCollective); A Guide for the Homesick (LDK Productions); How I Learned What I Learned (PlayMakers Repertory Company); and Time:Spans Festival (Dimenna Center and Earle Brown Music Foundation, co-designer alongside Burke Brown).

Website: hokebradydesigns.com 
Social: Instagram

Bozkurt “bozzy” Karasu has been in the performing arts, in one way or another, since 1991, starting in Istanbul, where he was born and raised. He worked as production manager, technical director, instructor, and designer at numerous institutions, including Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, the Wooster Group, MIT Music and Theater Arts, and the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, among other individual theater and dance companies, festivals, visual artists, and musicians both in United States and in Europe. 

Karasu lived in Istanbul, New York, Cambridge, and Los Angeles before moving to North Adams in 2025 to join MASS MoCA as associate director of programs and production in the museum’s Performing Arts and Film department. When not designing and producing for performing arts, he obsessively reads, travels and cooks…

Social: Instagram | Threads | Discogs |  Bluesky 

Bouncing between Boston and Salem, Lily Barnes is a freelance stage manager whose practice is rooted in joy and wonder. Previous stage management credits include A New Era (Company One Theatre); Schreibstück (MIT Theatre Arts); You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World! (Company One Theatre); Not Sightly (MIT Theatre Arts); Antigonick (MIT Theatre Arts); and Dear Jack, Dear Louise (Penguin Rep Theatre). Barnes holds a B.F.A. from Salem State University. Get outside and get off your phone!

Social: LinkedIn

Co-created by Sara Brown and Shira Milikowsky, with creative contributions by Adrianne Krstansky and Lauren K. Wolfe.

Directed by Shira Milikowsky
Performed by Adrianne Krstansky & Tony Torn
Set and costumes designed by Sara Brown
Lighting designed by Abigail Hoke-Brady
Sound designed by Bozzy Karasu
Dramaturgy by Lauren K. Wolfe
Stage managed by Lily Barnes

Woodcutters received a faculty grant from the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology and is generously supported by the MIT Human Insight Collaborative, MIT Music and Theater Arts, Circuit Arts, and the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse.