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Every story is a love story
Talented trio of actors portray the love triangle at the heart of AIDA

No matter how sumptuous the costumes, spectacular the scenery, or mesmerizing the music, every production depends on its actors to tell a captivating story.  The Willows Theatre Company is fortunate to have three outstanding performers portraying the central figures in Elton John & Tim Rice’s AIDA.

Playing the title character Aida, a Nubian princess stolen from her country, is Dawn Troupe-Masi of Fremont.  She was last seen on the Willows stage as Addaperle in The Wiz.

Regionally, Ms. Troupe has appeared extensively at TheatreWorks in Mountain View. As a member of the ensemble of Memphis and understudy for the lead role of Honey Lovin’, she worked with author Joe Di Pietro (who also wrote the book and lyrics for I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change) and composer David Bryan (of Bon Jovi). In The Little Princess, another production of TheatreWorks’ New Works Festival, she worked with composer Andrew Lippa (The Wild Party) and playwright Brian Crawley (winner of the Kleban Award for Violet), and was directed by Broadway director Susan Schulman (The Secret Garden, Little Women).  She has also appeared in Ragtime as part of the featured pas de deux, in Raisin as understudy for Beneatha, as Joan in The Water, and as Ginger in Book of Days. Other regional roles include Nurse and understudy to Bloody Mary in South Pacific at American Musical Theater, and as the Attorney for the Wolf in BB. Wolf vs. The Pig for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival. 

Ms. Troupe has played Josephine Baker in two separate productions at the Black Berkeley Rep, one for world renowned artist and jazz legend Herb Geller (with whom she appeared last summer as the featured vocalist), and the other for Jonal Productions. She has performed in numerous productions for Jackson Theatre at Ohlone College including Anything Goes, Working, A Flea In Her Ear, The Shadow Box, and summer galas.  She has studied with legendary jazz greats Sheila Jordan and Jay Clayton, sung in a California Lotto commercial, done background work in the film Bicentennial Man, and was featured in Partners, an ABC-TV pilot.  You may have also seen her advertising the Christian children’s video series Heroes and Legends of The Bible, with Charlton Heston narrating.  

Jeff Leibow got a late start in theater, but has been no stranger to music.  He has been involved with music in some capacity since the age of 6, and has studied guitar, piano, flute, oboe and English horn, as well as a slew of percussion instruments including (believe it or not) steel drums.  It wasn’t until he attempted theater many years later that he learned about one more instrument, his voice.

He was already a junior at UC Davis, well on his way to a degree in zoology, when a friend of his dared him to audition for a production of A Chorus Line.  That production at Davis Musical Theater Company was the first in a series of shows at local theater companies in the Davis and Sacramento area. Eventually, he auditioned for one of the local professional companies, Sacramento Music Circus (now California Music Theatre).  After one summer working next to actors from Broadway, he dropped his bachelor’s degree in zoology by the wayside and moved to New York to be trained as an actor.

Mr. Leibow’s training led him to jobs in and out of New York City, and his resume now includes credits from regional theaters across the country — even New York City’s Eighty-Eights Cabaret. Since being back in California, he has performed in productions at American Musical Theater of San Jose (including Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Damn Yankees, and Miss Saigon, understudying the leads in all three); TheatreWorks (including the recent world premiere of Memphis); and Playhouse West (in the Northern California premiere of The Last Five Years).  His most recent credits include the San Francisco production of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change at the Marines Memorial Theater and a second production of The Last Five Years opposite his fiancé, Melody. 

Jeff can now add the Willows Theatre Company to his list of Bay Area theaters with his role as Radames, the Egyptian captain who must re-examine his beliefs.
 

New York-based actress Megan Ross returns to the Willows to play the Egyptian princess Amneris, engaged to Radames and destined to become ruler of her country.  Originally from outside Chicago, Ms. Ross debuted to great acclaim when in her first production (at the age of 6) she portrayed the grandmother in Brownie Troop 208’s production of The Brownie Story, in the basement of Christ United Methodist Church.

Megan began performing professionally at 12 in area regional theatres including the New American Theatre and Starlight Theatre and hasn’t stopped since.  Some of her Bay Area credits include I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change at San Jose’s Theater on San Pedro Square and Lucy Harris in the Willows Theatre’s own regional premiere of Jekyll & Hyde.

Megan has been seen by audiences around the United States in the national tour of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying as the wise-cracking Smitty, and in numerous other productions. They range from Italian dramas to her current long-term project in New York: working alongside award-winning new composer Brett Kristofferson and Jeff Dobbs developing a new musical, where she is portraying one of the most complex women of American pop culture, Tammy Faye Bakker.

In addition to her career as an actress, Megan teaches playwriting to children and is a published writer and accomplished artist, with a degree in painting from the historic San Francisco Art Institute.
 

We are pleased to have this talented trio of actors at the heart of AIDA.

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