Leo Lion | Founder, Artistic Director

Leo is a NYC-based director, performer, teaching artist, rpg storyteller, and clown. Leo founded Firebird in 2013 when they were 13 years old. Since then, Leo has directed twelve Firebird productions: Down the Chocolate River and Beyond, Expresso, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Treasure Island, Romeo+Juliet, Our Town, R.U.R., The Tempest, Julius Caesar, and An Enemy of the People, and Macbeth: Online, Rossum’s Universal Robots, and The Snow Queen. For Firebird’s youth ensemble, Leo teaches youth arts classes in improv, playwriting, acting shakespeare, and more. He also serves as the Associate Artistic Director of Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, where he creates interactive experiences inspired by classic books.

Leo is a Member of Dramatists’ Guild and Stage Directors and Choreographers Association.
leolion.com

Zoe Senese-Grossberg | Literary Director, Resident Dramaturge

Zoe Senese-Grossberg is a NY based director, playwright, dramaturg, and teaching artist. She has been the literary director of Firebird since Romeo + Juliet in 2017. Past directing credits include: Firebird’s The Seagull, At The End Of The World, Hamlet, Sarah Ruhl’s Orlando, and Twelve Ophelias. Zoe’s play Lay The Bent to the Bonny Broom was a 2023 semi-finalist for the National Playwright’s Conference.

Currently, Zoe is writing a solo show/pop music cabaret about the life of Bosie Douglas. If you know who that is please talk to her. zoesenesegrossberg.com.

Nickolas Roblee-Strauss | Artistic Producer

Nickolas is a multidisciplinary artist from rural western Massachusetts. He joined the Firebird team in 2023, and produced Boy My Greatness, Lay The Bent to the Bonny Broom, Nurse!, and if i live until i be a man. His artwork has shown at 440 Gallery and Thomas van Dyke, in Brooklyn NY as well as the Granoff Center, List Art Center, Joukowsky Institute, and Salon 149, in Providence, RI. He holds a BA in Modern Culture & Media from Brown University where he was a Royce Fellow, received Region 1 Mark of Excellence Award for In-Depth Reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists for his work at the College Hill Independent and his screenplay Poached won the Brown Motion Pictures competition.
nickolasrobleestrauss.com

Benny Rendell | Teaching Artist

Benny is a filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter, and has worked with Firebird for more than 8 years, growing up in their youth ensemble and now performing in the resident company (Boy My Greatness, RUR). He teaches Firebird’s award-winning MovieMaster Teen Film Lab along with Leo Lion. He studied filmmaking for a number of years with Carlo Mirabella-Davis (dir. Swallow, The Swell Season, The Servant) and studied screenwriting with Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia, Homeland, Fellow Travelers). Benny’s films have been selected for film festivals including the Woodstock, Austin, and Williamsburg Film Festivals. A proud homeschool alum, Benny is currently studying Filmmaking and Cinema Studies at NYU Tisch.
mirroruptonaturefilms.com

Thomas Manfred Pflanz | Founding Artist, Technical Director Emeritus

Thomas stage managed every Firebird Youth Theater production 2014-2022, after joining the company as a stage hand and prop master in their first show. Other tech credits include work as a Venue Production Assistant in the 2015 NY International Fringe Festival, and continued lighting design/operation. Thomas’s most recent projects include Tales From Grevelon, a whimsical RPG storytelling podcast, Theater of the Apes’ 2017 Repertory Season, and Tales of Neverland, an original adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy, written by himself and Tinamarie Panyard. 
thomasmanfredpflanz.com