Lightning Rod Special is a Philadelphia-based original performance company that creates raucous and contemplative works to ask questions of ourselves, our audience, and the world at large. Like scientists, we begin each project with a hypothesis and, following artistic investigations, find our way to complete pieces of theatre that twist the ordinary into alien, provoke debate, and stir what lies dormant in the corners of an audience’s mind. With big hearts, we tackle lightning rod topics in ways that scramble theatrical conventions and intellectual assumptions. Exploding complex questions with precision and play, Lightning Rod Special makes live performance from the ground up.

Shayok Misha Chowdhury is a many-tentacled writer and director based in Brooklyn. A Jonathan Larson Grant awardee and Sundance, Fulbright, and NYSCA/NYFA fellow, Misha is currently writing and directing a new bilingual play, Public Obscenities, premiering next season at Soho Rep, co-commissioned and co-produced with NAATCO. Recent projects: Brother, Brother (New York Theatre Workshop) with Aleshea Harris; MukhAgni (Under the Radar) with Kameron Neal. Misha is also the creator of VICHITRA, a series of sound-driven, cinematic experiments including Englandbashi (Ann Arbor Film Festival), The Other Other (Ars Nova), In Order to Become (Bushwick Starr), and An Anthology of Queer Dreams (Audio Unbound Award finalist). He was a collaborator on the Grammy-winning album Calling All Dawns and has been published in The Cincinnati Review, TriQuarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Asian American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Misha is an alumnus of NYTW 2050, The Public’s Devised Theater Working Group, Ars Nova’s Makers Lab, NYSAF Nexus, and Soho Rep’s Project Number One and Writer/Director Lab. Publications: MFA: Columbia.

Scott R. Sheppard is an OBIE award-winning theater artist and Co-Artistic Director of theater company Lightning Rod Special (2019 Barrymore Award for Evolving Theatre Company). Recent credits: Writer of Blood Meal for Theater in Quarantine (NY Times Critics’ Pick); Lead Writer/Performer in Lightning Rod Special’s The Appointment (Best of 2019 Time Out NY, NY Mag, NY Times Critics’ Pick). He was the co-creator and performer of Underground Railroad Game, which toured the world, earned an Edinburgh Fringe First Award and was named by the NYTimes as one of the 25 Best Plays of the past 25 Years. Scott graduated from Pig Iron’s School for Advanced Performance Training and has collaborated on several works with Pig Iron including: Period of Animate Existence, 99 Breakups (deviser/performer) and Gentlemen Volunteers (performer). Independence Foundation Fellow, Guild Hall Resident Artist, BRIC Lab Resident, and current member of Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writer’s Group. Scott is also the writer of Theater in Quarantine’s Topside in 2022 Cannonball Festival (happening right now).

Alice Yorke is a Philadelphia-based actor, creator, director, and producer. She is a Co-Artistic Director of Lightning Rod Special and the lead artist on their latest piece, The Appointment (Best of 2019 Theater: New York Times, Time Out New York, New York Magazine). With LRS: performer/creator: Hackles, Let the Dog See the Rabbit and Sans Everything; creative producer: Underground Railroad Game (2015). Performance credits include How to Be Brave (Inis Nua), The Gap (Azuka Theatre, Barrymore nomination, outstanding supporting performance), Down Past Passyunk (InterAct Theatre), Alex Bechtel’s The West, Pig Iron Theatre Company’s 99 Breakups and Pay Up. Recent directing credits include We Are Trying to Reach You, an audio work by Katie Gould as part of LRS’s Sound Break series, Cerebral (UArts), and Lee Minora’s White Feminist (Ars Nova Ant Fest). In 2019 she was named the Best Theatre Talent in Philadelphia by Philadelphia Magazine. Proud graduate of the inaugural class of the Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training.