ABOUT US

Students of Italian mask maestro Matteo Destro, Rebecca Pingree and Elissa Beth Stebbins founded Analog Theatre in January of 2020. Both were deeply inspired by the process of traditional Italian improvisational devising—wherein performers improvise a scene in mask characters, consult together about what worked and what didn't, and then improvise the scene again, repeating this process until satisfied with the scene. The draw of this model of creation lay especially in its potential for greater creative equity than a traditional theatre hierarchy. The desire to continue this creative process, plus a recognition of the shortage of developmental opportunities for physical theatre, led them to create Mask Monday: an eclectic mask & physical theatre work-in-development lab.

Mask Monday grew through early 2020 until pivoting in the Pandemic. This led Analog to expand to digital devising, with three episodes of “This is Not Moose & Tweety,” devised in collaboration with Julius Rea and Ely Sonny Orquiza from 2020 to 2021. Mask Monday finally made its in-person return for a full season in 2022. Jed Parsario (having trained and worked professionally with Destro protegé David Poznic, as well as Cirque du Soleil clown Ron Campbell), rapidly became a beloved fixture at Mask Monday performances, and officially joined Analog’s collective leadership in the fall of 2022. Julius Rea, who first worked with Analog in 2020, officially joined as the Guest Devising Director for our 2023 Mask Monday season, and then joined the collective leadership team in 2025, creating the current cohort of four multi-hyphenate artist leaders. 

Since coming back to in-person performing in 2022, Analog has produced a season of Mask Mondays yearly featuring 4-12 Guest Artists at each performance and hosted by Analog collective’s growing repertoire of mask and puppet characters. In addition to this regular season, Analog has presented pieces as part of Playground’s Incubator festival, as well as developing long-form pieces in collaboration with local artists.