Meet the Team

Dominique Alfandre has been producing plays, dances and site specific events for a long time. As Founding Executive Director of Island Moving Company (now Newport Contemporary Ballet), she helped create and presented eight seasons of Open for Dancing, a festival of site specific dances made with community members in iconic Newport landscapes. With Artistic Director Miki Ohlsen, she produced numerous collaborative performances with poets, sculptors, musicians and other artists. Dominique serves on the Boards of the Arts & Cultural Alliance, Newport Performing Arts Center, Newport String Project and the RI State Council on the Arts. She believes that everyone has a great story and a creative spirit inside them.

Born and raised in Newport, Jed got his BFA in Acting from URI and an MFA in Devised Theater from the London International School of Performing Arts. Today, he is a theater-maker, performance educator and support staff member at Bike Newport. He teaches voice and movement at Salve Regina and offers private lessons in the Alexander Technique.

Anna Basile is a Rhode Island born actor and teaching artist. She received her BA in Theatre from Northwestern University and her MFA in Devised Performance in Physical Theatre from Pig Iron / University of the Arts.
Creating original works of physical theatre with young performers is Anna’s absolute favorite thing to do, second only, perhaps, to being onstage herself. Anna has produced four original pieces for the Providence Fringe Festival. She worked for two years as a performing arts faculty member at the Lincoln School in Providence. Additional school partnerships include the Rocky Hill School in East Greenwich, Saint Philomena’s in Portsmouth, Beacon Charter School for the Arts in Woonsocket.

Thomas Palmer lives in Newport, Rhode Island and has an expansive view of the Common Burying Ground. This is his first production with Center Aquidneck.

Rebecca is a community arts organizer, deviser, and administrator who lives in Newport. She has created original live community-based performance since 2010, mostly in Rhode Island, but other places too. After four years as the first Director of Community Engagement at Trinity Rep in Providence, RI, Rebecca moved to Minneapolis to lead Community Engagement at the Guthrie Theater where she built mutually-beneficial relationships across the Twin Cities and in greater Minnesota through art-making, responsive events, and co-conspiratorial relationships surrounding the Guthrie’s work. Today Rebecca proudly serves as the Director of Special Projects in the City of Providence’s department of Art, Culture and Tourism.
Rebecca holds a BFA in Acting from the College of Santa Fe and an MFA in Lecoq Based Actor Created Physical Theatre from the London International School of Performing Arts. She was the 2015 and 2017 RI State Council on the Arts Playwriting Fellow and was named one of TCG’s One to Watch in 2019.

Elizabeth Woodhouse (she/her) is a choral music educator and conductor with over 20 years of experience working with choruses all across the country from Denver, Colorado to Brooklyn, New York. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of Newport Sings (RI), a non-profit organization that provides opportunities for youth and adults to discover the joy and power of singing in community with others. At Newport Sings she conducts Aquidneck Singers, a multigenerational treble chorus, and QUORUS, an LGBTQIA+ chorus for teens and adults. She also oversees the Newport County Youth Chorus programs and leads Community Sing, a weekly singalong program for adults with disabilities. Elizabeth has prepared and conducted ensembles at Carnegie Hall and Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) as well as for a national PBS Kids Commercial.
Elizabeth is an adjunct professor at University of Rhode Island where she conducts the University Chorus and has previously taught choral methods and conducting courses. She also serves as a student teacher supervisor at Rhode Island College. A 2019-2020 Jubilation Foundation Fellow, Elizabeth received a Bachelor of Music Education from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Master of Music in Choral Conducting at The Ohio State University, where she was a University Fellow.

Jane Carey is a Newport native whose working career was off-island as an Art Director and Book Designer for technology, trade and college textbooks at Artech House, Beacon Press and Harcourt Brace. Her local interests include a revival of the city’s cemetery commission and research contributions of Newport’s historic landscapes to the Smithsonian Archives of American Gardens.

Casey Seymour Kim is a Rhode Island-based theatre arts performer who has performed professionally on regional stages such as the Gamm, and specializes in improvisation and working on new or original material. Some of the most joyful moments in her arts career have involved her collaborations with Jed Hancock-Brainerd and Rebecca Noon, through the theatre group Strange Attractor, and now through Center Aquidneck. Casey holds an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College, teaches theatre performance at Rhode Island College, and is a member of the improv troupe Improv Jones.

Research Support

Nick Benson

Third generation American stone carver, stone letterer and owner of The John Stevens Shop
John Hattendorf

King Professor of Maritime History at the United States Naval War College
Lew Keen

Chairman of the Newport Historic Cemetery Advisory Commission
George Champlin Mason

American architect considered the first professional architectural preservationist in the United States
Bert Lippincott

Librarian and Genealogist with the Newport Historical Society
Ron Onorato

Scholarship on American architecture, public sculpture and funerary art
Keith Stokes

Consulting historian for the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society and Rhode Island’s Historian Laureate
Theresa Stokes

Executive Director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society
Paul Russo

Stone carver at the John Stevens Shop