VIRTUAL PROGRAM | River's Edge Theatre

PEEK-A-BOO

Immersive Theatre. Haunted History.

By Meghan Covington

Directed by Jessica Irons

Oct 16th -19th and 23rd - 26th

7:30pm on all dates

Bethany Arts Community, Ossining

Creative Team:

Director - Jessica Irons

Playwright - Meghan Covington

Stage Manager - Monica Robles

Lighting Design - Andrew Irons

Sound and Lighting Technician - Ray Flaks

Costume Design - Emily Dziak

Choreography - Megan Roe

House Manager - Sioux Madden

Cast (in order of appearance):

Luci................................................Meghan Covington

John Andre..............................................Ellijah Parfait

Sadie the Goat..............................................Noni Alley

Willhemina Salisbury...........................Katie Kopajtic

The Stranger.......................................David Covington

Hulda.....................................................Traci Redmond

Understudies:

Owen Ryan, Elena McGuigan, Mark Cajigao, and Lily Boulard

The Staff:

Elena McGuigan and Anna Fewell Triantafillou

Photo credit Ben Fraternale of Analog on Hudson.

Support Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prisons

Peek-a-Boo explores themes of redemption, second chances, and the possibility of transformation. These ideas are not just theatrical—they’re real. We invite you to join us in supporting Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison, a nonprofit that provides college education, reentry support, and life skills to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals. If the story of Peek-a-Boo moves you, consider helping others write their own story of redemption. Learn more or donate at www.hudsonlink.org.

River's Edge Theatre Co's programing was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

River's Edge Theatre Co. is proud to be a grantee of ArtsWestchester with funding made possible by Westchester County government with the support of County Executive Kenneth W. Jenkins and the Board of Legislators.

Meet the Cast:

Meghan Covington (Playwright and Luci)

Meghan is a NY based actor, playwright, and producer. Her most notable acting credits have taken place on the stages of The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co, The Shakespeare Theatre, Round House Theatre, Theatre J, Olney Theatre in Washington DC. She was also a company member for Synetic Theatre, where she spent 4+ years developing skills in classical pantomime technique, physical theatre, and dance. In NYC Meghan has performed at Theatre for the New City, The Brick, and Manhattan Theatre Source. As a playwright her work has been produced at The Tank, Equity Theatre Library, Tiger Heart Theatre Co, Musco Performing Arts Center, Pillipstown Depot Theatre and River's Edge Theatre Co. Meghan holds a BFA in theatre performance from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Ellijah Parfait (John Andre)

Ellijah is a NYC based actor who is very excited to be working with the Rivers Edge Theatre Company on such a unique project . Ellijah has been doing theatre since he was 11 and has been in numerous productions in his hometown of Baltimore, his recent work includes performing in the New York theater festival in the new play “The Devil and i”, a staged reading of a new work called “Back” from the playwright Matthew Webster and King Lear presented by Theatre 20/20. He has received training from Carver Center for the arts and recently studied at AMDA. He would like to thank his friends,family and anyone who supports the show.

Katie Kopajtic (Willamina Salisbury, aka Sal )

Katie Kopajtic is a writer, filmmaker, and theater person thrilled to be reprising the role of Sal. Her writing has been published in No Sleep podcast, cream city review, Electric Literature, Variant Literature, The Future Fire, and more. When not on stage or caring for her three senior rescue dogs, she's reading sapphic mysteries or working on a feature-length documentary about the fantasy of her Croatian heritage. Explore her work at www.katiekopajtic.com

Noni Alley (Sadie the Goat)

Noni Alley (they/them) is an actor, producer and award-nominated VoiceOver artist based in NYC. An acting alumni of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, with a background in circus arts, Noni performs in live theater, film, animation and audiobooks. Recent work: Valentine in Twelfth Night, Sterling and Tezcatlipoca in It Has His Eyes, narration of Beyond Inclusion audiobook.

David Covington (The Stranger)

David began his performance career tap dancing his way across the globe with the internationally acclaimed company of TAP DOGS. Other tap dance credits include Lincoln Center with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the Kennedy Center's 13th Annual Gala: A Salute to the 1940’s Broadway Musical with the National Symphony Orchestra In Washington D.C., David founded his own tap company, MetroTAP, and youth company, Metropolitan Youth Tap Ensemble. David has appeared in numerous stage performances Off-Broadway and regionally, including performances at the Kennedy Center, Signature Theater, Arena Stage, Theater Row, and the historic Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C.

Traci Redmond (Hulda)

Traci Redmond is based in Dobbs Ferry, NY, working as an actor, voice actor, and improviser. A regular collaborator with RetCo, she has appeared as Puck (Midsummer), Susan (Happy Hour), L. Montague (R&J), and The Captive (Riverside Haunts). She also leads the monthly adult improv workshop nurturing creativity and play for everyone.One of her recent favorite roles was playing Sandra in “The Play That Goes Wrong” at Elmwood Playhouse. Other select NY stages: Gene Frankel Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Source, The Tank, Primary Stages, Dixon Place, Queens Theater, Bluemouth Inc, Turtle Shell Theater. Offstage, Traci embraces her most recent and challenging role yet: Stage IV colon cancer survivor and advocate. She encourages everyone to schedule that colonoscopy! For more info about her on-screen and VO work: www.traciredmond.com

Lily Boulard (u/s Hulda and Sadie)

Lily (they/them/theirs) is a New York City-based actor, playwright, and comedian. Their NYC stage credits include Friend In Need (Between Us Theater Co.), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Somethin’ Else), and Who You Are To Me (The Chain Theater One Act Fest). Regional credits include 9 to 5 (Tantrum Theater) and Natasha, Pierre…The Great Comet of 1812 (Tantrum Theater). Lily would like to wish everyone a very spooky Halloween season!

Owen Ryan (u/s Andre)

Owen is an amateur actor from Mt. Pleasant, New York. Owen has acted in productions of As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Parade, Chicago, Gone Missing, and The Importance Of Being Earnest. Outside of stage acting, Owen also does improv comedy and plays guitar and piano around New York City.

Elena McGuigan (u/s Sal and Staff)

Elena is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, studying Drama. Her love of the performing arts began in the 7th grade, and she has had roles in a number of productions throughout her time in middle and high school, ranging from Greek tragedy to musical comedy. She has also acted in many student short films during her time at NYU. As well as performing on stage, Elena also has interests in work backstage and behind the camera. She has worked in stage management, on run crew, and costume crew, for a number of productions through NYU Tisch, and the Atlantic Theater Company. Elena has recently landed a role in the Atlantic Theater’s One Act Festival, which she will be performing in this fall. Elena has been in participation with River’s Edge Theatre Company for a few years, and is very excited to be a part of this production.

Mark Cajigao (u/s Stranger)

Mark Cajigao (Director) is very happy to be working again with River's Edge Theatre Company. He is an actor, singer, director and producer who has worked on stage and in film in NYC, regionally, and as far abroad as Cairo, Egypt. Mark also co-curates RETCo’s Cold Reads series, where every month local actors tackle a different play with no prior rehearsal. He lives with his family in Hastings on Hudson, and holds degrees from Wagner College and The New School for Drama. Mark is a proud member of Actors Equity and the Screen Actors Guild.

Anna Fewell Triantafillou (Staff)

Anna Fewell Triantafillou is a student of acting at River’s Edge Theatre Company. She is studying with Julia Schonberg and Mark Cajigao. Anna is a graduate of Oberlin College, Columbia University SSW & SIPA, and an LCSW. As a native and now a mom of Hastings-on-Hudson, she thanks River’s Edge for enriching the Rivertown community. Thanks to fellow Acting Lab students for their steadfast camaraderie, collaboration, authenticity, bravery, and superbly shining spirits. Thanks to her family and friends for believing in me; connecting me to the great beyond: past, present and future; and teaching me all the important things, including Tarot.

Meet the Production Team:

Jessica Irons (Director)

Jessica is an Ossining resident, and sits on the Board of Bethany Arts Community, and is the current president. She sat on the Board of Ossining MATTERS for 6 years and was president for 2. For 10 years she was the Artistic Director of the award winning , NYC based Andhow ! Theater Company where she fostered new plays from a seed of an idea through to full productions. She directed Off & Off Off Broadway at the Flea, The Ohio, HERE Arts Center, 78th Street Theater Lab, Dixon Place, The Blue Heron Arts Center, The Ontological at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery New Georges and adobe theatre company. She was the Associate Artistic Director of adobe theatre company and the Artistic Associate at Adirondack Theater Festival. As an educator she has directed/taught in Newark NJ, Redhook, Brooklyn, for the 52nd Street Project in Manhattan, Allan Stevenson, Fordham University, the Boys & Girls Club of Northern Westchester and elsewhere throughout the tri-state area . Locally, she has directed adults professionally for Rivers Edge Theatre Co. She was the original therapeutic arts director at Children of Promise, NYC in Bedford Stuyvesant, where she developed and implemented therapeutic art & theater curricula for children of incarcerated parents. Jessica studied theater at Skidmore College (BA) and Creative Arts Therapy at the New School.

Monica Robles (Stage Manager)

Monica is the co-founder of Tres Brujas Productions where she serves as a producer and stage manager. Past production credits include work in NYC, Puerto Rico and Edinburgh. During the day, she is a media Partnerships Director at SiriusXM and sits as the chair of their DE&I Board and their Pride ERG, developing partnerships with non-profit organizations such as The Ally Coalition, New Alternatives and Live Out Loud.

Andrew Irons (Lighting Design)

Andrew is a playwright and a founding member of ANDHOW! Theater Company. For Andhow! he has written Linus & Alora (The Flea Theater), Little Suckers (The Ohio Theater), Non-D, (the Ontological Theatre; Backstage STIMY Award: Powerful Production 2003-2004), Paschal Full Moon (78th Street Theater Lab), and has received readings / workshops of Yakima Man and Iris. His play Tunnel was produced at Expanded Arts. His toy theater piece And Away! was presented at The Brick, as well as with Andhow! at The Connelly Theater. And as an actor and playwright he has worked with several New York theater companies including the Ontological, New Georges, Turnip and 78th Street Theater Lab. His play Linus & Alora was published in Plays & Playwrights Best Plays of 2010. Andrew has been a Teaching Artist at The Hudson River Academy, Sarah Lawrence College’s Summer Writing Intensive, Westchester Community College, Allen Stevenson, and Penobscot Theater Company. He was Program Director for Off the Hook a playwriting to performance program in Red Hook Brooklyn, 2006-2008. He has been teaching in the New York City public school system for the last 8 years. Andrew studied theater at the American Conservatory Theater (Young Conservatory), National Theater Institute, Skidmore College (BA) and Sarah Lawrence College (MFA).

Ray Flaks (Sound and iLghting Technician)

Ray is an A/V technician and audio engineer from Westchester, NY, and currently based in Ossining, NY. This is his third time collaborating with Rivers Edge Theater Company (Ichabod, Marian), and he is grateful to be working with this wonderful team again. Ray has worked on a variety of theater productions from a young age, including a few recent shows at Bethany Arts Community. He received a BA in Cinema from Binghamton University in 2021, and is excited to continue supporting the arts in his community.

Emily Dziak (Costume design)

Emily is an actress and scenic artist from Westchester, New York. Her credits include: As You Like It (Rosalind), We Are Proud to Present (Actor 5, Sarah), Kodachrome (Suzanne/The Photographer), The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (Beatrice), The Green Plays Project (Kara, Actor B), Listening (Hailey).

Megan Roe (choreographer)

Megan is a dancer and visual artist born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her childhood was spent in the dance studio. She assisted her teachers and quickly began to choreograph pieces herself. Megan continued on to New York City to study contemporary and improv dance at the Steps on Broadway Conservatory. She's performed in a variety of dance and art productions over the years but only once she began choreographing for a Brooklyn theater company, Loop Troupe, did she really find her passion. Megan quickly became involved in all aspects of a production, from making costumes to building props to designing posters and more. This desire to create full visions led her to directing music videos for artists like BlackJeans, Zuli Jr., Enrose and more. Megan is a dance teacher by day and visual artist by night, taking on collaborative projects that inspire play in her community.

The History That Inspired Peek-a-Boo:

On Wildey Street in Tarrytown, the notorious Peek-a-Boo Flats flourished in the early 1900s–1920s. A red light district, the Flats earned themselves a reputation as “disorderly houses.” The local paper fumed, “The Peek-a-Boos give the police more trouble than any other section!” Neighbors called for their demolition, yet night after night the Flats brimmed with paying customers. The women who worked there were often arrested, exiled, or forbidden from appearing on the streets after dark without a chaperone. But no amount of policing could dim the allure. The more the town tried to shut them down, the more irresistible the Peek-a-Boos became.

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Sadie the Goat

Sadie the Goat was an American criminal, gang leader, and river pirate. In 1869, Sadie the Goat joined the Charlton Street Gang, headquartered at a gin mill at the end of Charlton Street on the West Side. Though her real name was Sadie Farrell, she became known as Sadie the Goat because of her favored form of fighting: headbutting men in the stomach and having a male compatriot knock the victim out cold so they could steal his money and valuables without difficulty. She also had the misfortune of having her ear bitten off by the infamous Gallas Mag who was the bouncer at the Hole in the Wall bar. After Sadie the Goat lost her ear, she left the Fourth Ward and found a new home on the West Side with the Charlton Street Gang. The gang decided to become pirates and wreak havoc along the shores of the Hudson River (then called the North River), and that''s how Sadie got yet another nickname - Sadie, Queen of the Waterways.

John Andre

Major John André was no ordinary British officer. Fluent in four languages, a poet, an artist, a theatre-lover, and a soldier—he embodied both charm and danger. But in 1780, fate betrayed him on Hudson Valley soil. Captured near Tarrytown with incriminating papers in his boot, André was condemned as a spy and executed on George Washington’s orders. His ghost lingers in legend. Washington Irving himself wrote that the tulip tree where André was seized became one of Sleepy Hollow’s most haunted sites, forever binding the officer’s tragic end to the valley’s spectral folklore.

Hulda the Witch

Hulda of Bohemia was no witch—but the villagers of Sleepy Hollow thought otherwise. An immigrant woman living alone in the woods, she was skilled in herbs, healing, and trade with the Lenape. That independence made her dangerous in the eyes of Dutch settlers. When British troops invaded during the Revolution, Hulda fought alongside the patriots, rifle in hand, and fell in battle. At first denied a proper burial, the townspeople later recognized her courage. Today a stone near the Old Dutch Church reads: “Herbalist, Healer, Patriot. Felled by British while protecting the Militia.” Hulda, the so-called witch, is remembered instead as a hero.

William Salisbury

General William Salisbury of Leeds appeared every bit the respectable gentleman—until his darkest secret spilled into local legend. One night, after a young servant girl tried to escape, Salisbury bound her wrists to his horse. Whether by accident or intent, the horse bolted, dragging the girl to her death. The general was convicted of murder, yet his punishment was grotesquely delayed: he would wear a rope around his neck in public until his 99th birthday, when he was to be hanged. Over time, the rope became a silk cravat. His execution never came. He died comfortably at 100. But some say the hills near his manor still echo with the screams of the girl and the thunder of phantom hooves on Old Coxsackie Road. Below is the Salisbury manor house that still stands today.

About River's Edge Theatre Company

River's Edge Theatre Company (RETCo) is a NY State non-profit organization with the mission to reflect the human experience, spark conversation, and inspire social change through performance. RETCo invites theatergoers to step to the outer limits of their comfort zone as they shed light on some of society's most pressing issues. In addition to producing quality, thought provoking performances in Westchester, NY, RETCo also offers classes and workshops that place emphasis on the social emotional benefits of theatre education, allowing students to collaborate and create in a fun and nurturing environment. River's Edge Theatre Company is a NY not-for-profit 501(c)3 corporation and donations qualify as a deductible charitable contribution to the extent the law provides. Make a donation or learn more on our website.

About Bethany Arts Community

Bethany Arts Community is a space and environment where all forms of art can be learned and expressed, where hope & acceptance are the norms. Nurturing the creative process, Bethany welcomes artists, from young to old, and all levels of experience, to explore and create art that the community can engage with. Bethany fosters sharing, connection, and collaboration, in an inclusive culture where people experience the power of art to improve lives and expand their perceptions and perspectives of the world.

The Vision of Bethany Arts Community is to be a model arts community where everyone has access to the arts in a safe, accepting, and nurturing environment, where art is valued for its power to broaden perspectives and challenge assumptions, and where the artistic process results in community engagement, cross-cultural understanding, and personal growth.

About Hudson Link for Higher Education:

Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison provides college education, life skills, and reentry support to currently and formerly incarcerated people so they can make a positive impact on their own lives, their families, and communities, resulting in lower rates of recidivism and higher rates of employment, community regeneration, cohesiveness, and reciprocity. We provide post-secondary educational opportunities for incarcerated students enrolled in programs at six correctional facilities in the greater New York area.

Learn more or donate here.