The Company

Mariangela Saavedra

Artistic and Managing Director

Mariangela Saavedra has been working in Theater for 26 years, in cities across the country such as, Chicago Illinois, Washington DC, Wilmington North Carolina and Philadelphia Pennsylvania, just to name a few. Before founding Casabuena Cultural Productions she was the Founder and Artistic Director of The Starving Artists Theatre Ensemble in Wilmington, The Storytellers Theatre Company in Chicago, and then founded Casabuena CP here in Philadelphia in 2009. Their first residency was at The Piazza at Schmidts in Northern Liberties where she produced Hamlette by  Alison Williams on the main stage in July of 2009. She has worked for the Tony Award winning Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, The Kimmel Center here in Philadelphia and was the Director of Drama and Voice at Cape Fear School of the Arts in Wilmington. She has always loved working with creative youth, which is why when she founded CCP she knew she wanted young performers to be a part of it. She currently teaches theater classes for youth at Allens Lane Art Center, and directed Talk Radio by Eric Bogosian for their 2016 Season, An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein by Shel Silverstein for their 2017 Season, and I hate Hamlet for their 2018 Season. She is extremely proud of the work she is doing with Casabuena and is so happy to have such a great team of creative people on board making this company her most successful to date.

Eric Gershenow

Music Director

Eric has been Music Director for Casabuena Cultural Productions since 2013, writing and recording original songs for short films and theatre productions as well as engineering sound for live performances. A DC native, Eric G. Has been a live performing artist for over 20 years having performed in various cover projects before moving to Philadelphia in 2010 where he began focusing on writing and recording original music.  Having grown up in the 90’s, his influences include 90’s-era hip hop and rock, as well as the classic blues that spurred the British Invasion of the 1960’s to the 1970’s R&B can be heard throughout his self-titled EP Harmonic Frequency Matching due in March 2018.  Since moving to Philadelphia, Eric has performed and recorded with numerous local artists from both rock/folk and R&B jazz communities, most notably performing with R&B heavy hitters Stephen Wise and Grammy-nominated bassist Doug Grigsby III (StepWiseEntertainment).