Dr. Barry Mann is a retired surgeon and medical educator who currently serves as dean of the Faculty of Health and Allied Sciences at Pentecost University in Ghana. He directed surgery residency training and served as Chief Academic Officer of the Main Line Health System for two decades. A national leader in surgical education, he authored SURGERY: A Competency-Based Companion and received the AAMC Robert P. Glaser Distinguished Teacher of Medicine Award. His children’s book Miri and Her Drum Set: A Modern Hanukkah Miracle inspired Cousins, his first musical.
Barbara Bellman is an award-winning playwright, librettist, producer, and arts advocate based in Philadelphia. Her work has been developed through NAMT, BMI, Theatre Row, and the O’Neill National Musical Theatre Conference. Her musicals include Bordello, The Word Police, Steadfast, and Anna: Unmasked. She is co-founder and former producing artistic director of MusiCoLab and a member of the Dramatists Guild and BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop.
Emiliano Messiez is a Latin Grammy-nominated composer, pianist, and orchestrator originally from Argentina and now based in New York City. His work blends tango, classical music, jazz, and musical theatre traditions into a distinctive theatrical voice. Messiez is the founder of Típica Messiez and pianist for the internationally acclaimed production Forever Tango. His recent theatrical works include Bordello, The Guava Tree, Casa Alfonsa, and Coyote and the Counting Game.
Marley Shropshire is an award-winning director, producer, and writer specializing in new-work development. Her credits include the world premieres of The Woman in the Mirror, For Tonight, Breaking Out of Sunset Place, and The Sweet Potato Queens, plus youth productions including Elf Jr., James and the Giant Peach Jr., and Zombie Prom. Her leadership roles include associate artistic director at Theatre Under the Stars, producing executive director at Queensbury Theatre, and director of artistic production at HITS Theatre.
Music Supervisor / Music Arrangements & Orchestrations
Steven Gross
Steven Gross has worked on Broadway, Off-Broadway, the West End and internationally as a music director, conductor, pianist, sub and vacation conductor. He is a Lortel Award nominee for Best Musical for his adaptation of The Pirates of Penzance at the South Street Seaport. He has conducted the European premieres of The Life, Urinetown, Falsettos, Beehive, Forever Plaid, Closer Than Ever, and Flora the Red Menace. He also works extensively as a classical conductor and has appeared with national and international opera companies, symphony orchestras and festivals. His musical Nijinsky has been performed in Berlin, Zurich and Monte Carlo. Steven has collaborated on new musicals with award-winning composers and lyricists including Benny Andersson & Bjorn Ulvaeus, Cy Coleman, David Friedman, and Zina Goldrich & Marcy Heisler. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Conducting from Yale University and is currently program head of The Abbott MFA in Musical Theater Collaboration Program at Temple University.
Music Director
Jeff Smith
Jeff Smith is a music director, composer and pianist based in Philadelphia, PA and Vero Beach, FL. He specializes in supporting new musicals in development (Cool at Camp, Cousins, You Are Mine) and music directing contemporary rock and pop musicals, including Come From Away, Dear Evan Hansen, Godspell (2012 Revival), Hadestown (Teen), The Last Five Years, Next to Normal, RENT, and Songs for a New World. Compositional credits include original music for a Woodstock-based rock musical of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, incidental music for a stage production of Network, and additional songs for Boundless. He has played hundreds of jazz gigs in the Philadelphia area with Jazz 180 and served as a staff accompanist for the musical theatre program at Rider University. In 2024, he hiked 500 miles of the Camino de Santiago and has a similar hike planned for spring 2027.
Cast
Miri
Delilah Edinger
Delilah Edinger (she/they) is so grateful for the incredible opportunity to be part of this wonderful production! Her favorite past roles include Duffy in Annie, Lord Farquaad in Shrek Jr., Jojo in Seussical Jr., and Amanda Thripp in Matilda. This summer, Delilah was thrilled to have the opportunity to sing the National Anthem at Citizens Bank Park and perform with Broadway Artists Alliance in NYC! Delilah would like to give a huge thank-you to her amazing teachers, Miss Jenna and Miss Lexi, her family, and the entire cast and crew of Cousins for making this experience so special.
Sabi
Charlie Gilbert
Charlie Gilbert is a composer, writer and educator who has taught, written, composed, directed, conducted and played for musicals in Philadelphia since the 1980’s. A Professor Emeritus at the University of the Arts, Charlie started the musical theater program there in 1990 and trained hundreds of young artists, many of whom are now lighting up stages in Philly, on Broadway and beyond! (“Emeritus” means he’s retired from full-time teaching to start his next career as a full-time ruckus-maker.)
Mama / Security Guard / Mall Announcer
Rachel DeMasi
Rachel DeMasi is so honored and excited as a Jewish artist to be a part of this meaningful and special story! A St. Louis native, Rachel is happy to now call the Northeast her home. She is a performer based in the South Jersey area and is the proud owner of a small singing business where she entertains local residents at assisted living, memory care, and retirement communities. She has performed with various local theatres including The Walnut Street Theatre, The Ritz Theatre Co, The Broadway Theatre of Pitman, Haddonfield Plays & Players, South Camden Theatre Co., and as an understudy at The Eagle and The Arden Theatres. Favorite credits include Fiddler on the Roof, Chess, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, A Christmas Carol, Spring Awakening, Something Rotten! the Musical, and The Revolutionists. Thank you to The Cousins team for this opportunity to bring this precious story to life. Squeezes and kisses to my twin daughters and so much adoration & gratitude to Jim—I love you so much!
Recent credits: Elizabeth in Young Frankenstein (Media Theatre); Ensemble (Alexi Darling) u/s in Rent (Arden Theatre Company); Ancestor S, u/s Khalilah in Siluetas (Power Street Theatre). Education: University of the Arts, BFA Musical Theater. “Birds fly over the rainbow; why, then, oh why can’t I?”
Malik is a proud native Texan currently living in New York City. In the past Malik has been seen as Larry The Lobster in the Broadway national tour of The SpongeBob Musical. He has also served as sensitivity and intimacy coordinator for the upcoming short film, Surprise, directed by Jake Barr. Malik has worked with director Marley Shropshire on the world premiere of For Tonight and Sideshow at Queensbury Theatre in Houston, Texas and is so excited to be in the cast of Cousins.
Abrham Bogale is a Philadelphia-based artist working across many departments of production and several different artistic mediums. Theatre credits include Sweeney Todd (Three Tenors/The Letter Soloist), The Ballad of King Henry (The Douglas), The Angry Grammarian (Ensemble/Web u.s.), SpongeBob (Perch Perkins), and Little Shop of Horrors (Audrey 2). He is the director and voice actor for The Armitage Account, a horror anthology podcast produced by his entertainment production company, SCOPE Productions (@scopenetworks), which releases its second season later this Fall. This company is also helping to produce archy and mehitabel for the ’26 Fringe Season at the Ethical Society on September 19th.
