Our Team
Leo Lion | Founder, Artistic Director
Leo is a NYC-based director, performer, teaching artist, rpg storyteller, and clown. Leo founded Firebird in 2013 when they were 13 years old. Since then, Leo has directed twelve Firebird productions: Down the Chocolate River and Beyond, Expresso, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Treasure Island, Romeo+Juliet, Our Town, R.U.R., The Tempest, Julius Caesar, and An Enemy of the People, and Macbeth: Online, Rossum’s Universal Robots, and The Snow Queen. For Firebird’s youth ensemble, Leo teaches youth arts classes in improv, playwriting, acting shakespeare, and more. He also serves as the Associate Artistic Director of Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, where he creates interactive experiences inspired by classic books.
Leo is a Member of Dramatists’ Guild and Stage Directors and Choreographers Association.
leolion.com
Zoe Senese-Grossberg | Literary Director, Resident Dramaturge
Zoe Senese-Grossberg is a NY based director, playwright, dramaturg, and teaching artist. She has been the literary director of Firebird since Romeo + Juliet in 2017. Past directing credits include: Firebird’s The Seagull, At The End Of The World, Hamlet, Sarah Ruhl’s Orlando, and Twelve Ophelias. Zoe’s play Lay The Bent to the Bonny Broom was a 2023 semi-finalist for the National Playwright’s Conference.
Currently, Zoe is writing a solo show/pop music cabaret about the life of Bosie Douglas. If you know who that is please talk to her. zoesenesegrossberg.com.
Nickolas Roblee-Strauss | Artistic Producer
Nickolas is a multidisciplinary artist from rural western Massachusetts. He joined the Firebird team in 2023, and produced Boy My Greatness, Lay The Bent to the Bonny Broom, Nurse!, and if i live until i be a man. His artwork has shown at 440 Gallery and Thomas van Dyke, in Brooklyn NY as well as the Granoff Center, List Art Center, Joukowsky Institute, and Salon 149, in Providence, RI. He holds a BA in Modern Culture & Media from Brown University where he was a Royce Fellow, received Region 1 Mark of Excellence Award for In-Depth Reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists for his work at the College Hill Independent and his screenplay Poached won the Brown Motion Pictures competition.
nickolasrobleestrauss.com
Benny Rendell | Teaching Artist
Benny is a filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter, and has worked with Firebird for more than 8 years, growing up in their youth ensemble and now performing in the resident company (Boy My Greatness, RUR). He teaches Firebird’s award-winning MovieMaster Teen Film Lab along with Leo Lion. He studied filmmaking for a number of years with Carlo Mirabella-Davis (dir. Swallow, The Swell Season, The Servant) and studied screenwriting with Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia, Homeland, Fellow Travelers). Benny’s films have been selected for film festivals including the Woodstock, Austin, and Williamsburg Film Festivals. A proud homeschool alum, Benny is currently studying Filmmaking and Cinema Studies at NYU Tisch.
mirroruptonaturefilms.com
Resident Artist Company
Rae Bell
Sophie Falvey
Katie Homer-Drummond
Isabelle Pflanz
Thomas Manfred Pflanz
Maximillian Romanov
Eli Wassertzug
Juli Worth