Give em’ the old razzle dazzle

DIRECTOR

Sara founded Happily Ever After Productions Amsterdam in 2019. Growing up in a musical theater family, she performed in over 200 musicals by the time she was 18. Although she still will occasionally get on stage, she has discovered that her passion is directing and producing musicals in this beautiful country. She hopes to build HEA Productions across the Netherlands providing opportunities to perform in and attend English speaking musical theater to everyone.

BAND DIRECTOR

A hobbyist musician, Elliot has played in the band for several shows in Australia and now in the Netherlands, including Working, Guys & Dolls, The Night We Broke Into The Theatre, AIDA, Urinetown, Sweeney Todd, Little Shop of Horrors, and Avenue Q. He has also musically directed and co-/assistant musically directed several of these shows, and when not participating in the performing arts, he is a renewable energy professional with extensive technical, analytical, and managerial experience in various sectors.

VOCAL DIRECTOR

In addition to being a singer and performer himself, Wesley is excited to put on the vocal director hat for this production. His past credits include directing various church and college chamber choirs, and conducting an orchestra for Catawba College in North Carolina. He spent five years directing a dancing pop show choir for the same college, which he feels happily prepared him for this first endeavor as a musical theater vocal director.

CHOREOGRAPHER

Annick Huizinga is a professional dancer educated at HBO Lucia Marthas Dansacademie Institute for Performing Arts in Amsterdam. She is an all-around dancer with a versatile background and an ability to dance in all styles. Annick has 10+ years of professional experience performing in many different productions worldwide, both as a dancer and as a Dance Captain Assistant, including Dinnershows in Studio 21 at Hilversum, the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Mariner of the Seas and shows abroad. Annick has also performed in many televised performance events and TV shows such as Dancing With The Stars, Belgium’s Got Talent, Gouden Televisier-Ring Gala, X-Factor, 3FM Awards and dancing for Fedde Le Grand’s shows. Annick has multiple years of freelance experience dancing in numerous gigs throughout Europe and Asia, as well as dancing for various music videos and commercials. Since 2021 Annick is in charge of the choreography for the Bootcamps of Happily Ever After Production's .

CHOREOGRAPHER

Yaël Sarioa, professional educated at Lucia Marthas Institute for Performing Arts HBO. Trained to be an all-round dancer. He has been performing in (live TV) shows as Eurovision Song Contest, The Voice of Finland, X-Factor, Gouden Televizier-Ring, Grand Prix the Netherlands and Belgium with Armin van Buuren. Live performances for Nike, Tomorrowland, Hans Klok and dinner show Vegas. Yaël is experienced as dancer, dance-captain and choreographer in Europe and Asia.

LIGHTING DESIGN / TECH

Yann has been involved in the Amsterdam theater community since 2014, and he has worked both onstage and backstage for English (Into the Woods, Contractions, Avenue Q, Monstersongs) and French (Les sept jours de Simon Labrosse, Le crime de l'Orient Express) productions since then. After working in the lighting booth for HEA's Little Shop of Horrors in 2021, he fell in love with light operation and design, and he was delighted to take that role again for Chicago!

SET DESIGNER

Marc is an animator and illustrator who started doing set design for HEAP a few years ago with their production of Into The Woods. He kept going ever since, designing sets for productions such as Little Shop of Horrors, Ordinary Days and Avenue Q, in which he also played Trekkie Monster. He also combines his love for theatre and animation in his very own YouTube series, @wolfgangluvsyou.

STAGE MANAGER

Mavis has fallen in love with theater since she acted as the stage manager for her first high school production. The fire has been burning ever since. She has long been a keen evangelist to organize amateur theater productions in Hong Kong for teenagers to build up their self-confidence and cultural awareness. Having moved to Amsterdam now, she is so excited to have found HEA and connected with fellow enthusiastic English-speaking theater lovers. She is ready now to continue developing amazing theater productions for all culture lovers to enjoy!

Costumes

Viivi Valpuri is a costume designer, puppet maker, and creator extraordinaire based in Amsterdam. Viivi has a master’s degree in theatre science at the University of Helsinki with a focus on immersive theatre and costume design. In the past decade, Viivi has had her hands full from running a film company to hosting tours in theatre history and from teaching embroidery to designing and making costumes and puppets. Viivi has been working with English language theatre in Amsterdam since her arrival in 2019 and has been with Happily Ever After since their production of Little Shop of Horrors. Viivi’s most recent activities have been with Happily Ever After as the mother of the Avenue Q puppets and with Orange Theatre Company as costume designer for A Christmas Carol