Tonya Lynn

Workshop Coordinator
SAFD Fight Director & Certified Teacher

Tonya Lynn is a Pittsburgh, PA-based fight director and educator whose credits include over 160 productions, with highlights including Il Trovatore and Tosca at Pittsburgh Opera, the world premiere of Storming Heaven at West Virginia Public Theatre, the original production Sword Play at Colonial Williamsburg, VA, the Pittsburgh premiere of She Kills Monsters at the University of Pittsburgh (including a sold-out encore performance at the August Wilson Cultural Center), and 17 productions with Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the Parks. Tonya is the recipient of the 2024 KCACTF Award for Distinguished Achievement in Fight and Intimacy Direction for ≈ [Almost Equal To] at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. She is also active in many local theatre training programs, providing choreography on multiple occasions for Carnegie Mellon University, Point Park University, the University of Pittsburgh, Allegheny College, and many others. Tonya is a co-founder of Brawling Bard Theater (a five-time award winner at the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival), and a company member with the New Renaissance Theatre Company.  She has trained with the United Stuntmens’ Association and for nearly 20 years has been an active member of the Society of American Fight Directors, with whom she is recognized as a Fight Director and a Certified Teacher. 

Tonya is a Teaching Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pittsburgh, and an adjunct instructor at Carnegie Mellon University, Point Park University and the Community College of Allegheny County South Campus, as well as serving as a teaching artist with Pittsburgh Public Theatre, City Theatre, Gateway to the Arts, and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. She has served as a workshop coordinator for the Fight Choreographer Track at the Summer Sling Stage Combat Workshop at Brooklyn College, and is co-founder and Head Coordinator for the Allegheny Alley Fight, a regional SAFD workshop in the Pittsburgh area since 2015.

Jonathan Ezra Rubin

Workshop Coordinator
SAFD Certified Teacher 
SAFD Treasurer

Jonathan Ezra Rubin freelances as a fight & intimacy director throughout the Washington, DC-Metro Area. In addition to his freelance career, he has over a decade of theatre administration and nonprofit executive management experience, which he is currently putting to use as the Co-Chair of the SAFD's Development Department and, as of 1/1/23, also as the SAFD's Treasurer. He served as the Managing Director and then Associate Artistic Director for the nonprofit performing arts company Flying V from the tail end of 2011 through June 2020, helping to grow the company by around $300,000 in that time, as well as positioning Flying V to be awarded the 2015 John Aniello Award for Outstanding Emerging Theatre Company at the Helen Hayes Awards, DC's Regional Theatre Awards. Since stepping down from the staff, Jonathan has been an active member of Flying V's Advisory Board, offering insight, institutional knowledge, and advice to the current leadership team. Jonathan also works as the Managing Director for the Theatre Consortium of Silver Spring, the nonprofit entity which manages the Montgomery County, Maryland-owned theatre venue, the Silver Spring Black Box Theatre, for whom he is the sole full time employee and where he has been employed since December 2014. 

A Certified Teacher with the SAFD, a three-time Helen Hayes Award Nominee for Outstanding Choreography (Flying V Fights: Heroes & Monsters, Flying V Fights: The Secret History of the Unknown World, Crystal Creek Motel), and WATCH Award Nominee for Fight Choreography (Appropriate), Jonathan works regularly as a fight & intimacy director throughout the DC-Metro Area, having choreographed most of Flying V's shows, as well as at The Studio Theatre, Signature Theatre, Mosaic Theater Company, GALA Hispanic Theatre, Adventure Theatre-MTC, Cohesion Theatre Company, 4615 Theatre Company, LiveArtDC, Georgetown Gilbert & Sullivan Society, Silver Spring Stage, Maryland Shakespeare Company, Lumina Studio Theatre, Georgetown University, American University, Goucher College, and more. Jonathan also served as a member of the Steering Committee for the Montgomery County Executive's Ball for the Arts & Humanities in 2015 and 2016, and as a member of the Advisory Board for Faction of Fools Theatre Company from January 2017-May 2020.  He is a proud Associate Member of The Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, a national professional theatrical union, and a licensed professional wrestler in the State of Maryland. Additionally, he has been studying intimacy direction since 2015, was an Apprentice with Intimacy Directors International, and has continued that training with Intimacy Directors & Coordinators and other organizations. Jonathan has been a staff member at over 30 regional SAFD workshops across the country since 2014, in addition to assisting and/or coordinating multiple additional masterclasses in that time, including working as one of the Co-Coordinators of the Social Distance Showdown: Virtual Stage Combat Workshop, the first and largest online weekend workshop of its kind, in May 2020, as well as its 2nd iteration in October 2020. Jonathan is also the owner of Fire & Ice Movement Arts, a stage combat and theatrical intimacy choreography and education company. 

Cha Ramos

Workshop Instructor
Drama Desk Award Winning Broadway Fight Director

Cha Ramos (she/ella) is a Drama Desk Award winning fight director (Water for Elephants), industry leading intimacy director, dramaturg, playwright, and performer, with an MFA in theatre from Columbia University. She's as likely to be found in Broadway rehearsal rooms, as on Renaissance Faire stages, as in a comfy chair writing or reading a new play. She has shared her thoughts on violent and intimate theatrical storytelling on local, national, and international panels, in classrooms and workshops, for HowlRound and the New Yorker, and in three different books (The Intimacy Coordinator’s Guidebook, Dramaturgy of Sex on Stage in Contemporary Theatre, & Supporting Staged Intimacy). Her most recent fight direction work can be seen on Broadway in the hit new musical comedy Death Becomes Her.