Aaron Alon (President, Co-Founder) — Playwright, Composer-Lyricist

Aaron Alon is an award-winning, widely-performed young classical composer. He holds a doctorate in music Rice University and also studied musical theatre collaboration with Tony Award-winning producer Stuart Ostrow. Since he began playwrighting in 2009, his works have been read and performed in Houston, Galveston, and NYC. Current projects include a full-length drama titled Ghosts Under the Night, a comic musical revue titled Death, the Musical, and a new dramatic musical titled Bully.

Justin Doran (Secretary) — Actor, Director

Justin Doran has over 100 professional credits regionally and locally as an actor, director, and producer, including have twice directed for Thunderclap Productions.  He also teaches at Rice University and The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at the University of Houston. He is a member of the Actors Equity Association and the Screen Actors Guild.

John Papini — Attorney

John Papini is an attorney with Vinson & Elkins, LLP, specializing in Energy Transactions & Projects and Mergers & Acquisitions law.  John earned his J.D. in 2010 from Harvard Law School and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Duke University in 2007 with a BA in Arabic and Philosophy.  John's interest in theatre began with Duke's highly immersive Leadership and the Arts program in New York City in 2005 where, in the span of just four months, he saw approximately 19 operas, 33 plays, 11 symphonies, 6 musicals, and 5 dance performances.

Tamara Siler (Acting Treasurer) — Actress, Singer

Tamara is a veteran of over 50 stage productions in and around the Houston area,
most recently playing Hildy in Bayou City Concert Musicals’ On The Town and the title character in Main Street Theater’s acclaimed regional premiere of Caroline, or Change. Tamara graduated from the HSPVA and Rice University, where she is Senior Associate Director of Admission and Coordinator of Minority Recruitment.

Roy Hamlin

Roy Hamlin is the Associate Artistic Director of Theatre Under the Stars. He has also served as a performer, director, and designer at various regional theatres.  Just prior to joining the TUTS artistic staff, he was the resident artistic director at Baton Rouge Little Theatre, where he directed the regional premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winningWIT. Roy was University of Georgia and Southwest Missouri State theatre faculty, taught for San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre and the University of Iowa Playwright’s Festival/Opera Workshop, and was a tenured associate professor/theatre chair at Cornell College. (full bio)

Scott Holmes

Bio Coming Soon...

Eric James (Co-Founder) — Playwright

Eric James received his BA in English - Creative Writing at the University of Houston, where his plays In My Mother's Heels and Winter Tree received full productions in the Edward Albee workshops. His short plays have been produced the past five years in the annual S/H 10x10 showcase of new plays. In 2009, his full-length play, Stop, Traveler, received a professional reading at Stages Repertory Theatre as part of Wordsmyth Theatre's new play reading series.

Jimmy Phillips

Jimmy F. Phillips, a native Houstonian, has extensive directing and choreography credits in Houston, as well as dozens of acting credits at Stages, Theater LaB Houston, Main Street Theater, TUTS, BCCM, and Little Room Downstairs. As a classically trained dancer, he has performed with Texas Ballet, Houston Ballet, Houston Jazz Ballet with Patsy Swayze, Houston Grand Opera, and toured with Nureyev in South America. He also raised money for Houston AIDS organizations for 14 years through Halloween Magic Charity. He received his B.F.A. at Stephens College and is the Director of Drama at Annunciation Orthodox Middle School.

THUNDERCLAP PRODUCTIONS began in late 2010 as a playwrights' collective. Our first production, The Great Storm, was highly acclaimed by local audiences and critics and we were profiled in the Dramatist Guild of America magazine soon thereafter.

In 2011, Thunderclap Productions reorganized as a nonprofit that is dedicated to new and emerging works from writers both within our organization and around the country. Aaron Alon and Eric James stayed on as the president and vice president for the organization's first board of directors in 2011.

Thunderclap is in the process of applying for nonprofit 501(c)(3) status.