Jackie Ruggiero Jacobson
(Co-artistic Director) is an actor, playwright and teaching artist. Plays include Who Turned Off The Lights?, Ice Breakers, Natural Flavors, The Domestication of Women (a one act), The Domestication of Women: A Housewares Party in Two Acts, and American Mud (a recipient of the Jilline Ringle Solo Performance Program, administered through 1812 Productions). Collaborative writing includes, The Orphan Tree, a multi-disciplinary play that incorporates text, puppetry and song, written by Hannah Tsapatoris, Jackie Ruggiero Jacobson, Vivian Appler and Makaria Tsapatoris. Jackie has worked with Green Light Productions, Naked Feet Productions, New City Stage Company, The Brick Playhouse, Vagabond Acting Troupe, Big House Plays & Spectacles and the former Magnet Theatre Company in Trenton, NJ where she was a resident member. Favorite roles include Olga Lengyal in Angel: A Nightmare in Two Acts, Frieda in Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, Janice in Italian American Reconciliation and Natalia in I Am A Camera. Jackie has directed for the Southern New Jersey School of Performing Arts in Sewell, NJ, the Brick Playhouse and B. Someday Productions where she directed Australian playwright, Suzie Miller’s Confused Sea Conditions for the Fresh Fish Festival. Jackie is a teaching artist for Philadelphia Young Playwrights. She is a graduate of the University of the Arts and a member of the Dramatist Guild.

Mark Jacobson (Co-Artistic Director) has been acting, directing, and producing in the Philadelphia area for many years. His most recent roles with Straw Flower were Ted in Natural Flavors and Leonard in Ice Breakers. He also directed Who Turned Off the Lights? at Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York. He is the founding Curator of The Brick Playhouse’s highly successful short play series IT (Independent Theatre) and was a founding member and Managing Director of Magnet Theatre Company. Other acting credits include: The Wilma Theatre (Orpheus Descending), The Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival (The Merchant of Venice and Macbeth), Bristol Riverside Theatre (Romeo & Juliet), New City Stage Company (Chicken), Magnet Theatre Company (Waiting for Lefty, The Eight: Reindeer Monologues, and Faithful), Vagabond Acting Troupe (Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune and The Crucible), and B. Someday Productions (Grendl Cain). He has  been featured in numerous independent films and shorts including No Footing, Ice Breakers, Fourth Thorns for Aidan, Judy Goose, Victim's Song, Against the Wind, The Tolltaker, The Underground, and Posse (which won the Best Acting Award in the 2005 Philadelphia Film Festival's 48 Hour Film Project) as well as various commercials and industrial films.