Often we arrive at a conference to find a handy list of delegates and bios waiting for us so we can peruse the who's who of names and accomplishments in our midst.
But we figured...why wait until we get to Banff to find out who will be part of the conversation?
If you are attending the conference and would like to share your bio with other delegates please post it in a comment here on this post. If you'd like to add contact information or a website, please include it in the comment as well.
We are all looking forward to learning more about you!
Vicki Stroich
VP Canada & Banff Conference Chair
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Vicki Stroich is Artistic Associate – Festival and Dramaturg at Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary, Alberta, Canada where she has been a member of the Play Development team for over eight years. Vicki’s focus at ATP is dramaturgy and programming for the Enbridge playRites Festival of New Canadian Plays. She is also Co-Director of The Banff Centre’s Banff Playwrights Colony. She freelances as a dramaturg, facilitator, and director. Her work has included dramaturgy of dramatic text, devised theatre and performance creation. Vicki is VP Canada of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and your Banff Conference Chair.
http://www.atplive.com/
Bob White
Bob has been active as a dramaturg and director in the Canadian theatre for close to forty years. Most recently, he served as Artistic Director of Alberta Theatre Projects (1999-2009) and as Co-Director of the Banff Playwrights Colony (1997-2009), a writer’s retreat in the Rockies.
As a director, he has premiered dozens of new works by Canadian writers. As well, he has directed acclaimed productions of works from the Canadian, British and American repertoire, including, most recently Abraham Lincoln Goes To The Theatre, The Clockmaker, The December Man, East of Berlin and Half Life. His work has been nominated seven times for Calgary’s Betty Mitchell Award for “Outstanding Direction” He has received the award three times.
Upcoming engagements include production dramaturgy on George F. Walker’s new musical at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and an on-going association with the festival as Consulting Director/New Plays. He will re-mount his production of The Clockmaker at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre this fall and direct Cosi Fan Tutte for Calgary Opera’s Emerging Artist Program next spring.
Bob White is a Member of The Order of Canada.
Greg Hatch earned a BA in Theatre from Saint John’s University and the College of Saint Benedict, MN, before working as a stage manager at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, A Contemporary Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre and Intiman Theatre. He earned a Master's in Library and Information Science from the University of Washington in 2002, and is now Head of Fine Arts for Marriott Library at the University of Utah.
Greg taught the Dramaturgy course for the UofU Department of Theatre in 2007. He moonlights as a dramaturg for Pioneer Theatre Company in Salt Lake City, where he’s worked on productions of “Lost in Yonkers,” “The Vertical Hour,” “The Yellow Leaf” (world premiere), and “A Christmas Story.”
At the LMDA conference, Greg is interested in exploring the creation of a physical and digital archive of dramaturgical work, for use in scholarship and collaborative dramaturgy.
David Copelin is a Toronto-based playwright, dramaturg, translator and teacher. His play Bella Donna was named Best Play at the 2005 Toronto Fringe Festival and is published by Playwrights Canada Press. David’s translation of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi has been produced at the Shaw Festival and the Yale Repertory Theatre, and was published by Vancouver’s Pulp Press. He has also translated Carl Sternheim’s Citizen Schippel for John Van Burek’s Pleiades Theatre. David was educated at Columbia University, the Sorbonne, and the Yale School of Drama, from which he received a Doctor of Fine Arts degree. He has taught dramatic literature, scriptwriting, and dramaturgy at Brock University, San José State University, Louisiana State University, New York University and the University of California at Davis. David has been a Literary Manager and Dramaturg at such theatres as the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the Phoenix Theatre and New Dramatists in New York, Arena Stage in Washington, DC, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. For several years, he was Co-Director of ScriptLab in Toronto, and his “Practical Playwriting” workshops have inspired some quite gifted and distinguished playwrights. His book Practical Playwriting was published in 1998 by The Writer, Inc., in Boston. David’s other plays include Mind over Matter, A Clean Breast, The Rabbi of Ragged Ass Road, and The Angel Capone. He has received grants from the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. A founding member and former President of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA), David is an active member of both the Dramatists Guild of America and the Playwrights Guild of Canada. He was recently commissioned by Palgrave Macmillan to write a book for advanced playwriting students. David is represented by Michael Petrasek at Kensington Literary in Toronto.
Geoff Proehl teaches, dramaturgs, and directs at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. Prior to Puget Sound, he taught dramaturgy at Villanova University, where he supervised the work of graduate student dramaturgs on university and professional productions. He contributed to and co-edited, with Susan Jonas and Michael Lupu, Dramaturgy in American Theater: A Source Book (Harcourt Brace, 1997). His most recent book is Toward a Dramaturgical Sensibility: Landscape and Journey with DD Kugler, Mark Lamos, and Michael Lupu (Fairleigh Dickinson, 2008; Outstanding Book Award, 2009, Association for Theatre in Higher Education).
Brian Quirt is Artistic Director of Nightswimming, which has commissioned more than two dozen new works of dance and drama, many of which have gone on to acclaimed productions in Toronto and elsewhere. He recently directed the premiere of the Nightswimming commission, Such Creatures by Judith Thompson, at Theatre Passe Muraille. Nightswimming projects include Anita Majumdar’s Aisha n’ Ben, Anosh Irani’s Bombay Black, Carmen Aguirre’s Blue Box, Andy Massingham’s Rough House, and Ned Dickens’ seven play cycle, City of Wine. Brian’s plays include Blue Note (with Martin Julien), The Death of General Wolfe and adaptations of Jane Urquhart’s The Whirlpool, Michael Redhill’s Lake Nora Arms (with Jane Miller). He is the past-President of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, a two-time recipient of LMDA’s Elliott Hayes Award for Dramaturgy, an adjunct professor at York University’s Department of Dance, and has been nominated for three Dora Awards, two for Direction and once for his adaptation of Aurash.
Karen Craig is a former faculty member in the School of Drama at the University of Oklahoma where she was also a production dramaturg. She brought Tomson Highway to the US premiere of Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout, a production which won Best Production of 2008 at the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival. Last year she brought in Mieko Ouchi as OU's first Faith Broome Playwright-in-Residence with her play, The Dada Play. Karen is thrilled to be back in Canada!
Heidi Taylor is a Vancouver-based dramaturg, director, and performer. As Dramaturg at Playwrights Theatre Centre she has worked on ten new commissions for The News (including works by Anita Majumdar, Jason Maghanoy, and Waawaate Fobister), and dramaturged new plays for Leaky Heaven Circus, The Only Animal, Radix Theatre, and Craning Neck Theatre, and with individual writers including Jan Derbyshire, Nicola Harwood, Sean Devine, and Miranda Huba. She is co-artistic director of Proximity Arts, where she collaborates on cross-disciplinary projects including audio installation, site-responsive dance, and original cabarets. Recent directing credits include a reading of José Teodoro's Cloudless, Transmission (with Tanya Marquardt), and Johnny Grant: A Rollicking Adventure Story.
Tara Beagan will be coming directly from Tawata Productions’ inaugural Matariki Festival into the conference in the rockies this June. (She may need a 2am brunch buddy.)
Tara is a proud halfbreed of Ntlaka’pamux and Irish Canadian heritage. She is in residence at Native Earth Performing Arts for the 2009/2010 season with her play, free as injuns. Tara’s debut play, Thy Neighbour’s Wife (UnSpun Theatre) garnered three Dora Award nominations in ’05, winning for New Play. Ensuing plays include Dreary and Izzy, (NEPA), Miss Julie: Sheh’mah (KICK Theatre), The Fort at York (head writer/co-director, Crate Productions), The Mill: The Woods (Theatrefront). Short plays include Quilchena (halfbreed productions, writer/director/producer), Here, Boy! (halfbreed productions) Foundlings (writer/director/producer) BLUEBEARD’S WI7E (Caravan Farm), TransCanada, (NEPA), and Anatomy of an Indian (Wrecking Ball.) Tara is honoured to work as a mentor for emerging First Nations artists through Young Voices, CIT, Crossing Gibraltar, and AMY. She has also written for film and radio, and is a Dora and Betty nominated actor.
Michelle is a freelance dramaturg with interests in both text based script development and non-traditional script development. She is new to Calgary: Michelle moved here in the fall of 2008 from Vancouver after completing her Master’s Degree in Theatre Studies from the University of British Columbia. Michelle is currently a dramaturg with Alberta Playwright’s Network and an Artistic Associate- Dramaturgy with Urban Curvz Theatre. Michelle is a member of the planning committee for the 2010 LMDA Conference in Banff and is a member of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas.
Trevor has been an actor, director, writer and dramaturg for over 20 years. As an actor he’s performed in most cities and towns in the province of Alberta. As a director, his work has been seen on most of the stages in Calgary. Trevor has 5 produced TYA plays to his credit and currently works for Alberta Playwrights' Network as their Executive Director. Trevor is on the Planning Committee for the 2010 LMDA Conference. As well he is the producer/writer and director of the annual Betty Mitchell Awards recognizing outstanding work in professional theatre in Calgary. He is also an ensemble member of Dirty Laundry (Calgary’s live, improvised soap opera) and plays drums for Calgary cover band PopeDaddy. He holds a BFA in Drama from the U of C and the door open for senior citizens.
Mark Lord is Director of the Theater Program and Professor of Theater at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges and dramaturg of Headlong Dance Theater. A graduate of Swarthmore College and The Yale School of Drama, he is known for his direction of site-specific theater projects, including the world premiere of Gertrude Stein’s Pink Melong Joy, Beckett’s Endgame, Hamlet in/sites and original works. Recent dramaturgy, all with Headlong includes, more, Hotel Pool , Shosha, and The Explanatarium. He is the Academic Director of the Headlong Performance Institute and a Contributing Editor of Yale’s Theater Magazine.
Roxanne is a Seattle-based dramaturg and playwright who also serves as LMDA's Regional VP for the Northwest.
She works in academic program development at the University of Washington, where she is collaborating with the School of Drama to lay groundwork for a possible MFA in Musical Theater. Her future UW dreams include marshaling support for an academic program in Dramaturgy and a revived MFA in Playwriting.
On the side, she also works to bring audiences into the world of the play (or performance) by serving as a Performing Arts Writer for the International Examiner, focusing on interview-based preview articles.
Jacob Zimmer is a dramaturge, director, writer and performer and Artistic Director of Small Wooden Shoe. Born in Cape Breton and growing up in Halifax, Jacob now lives in Toronto. Along with his work with Small Wooden Shoe, Jacob also works extensively in dance as the Resident Dramaturge and Animateur at Dancemakers and the Centre for Creation in Toronto and in an on-going dramaturgical collaboration with choreographer Ame Henderson/ Public Recordings as well as being a co-director of HUB 14 (2005-9). He has worked as a dramaturge for choreographers Valerie Calam and Sally Morgan and theatre makers Dustin Harvey and the One Reed Theatre Ensemble. He has lead composition and performance workshops in Halifax, Toronto and St John’s. Jacob studied at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts and in 2004 he was a technical intern with The Wooster Group and studied Viewpoints, Suzuki and Composition with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company in New York. In 2007 he won the Ken McDougal Emerging Director Award.
Harriet Power is Associate Artistic Director of Act II Playhouse and also a Professor of Theatre at Villanova University, where she headed the graduate dramaturgy program from 1994-2006 and now teaches graduate directing and acting. She has devoted much of her professional directing and dramaturgy career to play development, working with new plays and playwrights at New Dramatists, PlayPenn, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, West Coast Playwrights, Iowa Playwrights Festival, and the International Women Playwrights Festival. In the 2009-10 season, she directed Marc Camoletti’s Boeing-Boeing and the world premiere of Bruce Graham’s Any Given Monday (coproduced with Theatre Exile) at Act II; and her 18th production for Villanova Theatre, Shakespeare’s As You Like It. At Act II, she has also directed James Still’s Iron Kisses, the world premiere of Jeff Baron’s Brothers-in-Law, and Alan Knee’s Syncopation. A three-time Barrymore “Outstanding Direction of a Play” nominee, she shared the award in 1997 with James J. Christy for Angels in America: Perestroika. Other recent directing: Michael Hollinger’s Ghost-Writer for PlayPenn and New Dramatists; Donald Margulies’ Dinner With Friends in Rome, Italy at Teatro L'Arciliuto, coproduced by The English Theatre of Rome and the American Embassy (winner of “Best of Rome” citation in Trova Roma); two world premieres at InterAct Theatre Company, both by Seth Rozin – Missing Link (Barrymore nomination, Best New Play) and Reinventing Eden; Measure for Measure (Phila. Shakespeare Festival). From 1995-1998, as Artistic Director of Venture Theatre, Philadelphia's professional culturally diverse theatre, Power produced two world premieres and directed A Moon for the Misbegotten, Fires in the Mirror, and Mad Forest (Best Director, Philadelphia Inquirer). This summer, she will serve as dramaturg for Nick Wardigo’s Hum at PlayPenn, and start preparing to direct Jen Child’s Why I’m Scared of Dance (1812 Productions), The Tempest and Sebastian Barry’s The Pride of Parnell Street (Act II), and The Cherry Orchard (Villanova) in the upcoming season.
Annie Gibson is the publisher at Playwrights Canada Press, the largest publisher of drama in the country. She loves bridging the gap between the page and the stage.
(She'll be selling books during the conference so be on the lookout for great deals on Canadian plays.)
Adam Versényi has been Dramaturg for PlayMakers Repertory Company since 1988. A graduate of Yale College and the Yale School of Drama is now the Barranger Distinguished Professor of Dramatic Art at UNC-Chapel Hill. He has worked as a scholar, critic, director, and translator on Latin American and U.S. Latino/a Theatre and Performance and is the founder and editor of THE MERCURIAN: A THEATRICAL TRANSLATION REVIEW, an online journal dedicated to the publication of translations of theatre and performance pieces from any language into English, as well as theoretical articles, production histories, position papers, rants, and mantifestos pertaining to theatrical translation.
Georgia Young is a graduate student at Texas State University-San Marcos (that's near Austin, for reference). She is one of five first-year Master's candidates concentrating in theatre history and dramaturgy. She is also the newest member of Poison Apple Initiative, a fledgling theater company based out of Austin, an associate editor of the Dramaturgy Protocol, a new electronic journal being launched by TSU this year, and assistant dramaturg for TSU's 2010 Black and Latino Playwrights Conference.
www.georgialyle.org
Gerry Potter works as a writer, dramaturg, director, filmmaker, screenplay consultant, teacher, actor and producer. He founded the multi-award-winning Workshop West Playwrights' Theatre in 1978, was Artistic Director and Dramaturg there for 17 years. He later served as Artistic Director of Fringe Theatre for Young People for two years. Currently Artistic Producer of Peregrine Productions and Rising Sun Theatre, a theatre company for adults with developmental disabilities. He’s also a board member of FAVA, Edmonton’s media arts co-op.
He taught for 12 years at the University of Alberta, and now teaches at Macewan University and for the University of Lethbridge on their Edmonton campus. Subjects taught: new play dramaturgy, directing, playwriting, screenwriting, acting, creativity and speech.
Gerry has served as dramaturg on over eighty play development workshops, directed over fifty plays and five films, has written eleven professionally produced plays and five films. His new documentary film, Stories About Us: The Movie, about the process of Rising Sun Theatre members creating a play about their lives, will be screening in Edmonton in late May, and he’ll bring it along to the conference.
Shelley Orr teaches dramaturgy and theatre history in the School of Theatre, Television, and Film at San Diego State University. Her professional credits include serving as a dramaturg for New York’s Classic Stage Company, La Jolla Playhouse, and the PlayLabs New Play Festival at The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. Most recently, she dramaturged A Weekend With Pablo Picasso at the San Diego Rep and 9 Parts of Desire at Mo`olelo Theatre Company. She has an MFA in Dramaturgy from UCSD, and a PhD in Theatre Studies from the UCI/UCSD joint doctoral program. She is president of the international professional association Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA).
Glenda Stirling is a Calgary-based freelance director, playwright, choreographer and movement instructor at Mount Royal University. Sometimes she even dramaturgs, and has esspecially enjoyed opportunities to provide dramaturgy on movement based projects and physical storytelling. She is currently completing her MFA, focusing on Laban Movement Analysis in rehearsal and creation, and her certification as a Movement Analyst.
As a director Glenda has enjoyed working on everything from classics at the Shaw Festival to new work at Alberta Theatre Projects, physical theatre and choreography with Quest Theatre and Spring Boards Dance, and everything in between.
DD Kugler, a Vancouver-based freelance dramaturg/director in theatre and dance, was the first Canadian president of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA, 2000-02). He served eight seasons as Production Dramaturg with Toronto’s Necessary Angel Theatre (1985-93), five seasons as Artistic Director of Edmonton’s Northern Light Theatre (1993-98), and has taught twelve years in the Theatre Area of the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. Kugler adapted Marc Diamond’s Property, and (in collaboration with Richard Rose) co-authored "Newhouse", as well as the adaptations of Michael Ondaatje’s "Coming Through Slaughter", and Timothy Findley’s "Not Wanted on the Voyage".
Here's my bio, cut-and-pasted from somewhere else. Lots of links and things at www.mishaglouberman.com
I'll be facilitating the event.
Looking forward to it!
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Misha Glouberman is a facilitator and designer of highly participatory events. He’s hosted panels, discussions, and events with health care workers, transit activists, professional dancers, homeless parents, Open Source software advocates, graffiti artists, Copyright experts, and Star Trek fans, to name just a few.
His approach to conference design draws especially on Open Space Technology, and the UnConference approach, both methods of conference design meant to get people talking to each other and sharing ideas quickly and effectively, in a highly decentralized model.
Misha’s interest in how people connect with each other also extends into work he does as a performer and artist. He hosts “The Trampoline Hall Lectures”, an interactive show popular with the arts and literary set in Toronto and New York, as well as “Terrible Noises for Beautiful People”, a series of participatory sound events for non-musicians, among other projects. He believes himself to be Canada’s foremost charades instructor, a claim which has thus far gone unchallenged.
Stephen is the Company Dramaturg for Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People. Past projects at LKTYP: Co-adapter of Love You Forever…And More Munsch (Dora Award, Outstanding TYA Production/Canada Council Theatre for Young Audiences Prize), Dramaturgy for The Princess & the Handmaiden, Hana’s Suitcase, i think i can (Dora Award, Outstanding New Musical), El Numero Uno and Touch the Sky. Other projects include: Dramaturgy for Three Fingered Jack and the Legend of Joaquin Murieta and Festival Dramaturg for the 2008-2010 De Colores Festivals (Alameda Theatre); Dramaturg for Dangling at 6th and 7th Potluck Festival (fu-GEN Theatre); Dramaturg for the 2004 & 2005 Paprika Festival. He is a graduate of the Masters of Philosophy (MPhil) Dramaturgy program at the University of Glasgow.
Megan Monaghan is a freelance dramaturg, director and teacher. Mere days before the LMDA Conference in Banff, she will move to St. Louis, MO. Her previous engagements include the Lark Play Development Center, South Coast Repertory Theatre, the Alliance Theatre, The Playwrights' Center and Frontera @ Hyde Park Theatre. Her career focus on supporting new work embraces endeavors in arts funding as well as production and development houses.
Bruce Barton is a theatre maker and scholar who teaches at the University of Toronto. Current creative practice includes writing, directing, and dramaturgy for multiple devised theatre projects (bluemouth inc., Theatre Gargantua, Zuppa Theatre, Hopscotch Collective) and the creation of aerial-based interdisciplinary performance (Vertical City). His research focuses on text-based and physical dramaturgies, and he has published in periodicals such as TDR, Theatre Journal, and Performance Research and in numerous Canadian and international essay collections. As an editor, his books include _Developing Nation: New Play Creation in English-Speaking Canada_ (2009) and _Reluctant Texts from Exuberant Performance: Canadian Devised Theatre_ and _Collective Creation, Collaboration, and Devising_ (both 2008).
Jane Barnette: I am the resident dramaturg at Kennesaw State University, just north of Atlanta. My work here includes 'turgy for classic and contemporary plays, musical theatre, dance, and original adaptations. Favorite recent projects include: John Gentile's adaptation of Melville's MOBY-DICK; the regional premiere of Karin Coonrod's adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE & A VIEW OF THE WOODS; and Gentile's staging of Katharyn Howd Machan's REDWING: VOICES FROM 1888. This will be my very first LMDA conference, so I'm excited to see how it all works! Dr. John Gentile will be attending the conference with me, so perhaps we can talk about our collaborations together.
John Gentile is a writer, director, actor, and storyteller. His stage adaptations of folk and literary narrative, include: “Over Nine Waves: Celtic Mythtelling from Ancient Ireland,” “Jack of Beech Mountain: Folktales from Southern Appalachia,” “Tales from the Brothers Grimm,” “Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice Told-Tales,” “The Bell Witch and Other Legends: Ghost Stories from the American South,” and “The Hero’s Journey: Mythic Stories of the Heroic Quest,” which was featured at the International Mythic Journeys conference celebrating the centennial of Joseph Campbell’s birth. His adaptation of Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” won the Jury award as Best Performance at the 21st Annual Festival International de Theatre Universitaire de Casablanca (Casablanca Theatre Festival). His essay, “The Pilgrim Soul: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick,” was published in Text & Performance Quarterly. Most recently, he adapted and directed “Redwing: Voices from 1888,” a collection of poetic monologues by Katharyn Howd Machan.
He is the author of Cast of One: One-Person Shows form the Chautauqua Platform to the Broadway Stage (University of Illinois Press), a history of American solo performance, and a founding co-editor with Joseph Sobol of the Storytelling, Self, Society: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Storytelling Studies, for which he now serves as book review editor.
John is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre, Performance Studies and Dance at Kennesaw State University, where he teaches classes in solo performance, storytelling, myth, performance art, and adapting literary texts for the stage.
JANINE SOBECK is the Literary Manager at Arena Stage. She is the creator of Sub/Text: Your Virtual Dramaturg, the website dedicated to providing behind-the-scenes information about the productions at Arena. Now in her third season at Arena, she has been the dramaturg of multiple productions, including The Light in the Piazza, Stick Fly, The Quality of Life, Looped, A Delicate Balance and The Mystery of Irma Vep, and is the Producer of the Downstairs New Play Series. Sobeck has an MA from Brigham Young University, where she worked as the Dramaturgy Supervisor for the undergraduate program, developing new dramaturgy courses as well working as a production dramaturg.
Beth Blickers is currently an agent at Abrams Artists Agency, where she represents such writers, composers, directors and choreographers for theatre, television and film as Bill Cain, Daisy Foote, Adam Gwon, Craig Wright, Ricky Ian Gordon, Leah C. Gardiner, Kara Lee Corthron, Wendy MacLeod, Elyzabeth Wilder, Bess Wohl and Peter Pucci. Before joining Abrams, she was an agent at Helen Merrill Ltd. and the William Morris Agency, where she began work after graduating from New York University.
Ms. Blickers has served on the jury panel for the Weissberger Award, the Ed Kleban Award, the Lark’s PONY Fellowship, participated in the Non-Traditional Casting Project, Inc.'s roundtable on inclusion and diversity in the theatre, and has presented workshops and sessions on agenting, playwriting, directors and choreographers and related topics for organizations such as the Society of Directors and Choreographers Foundation, the Dramatists Guild, Musical Theatre Works, the Lark, New York University, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre and the Texas Education Theatre Association.
She is a board member of the Association of Authors’ Representatives, Inc., is a member and Board member (Treasurer) of Literary Managers & Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA), and is proud to be the board chair of Theatre Breaking Through Barriers, a New York company that works with artists with disabilities.
Melinda Finberg is a dramaturg who is particularly interested in reviving the plays of historical women playwrights. Her work on the 2005 Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of Hannah Cowley’s The Belle's Stratagem, directed by Davis McCallum, earned her the 2006 Elliot Hayes Award for achievement in Dramaturgy from the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. Melinda has also served as dramaturg for productions and readings in Washington, D.C at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, and in New York at the Prospect and the Juggernaut Theatres. She holds a B.A. from Yale and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton and has studied acting, scansion, voice and speech at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and acted in New York. Melinda is also the editor of Eighteenth-Century Women Dramatists (Oxford University Press, 2001). She has taught at Princeton University, Swarthmore College, and Rider University.
Rick Davis (speaking about himself in the third person) looks forward to reconnecting with LMDA, an organization he proudly served as a Vice President and co-editor of the LMDA Review during the Copelin administration. His dramaturgical DNA includes an MFA and DFA in same from Yale, and six seasons as Resident Dramaturg at Center Stage in Baltimore, where as that theater's first full-time dramaturg he built a department that occasionally threatened to outnumber the Development staff, to the bewilderment of the Trustees. He is in his 19th year at George Mason University, where he has been Artistic Director of Theater of the First Amendment, recently becoming co-Artistic Director with playwright Heather McDonald. He is a translator (Calderon de la Barca on his own, and Ibsen with Brian Johnston), director of theater and opera, librettist, and teacher of various subjects including directing and dramaturgy. He has scrambled up Canmore's Ha Ling Peak trail twice and looks forward to a return engagement.
Early in my project of studying theatre-making I joined this wonderful group, and attending three annual conferences gave me many insights that have sustained my work. For over two years I disappeared into fieldwork, listening to (audible) rehearsal conversations from table reading to opening night at three regional repertory companies. And once having that corpus of direct quotations, I've disappeared again to find out what they tell us, through my lens as a cultural anthropologist. I'm rounding out another draft of a talk, "The Deep Play of Theatre-Making: Rehearsal Poetics and Pragmatics." I do my work as a visiting scholar in Anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. My A.B and A.M in Anthropology are from the University of Chicago; my PhD from The American University.
Richard assumed the artistic directorship of Vancouver’s Pi Theatre in 2008 after more than a decade as Artistic Producer of Theatre Conspiracy where he directed (among many other shows) seven Canadian premieres of contemporary international work and six new plays – four of which have been published. In the international vein, he’s directed plays that have been translated from French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Mandarin and Russian. Richard has been nominated three times for Outstanding Director in Vancouver’s professional theatre. He’s also a member of Lincoln Center’s Directors’ Lab; has participated in the Directors Project at the Shaw Festival and is current president of See Seven - an innovative theatre marketing collective. Richard’s taught or directed at several universities including the University of British Columbia, Saint Mary's University in Halifax and the University of the Fraser Valley. He received his MFA from UBC.
Paul Meshejian is the Founding Artistic Director of PlayPenn, a new play development conference in Philadelphia, PA. Since 1989 he has been a company member at People’s Light and Theatre (PLT) outside Philadelphia where he has both acted and directed. In addition to his work at PLT he has performed with all of Philadelphia’s major theatre companies. His work as an actor has been seen on film an television. In the 1980’s he was the founding artistic director of Stage One: Collaboration, a professional theatre in Minneapolis/St. Paul devoted to new and rarely produced works. Paul is on the Acting Faculty at University of the Arts in Philadelphia, also teaching at Arcadia University. His recent production of Lee Blessing's WHEN WE GO UPON THE SEA opens in early June at 59E59 in New York. He serves on the Board of Directors of the International Institute for Theatre Research.
KEN CERNIGLIA is a dramaturg, writer and director, working most recently with Seattle’s Fisher Ensemble to create AT THE HAWK'S WELL, a new chamber opera based on Yeats, and with KJ Sanchez and Emily Ackerman to develop REENTRY, a new documentary play about Marines and their families. He is also directing and producing a site-specific tour of THE TURN OF THE SCREW for historic houses (www.twoturns.com). By day he is dramaturg and literary manager for Disney Theatrical Productions, where he has developed over twenty shows for professional, amateur and school productions, including HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL, THE LITTLE MERMAID and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST JR. Ken holds a Ph.D. in theatre history and criticism from the University of Washington and presents and publishes his research internationally.
KATALIN TRENCSÉNYI is a London-based dramaturg. She was trained at the Academy of Drama and Film, Budapest and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London.
As a freelance dramaturg she has worked for the National Theatre, the Royal Court Theatre, and many other independent companies mainly in the UK. She is a member of the Dramaturgs' Guild, Hungary as well as one of the founders of the Dramaturgs' Network, UK. She is also a member of the Translation, Adaptation, Dramaturgy working group of the International Federation for Theatre Research.
As well as writing theatre reviews regularly, she has published one book on theatre and two plays. Currently she is writing a book on dramaturgical practices (Dramaturgy in the Making. A User's Guide to Dramaturgy.)
During the LMDA conference in Banff Katalin would like to interview you about your dramaturgical processes in the fields of: adaptation, new drama development, devising (text based), floor dramaturgy, working on translation and making children's theatre. - Please, get in touch with Katalin, if you would like to share your methods with her - with a future, wider audience in mind.
Last but not least Katalin would like to introduce the Dramaturgs' Guild's work to you in the hope that in the future links could be forged between American, Canadian and Hungarian professionals.
Michael is the Head of the Department of Theatre and Dance at Western Oregon University, where he teaches Theatre History, Dramaturgy, Text Analysis, and Directing. He is also the chair of the Dramaturgy Initiative for Region VII of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival.
When he can find a moment outside the university, Michael works as a profession director and dramaturg. He has dramaturged for Sojourn Theatre in Portland, Oregon, and most recently was the Literary Manager for Salem Repertory Theatre.
iz Engelman is a freelance dramaturg who lives in Minneapolis. Liz has served as the Literary Director of the McCarter Theatre, the Director of New Play Development at ACT Theatre in Seattle, Washington, Literary Manager/Dramaturg at Seattle’s Intiman Theatre, and as Assistant Literary Manager at Actors Theatre of Louisville. She has worked on the development of new plays at The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, ASK Theatre Projects, New York Theatre Workshop, the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, South Coast Rep, and Florida Stage. She has directed new plays at The Illusion Theatre (with Michael Dixon), Mixed Blood Theatre, The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, and Carleton College. Liz has been a guest at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Puget Sound, Cornish College of the Arts, and has taught playwriting at Freehold Studio Theatre Lab and The Playwrights' Center. She studied dramaturgy and new play development at Brown and Columbia universities, where she received her BA and MFA in theatre and dramaturgy, respectively. Liz is the co-editor with Michael Bigelow Dixon of several collections of plays, and a new book on playwriting exercises, and of two volumes of monologues with Tori Haring-Smith. She has written articles published in Theatre Topics and Theatre Forum. She serves on the Advisory Board of the National New Play Network and Emigrant Theatre, is a Consultant for The Playwrights' Center (where she helped initiate their New Plays on Campus Program), and Dramaturg at Mixed Blood Theatre. Liz most recently served as President of LMDA, Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, and has just completed her 3-year term as LMDA’s Board Chair. She is a member of the New Project Group of ITI, and is the founder and co-director of Tofte Lake Center at Norm’s Fish Camp, a creative retreat up in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota.
Sydney Cheek-O'Donnell is Head of Theatre Studies in the Department of Theatre at the University of Utah, where she teaches dramaturgy, theatre history, critical theory, dramatic literature, and directing. Sydney also works as a freelance dramaturg, most recently at Salt Lake Acting Company (SLAC) and Pioneer Theatre Company (PTC) in Salt Lake City. At SLAC she just closed a production of Kathleen Cahill's Edgerton Award-winning play CHARM, a comic and poetic exploration of the life and loves of Margaret Fuller.
Michele Volansky is Associate Professor of Drama at Washington College (MD), from which she earned a B.A. in English. She is also an Associate Artist and dramaturg for PlayPenn, the annual new play development conference based in Philadelphia. She has worked on over 150 new and established plays in her professional career. Her work on Sam Shepard’s rewrite of Buried Child (directed by Gary Sinise) and Dale Wasserman’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (directed by Terry Kinney and starring Gary Sinise) earned her two Broadway credits and participation in the Tony Award for Best Revival of Cuckoo’s Nest. She has guest dramaturged at Philadelphia’s Arden Theater Company, Theatre Exile, Azuka Theater and 1812 Productions as well as at South Coast Rep, the Atlantic Theatre Company, Victory Gardens and Next Theatre, in addition to her staff time at Actors Theatre of Louisville (1992-95), Steppenwolf Theatre Company (1995-2000) and Philadelphia Theatre Company (2000-2004). Ms. Volansky has served as an artistic consultant for the TCG playwright residency program, a reader for the Eugene O’Neill Center’s National Playwrights Conference, as well as a grants review panelist for Philadelphia-area arts organizations. She is the 1999 inaugural co-recipient of the Elliot Hayes Award for Dramaturgy and was the President of LMDA, the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (2002-2004). Volansky’s book on playwriting and collaboration with Bruce Graham entitled The Collaborative Playwright was published in March, 2007 by Heinemann Press. She holds an M.A. from Villanova University and is a doctoral candidate at the University of Hull (England), writing about the intersection of theater and politics in the work of critics Kenneth Tynan and Frank Rich.
Morgan Jenness spent over a decade at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater, with both Joseph Papp and George C. Wolfe, in various capacities ranging from literary manager to Director of Play Development to Associate Producer. She was also Associate Artistic Director at the New York Theater Workshop, and an Associate Director at the Los Angeles Theater Center in charge of new projects. She has worked as a dramaturg, workshop director, and/or artistic consultant at theaters and new play programs across the country, including the Young Playwrights Festival, the Mark Taper Forum, The Playwrights Center/Playlabs, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Double Image/New York Stage and Film, CSC, Victory Gardens, Hartford Stage, and Center Stage. She has participated as a visiting artist and adjunct in playwriting programs at the University of Iowa, Brown University, Breadloaf, Columbia and NYU and is currently on the adjunct faculty at Fordham University. She has served on peer panels for various funding institutions, including NYSCA and the NEA, with whom she served as a site evaluator for almost a decade. In 1998 Morgan joined Helen Merrill Ltd., an agency representing writers, directors, composers and designers, as Creative Director. She now holds a position in the Literary Department at Abrams Artists Agency. In 2003, she was presented with an Obie Award Special Citation for Longtime Support of Playwrights.
Amy Lynn Strilchuk
Amy loves a good story and is drawn to the brains that make them.
Ionesco and Beckett were her school-girl crushes. She took her MA in Theatre at UBC to “date around a bit” and get to know more writers from the canon a bit more intimately.
Since dead writers don’t return your calls, she’s been working with the living ones for the past 7 years, through companies such as Alberta Theatre Projects (Assistant Dramaturg since 2006), Arts Club Theatre (Dramaturgy Intern), Ghost River Theatre, Sage Theatre (IGNITE! Festival of Emerging Artists) and Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre (Spring Festival of New Plays). She thinks nothing feels better than working with a talented, emerging writer. She guesses that this is what it feels like to be at a hockey draft.
Amy is also bananas for fashion and home design. In addition to enjoying styling, she is the Fashion Director of Conglomerate Magazine – Canada’s Fashion Week Magazine.
Her love of fashion designers is like her love of playwrights. She can’t choose which she loves more. Don’t make her be monogamous.
Laurel Green is a theatre writer, director and producer who will be joining you at the Conference with help from the LMDA's Early Career Dramaturg Travel Grant. With an appetite for developing new work, Laurel has directed plays for the Fringe and SummerWorks Festivals in Toronto, toured to Northern Ontario, and the Boulder International Fringe Festival in Colorado. Functioning as the director and dramaturg on these projects, Laurel is keen to learn more about facilitating an informed collective process and sharing ideas across mediums. Since graduating with her Masters degree in Drama from the University of Toronto, Laurel has been working as a theatre reviewer while traveling down under: writing about performances in Melbourne and Sydney, and covering the New Zealand International Arts Festival. Having found new sources of inspiration to bring home with her, Laurel is seeking new projects and challenges for the year ahead and is eager to contribute to the upcoming conversation in Banff.
As a freelance producer, Melanie Preston has more than a decade of experience bringing performance to diverse audiences. She has developed productions with Leaky Heaven Circus and neworld theatre in Vancouver, and more recently, the Dusk Dances Festival in Toronto. Over the years, Melanie has orchestrated performances in city theatres, parks, alleys, and trees. These projects inspired her MA in Media Studies (UWO), where she recently completed a thesis on embodiment, identity and mobility in experimental theatre. Presently, she is working on a multi-media representation of the thesis research for the web. Thanks to an LMDA early career dramaturg grant, Melanie gladly joins the delegates for inspired discussion in Banff this month.
D.J. Hopkins (MFA, PhD UC San Diego) is Associate Professor, Head of Theatre Studies, and Director of the MA Program in Theatre Arts at San Diego State. His book City / Stage / Globe: Performance and Space in Shakespeare's London (2008) is available from Routledge. He is co-editor of Performance and the City (2009), an essay collection published this spring by Palgrave. As dramaturg, Hopkins has worked with numerous writers, directors, choreographers, and performers including Naomi Iizuka, Charles Mee, Les Waters, and Robert Woodruff. Recently, D.J. was dramaturg and co-director of the Hybrid Authorship dance collective, and he is currently dramaturg for Joe Alter Dance Group's "Walking Through Ghosts." D.J. is the editor of Review, LMDA’s journal of dramaturgy. To learn more about Review or to contribute your writing, email D.J.: .
Hmmm... The mysterious disappearing email is: dhopkins@mail.sdsu.edu.
Liana Thompson is a freelance dramaturg working in Hartford, CT and Boston, MA. She is currently the Literary Manager and Dramaturg on Company One's production of GRIMM -- seven short plays by seven Boston-area writers inspired by seven of Grimm's Fairy Tales, to be presented at the Boston Center for the Arts this summer. Liana has dramaturged plays at Hartford Stage, Baltimore CenterStage, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and Company One. She was the 2008 Literary Associate at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and the 2005-06 Dramaturgy Fellow at CenterStage, as well as a Literary Intern at Williamstown Theatre Festival (2006), and a Literary/Artistic Intern at the Huntington Theatre Company (2004-05). She received her MFA in theater (dramaturgy) from the University of Massachusetts in 2009. Liana will be traveling to the Banff Conference thanks to an ECD travel grant, for which she is extremely grateful.
Kae Koger is an associate professor in the School of Drama at the University of Oklahoma where she heads the BFA program in dramaturgy. She has published articles in On Stage Studies, Theatre Topics, The Chronicle of Higher Education, College Teaching and others. She served as Guest Dramaturg at Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival of New American Plays. She has served as production dramaturg for many OU theatre productions including Louis Broome's Texarkana Waltz, The Anatomy of Gray ,The Three Sisters, Mark Medoff’s Gunfighter: A Gulf War Chronicle, Great Expectations and Wayne Rawley’s Live! From the Last Night of My Life.
She is currently the Literary Manager of OU’s Faith Broome Playwright-in-Residence program and looks forward to talking with others who run playwriting contests and host playwrights-in-residence
Amy Freeman is a freelance writer/dramaturg/all around stagehand. She earned her MFA in dramaturgy from Brooklyn college in 2008 and has since moved to Philadelphia, PA where she worked as a dramaturg and administrative intern with a small dance company.
Her main interest is contemporary reception of ancient drama. For her MFA thesis, she translated Aeschylus' Suppliants. She is excited to attend her first LMDA conference.
Andrea Romaldi has worked in new play development as a dramaturg, producer and director. She began as a script reader for the Shaw Festival and moved onto dramaturging and/or directing productions at the Toronto Fringe, SummerWorks and CanStage’s Festival of Ideas of Creation. In 2006 and 2007, she co-produced the Alumnae Theatre’s New Ideas Festival and served as festival dramaturg. At the same time, Andrea apprenticed in dramaturgy with Brian Quirt at Nightswimming Theatre thanks to the support first of Theatre Ontario and then the Metcalf Foundation. She is currently Literary Manager at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre.
Janice Poon is a writer and theatre professional who has been awarded the Asian Cultural Council fellowship to pursue research on dramaturgy and playwrighting in the United States for twelve months. Janice studied English and Translation in the University of Hong Kong and later received a postgraduate diploma in East and West Theatre Studies. She has been a creative writer before she began her professional career as a cultural journalist for Ming Pao Daily in 2001. She joined PIP Theatre Limited in 2005, one of Hong Kong’s most active theatre companies, where she distinguished herself as the person who is responsible for establishing the first literary department in Hong Kong theatre, during which she’s established the first annual Hong Kong Playwright Festival and Conference on Contemporary Performing Arts. Janice has been an active cultural worker in Hong Kong, working also in the capacities as a culture writer, theatre critic, playwright, actress and producer.
After receiving a BA in English literature from York University in Toronto and a Production certificate from the National Theatre School of Canada, Peter began a career as a lighting designer and technician spanning twenty years. In 1987-93 he was technical director at Factory Theatre in Toronto. In the following ten years he lived in The Netherlands where his activities included work as a lighting director for television game shows and as a lighting designer and technician for theatre and dance productions that toured throughout Holland and Belgium.
Now living in Bragg Creek, Alberta, Peter has shifted his focus to playwriting and performance creation. Peter recently went back to school graduating this past May with a BFA in Drama at the University of Calgary. This fall he will continue there with graduate studies in playwriting. He looks forward to the opportunity to participate, contribute and learn at his first LMDA Conference.
Johnna Wright is one of two Literary Managers for Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon. For nine years she was co-Artistic and Managing Director of Vancouver’s Solo Collective Theatre, a company that commissions, develops and produces new work by Western Canadian playwrights. During that time, Solo Collective premiered 23 new scripts and developed another 25-30 through its Emerging Writers Program. Directing projects include the premieres of plays by Ian Weir, Aaron Bushkowsky, David Mackay, and Vern Thiessen, as well as established scripts such as Tomson Highway’s The Rez Sisters and Marivaux’s The Triumph of Love (Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards: Outstanding Director, Outstanding Production). Johnna holds a BA in Theatre from the University of British Columbia and an MFA in Drama (Directing) from the U of Alberta, and was a recipient of the Ray Michal Award for Outstanding Body of Work by an Emerging Director. She is excited to be attending the LMDA conference for the first time.
Maggie Bell is a Master's student who is writing her thesis on dramaturgy practice in contemporary American theatre. She comes from a stage management background, and worked as a stage manager for various theaters in New York for seven years. She is coming to the LMDA conference to do research for her thesis, and she hopes that she may be able to speak with some of you about your wonderful careers! Thank you in advance for your support.
Danielle Carroll is thrilled to be attending her fourth conference as LMDA's Administrative Director! In addition to her work with LMDA, she enjoys life as an actress and performer based in New York City. Originally from the Bay Area, CA, Danielle holds a B.A. in theatre and a B.A. in mathematics from Boston College. In 2007, Danielle completed her M.A. in Performance Studies at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where she had the privilege of studying with field pioneers Anna Deavere Smith and Richard Schechner. Recent roles include Katarina in AML Entertainment's "Katarina," Casey in AML Entertainment's "What Say You," and Blair in Mix NYC/ Inbred Hybrid Collective's "Disappear Here." In May, Danielle completed a two year Meisner-based training program at The William Esper Studio. She looks forward to her upcoming role as Fran in "Stars" which opens as a part of Manhattan Rep's Summerfest this August. www.daniellecarroll.com
Danielle Mages Amato is the President-Elect of LMDA; she has served as VP of Communications for the last two years. She was the resident dramaturg and literary manager at The Studio Theatre from 2005-2008, where her work included Shining City, Fat Pig, The Pillowman, and tempOdyssey. Other Washington DC credits include The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, We Are Not These Hands, and The Trial with Catalyst Theatre; and bobrauschenbergamerica and Desire Caught by the Tail with banished? productions. She has also worked at La Jolla Playhouse, Sledgehamer Theatre, and Sushi Performance and Visual Art in San Diego. She holds an MFA in Dramaturgy and a PhD in Theatre from the University of California, San Diego. She teaches theatre for the Kentucky Community and Technical College System.
LaRonika Thomas is a Baltimore-based freelance dramaturg and writer, as well as the new Vice President for Regional Activity for LMDA. In Chicago LaRonika worked with Stage Left Theatre, the Goodman Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Writers’ Theatre, Neo-Futurists, Silk Road Theatre Project, Lifeline Theatre, Greasy Joan and Co., and Chicago Dancemakers Forum, among others. Beyond Chicago she has worked with, or read scripts with, The Public Theater, Syracuse Stage, TADA! Youth Theatre, Artists Bloc, Active Cultures, the Baltimore Playwrights Festival, the Playwrights Group of Baltimore, and the ATHE New Play Development Workshop. LaRonika is a recipient of an LMDA residency grant as well as three CAAP grants for her individual work, and previously served as the regional VP for both the Metro Chicago and mid-Atlantic regions of LMDA. She occasionally writes about theatre, art, and pop culture on her blog, participant/observer, found at laronikathomas.wordpress.com.
Eric Rose is a self-professed process junkie and has one hell of a wicked sweet tooth. He often combines these two loves while directing, creating, teaching and performing dramaturgical acts of bravery.
Eric is also the Co-Artistic Director of Ghost River Theatre and the Playwright in Residence of Alberta Theatre Projects with his friend and collaborator David van Belle. During their tenure as ATP’s Playwrights in Residence, David and Eric co-created The Highest Step in the World that had its world premiere as a co-pro between GRT and ATP at the 2010 playRite’s Festival.
Eric loves almost any kind of dessert square.
His passion for the creative process (and sometimes dessert) has lead him to work across Canada, into the US and as far a field as South Korea and Ghana (where this summer he will be directing a new play, The Ancestral Sacrifice.)
Some of his recent credits include: conceiving / directing Something to do With Death: an ensemble devised production inspired by Sergio Leone’s epic Spaghetti Westerns for GRT; directing the world premiere of Conni Massing’s adaptation of W.O. Mitchell’s Jake and the Kid for Theatre Calgary, and directing and dramaturging of Jason Carnew’s ONE, that recently toured to Albuquerque New Mexico’s Revolutions International Theatre Festival.
Eric’s favourite dessert square is homemade Nanaimo Bars.
Tim Hamilton
I just completed my first year in the PhD in theatre research program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I did my master's in theatre studies at the University of Calgary, so I'm really looking forward to coming back to the mountains! My most recent research is in documentary drama, Elizabethan and virtual theatre (such as performances in Second Life).
I'm rather new to dramaturgy; I dramaturged Narukami: The Thunder God (our kabuki show) this spring, and I'm currently dramaturging South Pacific (opening in August) as well as Frank Galati's adaptation of Grapes of Wrath (October). I've recently been doing some directing, and I'm the new artistic director of our graduate student production company at UW. We focus on new work, new adaptations and reimagining the canon in various ways. Coming soon: a new staging of the bad quarto of Hamlet and a new piece inspired by the themes in Alan Lightman's novel Einstein's Dreams.
I'm really looking forward to gaining new insights that I can apply to both my scholarly work and my stage work. Looking forward to meeting and learning from you all.
Nakissa Etemad is a professional dramaturg, producer, and French translator based in San Francisco, CA. She has worked in the field of dramaturgy for eighteen years, including full-time posts as Dramaturg & Literary Manager for The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia and for San Jose Rep, and as Resident Dramaturg & Artistic Associate for San Diego Rep. Nakissa has fostered 15 world premiere musicals & plays and dramaturged 75 productions & staged readings with such writers as Tom Stoppard, Arthur Miller, Lynn Nottage, Polly Pen, Charles L. Mee, Marcus Gardley, Octavio Solis, Doug Wright, Dael Orlandersmith, Chay Yew, Katori Hall, Luis Valdez, Culture Clash, Heather McDonald, and Steven Dietz. Highlights include serving as dramaturg for the East Coast Premiere of Arthur Miller’s penultimate play Resurrection Blues at The Wilma; The Philadelphia Orchestra & The Wilma Theater’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favor by Tom Stoppard & André Previn; and producing the San Jose Rep’s 5th Annual New America Playwrights Festival, featuring writers Lynn Nottage, Polly Pen, James Milton, and Naomi Iizuka.
Nakissa just completed dramaturging Marcus Gardley’s …and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi for Cutting Ball/Playwrights Foundation, and looks forward to working with Marcus on several of his upcoming plays. Nakissa currently serves as Resident Dramaturg for Cutting Ball and has provided dramaturgy for Bay Area Playwrights Festival & Playwrights Foundation, Arizona Theatre Company, O’Neill Music Theater Conference, La Jolla Playhouse, George Street Playhouse, and Crowded Fire, among others. She served as Co-Chair for the LMDA Annual Conference in Philly ’04 with her dear friend Volansky. She holds an MFA in Dramaturgy from UCSD and certificates from Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute, London.
Elaine Avila is the Robert Hartung Endowed Chair, Head, MFA Program of Dramatic Writing at the University of New Mexico, where she is Artistic Director of their annual Words Afire! Festival of New Plays. As well as doing cross cultural dramaturgy for Pangaea Arts, Elaine’s own plays have premiered across the U.S., Canada, and Europe—often in site-specific projects, including Lieutenant Nun (based on the true story of a woman conquistador, Theatre SKAM, Victoria, published, Canadian Theatre Review), Burn Gloom (a music-theatre collaboration involving writers from 14 cities, including Malawi, Santiago, Tasmania, Bali, New York City, Montreal, and Belle Ile, France), At Water's Edge (Canadian Centre for Theatre Creation, Edmonton) , Uma Casa Portuguesa (Santa Fe, upcoming), Naked Singularity (at the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre Incubator, NYC), Jane Austen, Action Figure…and Other Plays (workshop, Women’s Project, NYC), and Quality:The Shoe Play (London, England, Edmonton, Alberta, Albuquerque, New Mexico). She is the recipient of numerous awards including The Victoria Critic’s Circle for Best New Play, numerous Canada Council Grants, “New Works for Young Women” Award/Residency from Tulsa University, the A.S.K. Theatre Projects Scholarship, the Alden B. Dow Fellowship, and a New Mexico State Historian Fellowship. She has her MFA from Calarts, where she worked closely with Suzan-Lori Parks and Erik Ehn.
Nichole Gantshar suffered a mid-life crises last year, sold her house, left her job and moved to Pittsburgh to volunteer (funded by a buyout from her "day" night job) for the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. There she crossed over to the dark side (arts administration). The gamble paid off, and PBT created a job for her. While not a practicing dramaturg currently, she wanted to drink Grasshopper beer with her friends in Banff. In her past list, Nichole, who has a MFA in dramaturgy from University at Stony Brook, worked for Syracuse Stage, the Atlanta Ballet, Richmond Ballet, National Actors Theatre, Pittsburgh Public Theatre among others.
Meghan Sharer is a dramaturg, designer and Exec. Director of Quo Vadimus Arts. She is a graduate of the Playwright's Horizons Theater School at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts (BFA) and The Central School of Speech and Drama, London (MA). In 2005, Meghan traveled to Rwanda to manage QVA's Rwanda Folk Tales Project. She has also worked with: Conflict Resolution Theater (Philadelphia), C-Venues (Edinburgh Fringe), Never Wait Theater & The BAC, Trafalgar Studios and The Southwark Playhouse (London) and The Story Shop (NY Fringe). Meghan is currently the production manager at the John Beasley Theater in Omaha.
Cindy SoRelle currently serves as Chair for the LMDA Board of Directors (2009-12). She is a member of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, for which she served as Dramaturgy Conference Planner, Focus Group Rep, and Nominations Chair. She currently serves as Dramaturgy Debut Panel National Competition Chair and hopes that every ECD will apply for 2010-11. She was KCACTF Region VI Coordinator for dramaturgy competition for two years and mentored a national winner (Amanda Lassetter) in 2008. She has served as a play reader for Minneapolis Playwrights Center and has written for the playwrights volume of the Dictionary of Literary Biography. Cindy served four years on the Texas Educational Theatre Association Board of Directors. As a certified clinician, she has adjudicated more than 100 Texas performance festivals and is recipient of the 2000 TETA Founder's Award for “outstanding contributions to theatre in Texas.” She spent seven delightful years as Dramaturg for the Lyric Opera of Waco. She holds a PhD from UT Austin, where she formed a lifelong friendship with her mentor Oscar Brockett. Her other passion is serving for the past five years on the Board of “Cross Cultural Experiences” (dba Mission Waco), an organization that provides shelter, training, drug/alcohol recovery assistance, a free clinic, and other services for the homeless population as well as neighborhood economic rehab and poverty simulations to bring middle class youth and adults into contact with issues surrounding systemic poverty. MW supports an orphanage in Ferrier, Haiti (north of Port-au-Prince). The Haiti project, now more critical, involves drilling water wells to provide uncontaminated drinking water, building a school, sending physician teams, and setting up a micro-loan program for village women who are making crafts and goods for sale at MW’s World Cup Café, a fair trade café and market.
Her husband Jim (Baylor U Professor of History & Civil Rights Movement/African American history scholar) is joining her in Banff, where he has agreed to supervise the LMDA Oral History Project. Thanks, honey!
Shari is Literary Manager at Theatre Calgary, where she was recently Production Dramaturg for the world premieres of Jake and the Kid and Beyond Eden and is currently working as Dramaturg for the upcoming Theatre Calgary premiere of Lost – A Memoir. Prior to joining Theatre Calgary in 2007, Shari was Resident Dramaturg at Alberta Playwrights’ Network, where she also coordinated and edited the publication Theatre 100: Celebrating 100 Theatre Practitioners Over 100 Years. As an actor, Shari has appeared in productions with Theatre Calgary, Alberta Theatre Projects, Lunchbox Theatre, Vertigo Theatre, Forté Musical Theatre, and Quest Theatre and has been an ensemble member of Shadow Productions and Dirty Laundry: Calgary’s Live, Improvised Soap Opera. She has also worked as a freelance researcher and editorial contributor to a variety of publications by Broadview Press, including The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, The Broadview Anthology of Drama and The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose. She is thrilled to be part of the planning committee for the 2010 LMDA Banff Conference and looks forward to seeing you all in the beautiful mountains.
Lauren Kresowaty is a graduate of the BFA Theatre Performance program at Simon Fraser University. Her final semester included performing in Nightswimming's City of Wine Festival at the Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto. Since graduation, she has had her first play, "Paper Boats", produced by UpInTheAir Theatre's 2009 Walking Fish Festival, co-created and performed in a piece for "Hive: The New Bees" at the 2009 Vancouver Fringe Festival, and has become a substitute aerial silks coach at the Vancouver Circus School.
Lauren is currently working as a dramaturg on a new play, "Keep to the West", written and directed by fellow City of Wine participant and SFU BFA grad Derek Chan.
Lauren loves reading the LMDA list serv.
Robert Blacker
Third season: Dramaturge for Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Dramaturge for As You Like It and Tempest. Stratford: Dramaturged five productions of Shakespeare, Rice Boy and Caesar and Cleopatra. Elsewhere: Over 50 projects from Robert’s eight years as artistic director of Sundance Theatre Labs were produced, including I Am My Own Wife (Tony, Pulitzer), The Laramie Project, The Light in the Piazza and Spring Awakening (Tonys for latter two). He was interim chair of playwriting at Yale School of Drama; taught playwriting and Shakespeare studies in graduate programs at Columbia, Iowa, and Yale; and dramaturged 14 productions of Shakespeare for Des McAnuff and others. Robert was McAnuff’s associate artistic director at La Jolla Playhouse, where he worked on The Who’s Tommy and Steppenwolf’s The Grapes of Wrath (Tonys for both) and participated in season planning. He was the first dramaturge at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater (New York). Training: Cornell.
Steve Marsh has been the Literary Manager of the John Gassner New Play Competition at Stony Brook University for the past 8 years. He teaches dramaturgy, new play development, acting and play analysis at Stony Brook's department of Theatre Arts where he served as interim director of the graduate program in dramaturgy for the last three years. Steve is continuing his work with actor Alan Alda and the SBU school of journalism's Center for Communicating Science, teaching improvisational techniques to help scientists better communicate their ideas to the press and lay audiences.
Steve will be accompanied by his wife Regina Marsh, who runs a successful graphic design firm on Long Island, New York.
Eury Chang is a dramaturge, writer/editor, and performer based in Vancouver, BC. Since 2003, he has hosted the "Launch Pad: Dramaturgy Program for New Performance," the only studio-based, dramaturgy program geared to physical theatre and dance on the West Coast. Over the years, he has studied with master teachers Linda Putnam (Growtowski, Sourcework), David MacMurray Smith (Pochinko mask-work, Clowning), and with the folks at One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre. Eury's interests include working with interdisciplinary collaborations, solo performance, physical theatre and dance. He is writing and devising two plays: a solo show exploring male archetypes,
"My Name is Chuck" (recently in-residence, Caravan Farm Theatre), and a historical play (circa 1858, Barkerville) entitled "Barnes & Sing." He is a member of the Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance, The Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, and Playwrights Theatre Centre. Eury is also the editor of two arts publications: The Dance Central (on-line) and Ricepaper Magazine (print).
Kaitlin Stilwell is so excited to be attending her second LMDA conference. Still early in her dramaturgy career, she was incredibly moved by the kindness, generosity and support she experienced at the conference last year. For the past 18 months, Kaitlin has been on the North American tour of Fiddler on the Roof – which aptly enough will close the day before the conference begins. (What a great way to start a new chapter!) This fall, Kaitlin is very excited to be getting her masters at Loughborough University in England. In addition to the conversations she's eager to have with dramaturgs whose work is based in the USA or Canada, she'd love to chat with any dramaturgs at the conference who have connections or experience with dramaturgs or companies in the UK and in Europe.
Walter Byongsok Chon is from Korea and is a first year D.F.A. candidate at Yale School of Drama.
He has served as literary intern and Script Coordinator at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center (2008 / 2009) and as Literary Associate at the literary office of Yale Repertory Theatre (2009-2010). His production credits include Rough Crossing and Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed (Yale Repertory Theatre), I Am A Superhero and The French Play (Yale School of Drama), and Be Aggressive and Mask Ritual: Electra (Yale Cabaret).
He studied Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre and holds a B.A. in English literature from Sungkyunkwan University in Korea, an M.A. in theatre studies from Washington University in St. Louis, and an M.F.A. in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism from Yale School of Drama, where his research focus were Theatre of the Absurd and Romanticism.
Currently he is working on a Yale Summer Cabaret piece called Muse, a dramatization of the correspondences between F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and a translation of a Korean play called Inching Towards Yeolha, scheduled to be performed at Columbia University this fall.
This is his first time attending the LMDA conference and he is enormously grateful for the ECD travel grant and much excited to be mentored.
Amy Jensen is a NYC-based, freelance dramaturg, currently working on with East River Commedia. Her MFA thesis (Stony Brook University) is on a devised production by Danish company Gruppe 38, which she studied as part of a Fulbright grant. In her neo-nomadic professionalization, Amy has been at Geva Theatre, the Goodman Theatre, the Kennedy Center for the Arts, and the Cornerstone Theatre institute. She looks forward to conversations on theatricality, devised theatre, dance theatre, site-specific theatre, space, time, and handling the vagaries of freelancing. She has served as the LMDA VP of Regional Activity, and has received an LMDA dramaturgy-driven grant.
Caroline completed her BFA in Theatre Performance at SFU Contemporary Arts last spring, and currently works as the Operations Manager for Vancouver's Touchstone Theatre. Recent undertakings include performing in Nightswimming's City of Wine Festival at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto, and co-producing "HIVE: the new bees" at the 2009 Vancouver Fringe (a collaborative show that brought together students from three different Vancouver theatre schools with mentors from the professional community). Next up, she is co-creating a show about gardening for the 2010 Vancouver Fringe that will take place in her backyard (lemonade will be served). She is curious about collective creation, interdisciplinary work, and why real food is so interesting onstage.
After flirting for a couple of years with the notion of becoming a marine biologist, I eventually left science, got a BFA in Acting at York and an MFA in Acting from Brandeis. I’ve worked as an actor, director and teacher for (ahem) some years now – the last, primarily at the University of Saskatchewan. There, I teach acting, voice and speech and, only very occasionally, directing. Over the years, I’ve acted in or directed plays in development for the Saskatchewan Playwrights’ Centre, and served frequently on its board and dramaturgical committee, most recently working with the lovely and talented Heather Inglis. I am a newbie to the LMDA (Kugler advised me to join) and look forward to meeting all its clever participants.
Michael Evans is a resident dramaturg at the Rogaland Theatre in Stavanger, Norway. He is an American expatriot who has been living and working in Norway since the unforgettable 70's. His book Innføring i dramaturgi is currently in its third print-run. He translates Norwegian and Danish plays into (American) English, and American and British plays into Norwegian. His tranlations of Astrid Saalbach's plays (she is Denmark leading playwright) have been seen in London, Guelph and Chicago, while his translation of Death of a Salesman has been performed three times in Norway. He is currently translating the play Enron, so if anybody can explain to him what "mark-to-market" accounting is, he would be greatly appreciative.
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