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Planned Guests for Current Summer Session*
Mark Bly, Dramaturg (2013)
Mark was the Chair of the Playwriting Program at the Yale School of Drama from 1992-2004 while being the Associate Artistic Director at the Yale Rep. Over the past thirty years he has served as a Dramaturg, Director of New Play Development, and Associate Artistic Director at such theatres as the Arena Stage, Alley Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, Seattle Rep, and Yale Rep, dramaturging and producing over 150 plays. He has dramaturged on Broadway Emily Mann’s Execution of Justice (1985) and more recently Moises Kaufman’s 33 Variations. Bly has served as the Dramaturg for the world premieres of plays by Rajiv Joseph, Suzan Lori-Parks, Tim Blake Nelson, Sarah Ruhl, and Moises Kaufman. Bly has written for numerous publications: Yale Theatre as Contributing Editor and Advisory Editor, Theatre Forum, American Theatre, Theater Topics, and LMDA Review. In 2010 Bly received the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas G.E. Lessing Career Achievement Award, only the fifth time the award was bestowed in the organization’s history.
Mark Charney, Dramaturg/Playwright (expected Summer 2014)
Mark Charney serves as Director of Theatre for the Department of Performing Arts at Clemson University. A past Chair for Region IV and a past member of the National Selection Team for KCACTF, Mark currently works as a playwright and professor. The first two works in his “male dysfunction trilogy” have been read in both New York and Washington, and the first—37 Stones or the Man Who Was a Quarry—was produced by Charter Theatre in D.C. and in 2008 Off Off Broadway by Working Man Clothes Productions. Mark serves as National Coordinator of the Critics Institute and Dramaturgy Initiative through the Kennedy Center, and works each summer with Dan Sullivan and the Critics Institute in Waterford, Connecticut at the O’Neill. One of his most recent plays, Shooting Blanks, was performed and published by the New Works Festival in California. Mark won the Outstanding Theatre Educator Award from SCTA in 2005. His play, Cat Scratch Fever, was published this year in the journal Grist, and his play The Power Behind the Palette won the David Mark Cohen Award for Playwriting in 2010. He is a ten-time recipient of the Clemson University Board of Trustees’ Award for Faculty Excellence. He also serves for his second year as Secretary of the Southeastern Theatre Conference.
Gary Garrison, Playwright and Co-Executive Director of the Dramatist Guild (2013)
Gary is the Co-Executive Director of the Dramatist Guild of America – the national organization of playwrights, lyricists and composers headed by our nation’s most honored dramatists. Prior to his work at the Guild, Garrison filled the posts of Artistic Director, Producer and full time faculty member in the Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, where he produced over forty-five festivals of new work, collaborating with hundreds of playwrights, directors and actors. Garrison’s plays include Game On, The Sweep, Verticals and Horizontals, Storm on Storm, It Belongs on Stage (and Not in My Bed), Crater, Old Soles, Padding The Wagon, Rug Store Cowboy, Cherry Reds, Gawk, Oh Messiah Me, We Make A Wall, The Big Fat Naked Truth, Scream With Laughter, Smoothness With Cool, Empty Rooms, Does Anybody Want A Miss Cow Bayou? and When A Diva Dreams. This work has been featured at the City Theatre of Miami, Boston Theatre Marathon, Primary Stages, The Directors Company, Manhattan Theatre Source, StageWorks, Fourth Unity, Open Door Theatre, Pulse Ensemble Theatre, Expanded Arts and New York Rep. His recent work as guest artist or master teacher of playwriting involve such institutions as Sewanee Writer’s Conference, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, CityWrights of Miami, The Inkwell and Source Theatre in D.C., Baltimore Playwrights Festival, New Hampshire Playwrights Festival, Goddard College, The University of Texas at Austin, Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Southeast Theatre Conference, Northwest Theatre Conference and Boston Playwrights. He is the author of the critically acclaimed, The Playwright’s Survival Guide: Keeping the Drama in Your Work and Out of Your Life, Perfect Ten: Writing and Producing the Ten Minute Play, A More Perfect Ten and two volumes of Monologues for Men by Men. He is on the Tony Administration Committee for the Tony Awards, the program director for the Summer Playwriting Intensive for the Kennedy Center, the former National Chair of Playwriting for the Kennedy Center’s American College Theater Festival and the Founder of The Loop, an on-line community of playwrights.
Jason Aaron Goldberg (2010, 2011, 2013)
Jason Goldberg is the President of Original Works Publishing, the only play publishing and licensing company dedicated entirely to bold and original plays. During his tenure at OWP he has increased the catalog to over one hundred titles and secured over 250 productions for the playwrights represented there. In the film world Jason has had the pleasure of working with many industry vets and up and comers. Among them are Wes Craven, Nick Cassavetes, Martin Brest, Bruce Willis, Christina Ricci, Ben Affleck, Nicolas Cage, Emile Hirsh, Ben Foster, Jesse Eisenberg, and Sharon Stone. Along with his publishing, producing and acting ventures, Jason is also an accomplished screenwriter and playwright. His plays have been produced all across the U.S. and his screenplay For Greece, about Greek marathon runner Stylianos Kyriakides, has gained a strong following among industry professionals and was originally championed by acclaimed cinematographer Barry Markowitz (Sling Blade, All the Pretty Horses, The Apostle). Among his other recent screenwriting projects is The Door to Déjà Vu, currently in final financing talks and starring Tania Raymonde (Lost) and Jason Earles (Hannah Montana), and a screenplay treatment for rising star Shia Labeouf. He is currently working on the stage western The Confessions of Deacon Jim, about the deadliest man in the history of the west. Podcast »
Rob Handel, Playwright (expected Summer 2014)
Rob received a 2007 Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights. His play Millicent Scowlworthy was developed at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference and produced in New York at the 2006 Summer Play Festival (SPF), for which he was awarded a residency and staged reading at the Donmar Warehouse in London. Aphrodisiac was developed at the Public Theater “New Work Now” Festival and produced in New York by 13P, the Obie-winning playwrights collective he created. Aphrodisiac was subsequently produced by Long Wharf Theater (New Haven), Theater Ninjas (Cleveland), and Curious Theatre Company (Denver). Staged readings include Soho Rep and the Royal Court Theatre. He taught playwriting at The New School from 2005–2007. His most recent play, The Knights (after Aristophanes), was produced by Target Margin Theater in October 2007.
Inger Hatlen, General Manager (2013)
Inger is the General Manager for New Paradise Laboratories in Philadelphia.
Lee Moyer, Graphic Illustrator (2013)
Lee designed the posters for the first three seasons at Studio Roanoke, their acorn logo, and also our own program logo. We're looking forward to having this amazing graphic illustrator come talk to our students about how designers and playwrights can work better together. Lee Moyer is an esteemed Illustrator and Designer whose work has been featured in art books for more than a decade; D'Artiste, Sci-Fi Art, the Future of Fantasy Art, and many Spectrum annuals. His work has appeared in Communication Arts, Design Graphics, and China's Top Artist magazine; the New York Times, Washington Post, and the BBC. Additionally, his work has been displayed at the Society of Illustrators, the National Zoo and the Smithsonian Institution's Natural History Museum, and many private collections. His film work can be found 8 Laurel & Hardy DVDs, 7 H.P. Lovecraft titles, The Yellow Sign, Annabel Lee, Call of Cthulhu, and the Special Edition Spiderman 2 DVD. His theatrical work includes world premiere posters for Stephen Sondheim, Andre 3000, John Mellencamp, Steven King, and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. He served as Art Director for Electronic Arts, and as a contractor for Sony, Upper Deck, and Hasbro. He was one of the two concept leads for 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons and is currently working with game designers Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet on the new game 13th Age. He has illustrated authors as diverse as Raymond Chandler, Philip Jose Farmer, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Iain M. Banks, Alan Moore, and George R.R. Martin. His product illustration and branding clients include Domaine St. Michelle, the Jackson Hole Soda Company, Hudson Industries, and Pharmacopeia. He writes for the stage and plays a mean game of Anagrams.
Robert Patrick, Playwright (2013)
Patrick is the author of over 60 published plays, perhaps most famously of Kennedy's Children, which opened obscurely in London in the back room of a pub and instantly was signed for the West End and further productions worldwide. During the 1960s Patrick was a pioneer in Off-Off-Broadway theatre and the gay-theatre movement with over 300 productions of his plays during this decade in New York City alone. In 1972, the play publishing and licensing company Samuel French called Patrick "New York's Most-Produced Playwright." In 1969, he won the "Show Business" Award for Joyce Dynel, Salvation Army, and Fog. That same year his play Camera Obscura was produced on PBS starring Marge Champion and was also chosen to be in the all-star-playwright revue, "Collision Course." A 1974 production of The Haunted Host marked the first time Harvey Fierstein appeared on the legitimate stage as a male (having previously only acted as a drag performer). Years later, Fierstein included a recording of Patrick's monologue, Pouf Positive on his compact disc, This Is Not Going to Be Pretty. Pouf Positive was also filmed by Dov Hechtman in 1989. 1974 was also the first season of gay theatre in the United Kingdom, to which Patrick contributed three plays. My Cup Ranneth Over (1976) was commissioned by Marlo Thomas as a vehicle for her and Lily Tomlin. Although a production with them never happened, the play went on to become Patrick's most produced. T-Shirts, first produced in 1979 and starring Jack Wrangler, was later chosen as the opening piece for Hoffman's anthology Gay Plays: A First Collection. The Trial of Socrates was the first gay play presented by New York City. Hello Bob, an account of Patrick's experiences with the production of Kennedy's Children, was the last play he directed before leaving New York City. Other works by Patrick include Untold Decades (1988), a history of gay-male life in the United States, told in a humorous vein; and Temple Slave, a "totally romanticized" novel about the early days of Off-Off Broadway and gay theatre.
Dámaso Rodriguez, Director (2013)
Dámaso is Co-founder and Resident Director of the acclaimed Furious Theatre Company, where he served as Co-Artistic Director from 2001-2011. From 2007-2010 he served as Associate Artistic Director of the Pasadena Playhouse, where he directed main stage productions and oversaw all programming for the Playhouse’s second stage, including its Hothouse New Play Development Program. He has directed over 25 award-winning, critically acclaimed productions at theatres such as Seattle's Tony Award-winning Intiman Theatre, the Pasadena Playhouse, A Noise Within, The Theatre@Boston Court and Furious Theatre. Directing credits include Ruth & Augustus Goetz' The Heiress (Starring Richard Chamberlain), Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes (starring Kelly McGillis) and Austin Pendleton’s Orson’s Shadow (starring Sharon Lawrence) at the Pasadena Playhouse; the reading of Steven Drukman’s The Prince of Atlantis for the Pacific Playwrights Festival at South Coast Repertory, Clifford Odets’ Paradise Lost at Intiman Theatre; Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit (Starring Scott Lowell), Tennessee Williams’ The Eccentricities of a Nightingale and Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms at A Noise Within. Furious Theatre credits include the Los Angeles premieres of Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s Boom and Hunter Gatherers, Bruce Norris’ The Pain and the Itch (a co-production with the Theatre@Boston Court), Craig Wright's Grace, Yussef El Guindi's Back of the Throat, Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things, and the world premieres of Alex Jones’ Canned Peaches in Syrup and Matt Pelfrey’s An Impending Rupture of the Belly and No Good Deed, among many others. His film directing credits include the darkly comic feature Pure Shock Value, which was selected as the "Centerpiece Film" of the Hollywood Fringe Festival, and episodes of the web series A G.A.N.G. by screenwriter Matt Pelfrey (MTV’s Skins). Dámaso is a recipient of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, the Back Stage Garland Award, the NAACP Theatre Award, and the Pasadena Arts Council’s Gold Crown Award. In 2010, Furious Theatre Company was named to LA Weekly's list of "Best Theatres of the Decade." He is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.
Fredrick J. Rubeck, Chair of Performing Arts at Elon University (2012, 2013)
Fredrick J. Rubeck is Department Chair and Professor of Performing Arts and coordinator of the Acting program at Elon University in North Carolina. Fred earned his B.F.A. in acting and directing at Illinois Wesleyan University and his M.F.A. in directing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. A working professional director of nearly 100 productions throughout the United States and the UK, Fred has directed at Cape Fear Regional Theatre in North Carolina, Lakes Region Summer Theatre in New Hampshire, and the Findlay Summerstock Theatre in Ohio. He was one of the founding partners of The Occasional Acting Company and the Piedmont Theatre Collective, both in North Carolina, served on the board of directors for the Nebraska Directors' Theatre and as the president of the Gallery Players, Inc. in North Carolina.
Other regional credits include The Mule Barn Theatre in Missouri, The Nebraska Repertory Theatre, The Nebraska Theatre Caravan, The Repertory Company (all in Nebraska) and The Summer Company and the Genoa-Kingston Summerstock Theatre in Illinois. His Elon directing credits include Crimes of the Heart, Getting Out, Noises Off!, A Midusmmer Night’s Dream, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, The Crucible, The Music Man, You Can't Take It With You, Macbeth, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Our Town and The Bacchae, to name a few. Fred's play Crackers has been produced at London's Pentameters Theatre and Brentwood Theatre, and other locations throughout the Southeast. His other plays have been produced throughout the Midwest and Southeast. Fred is an active member of the North Carolina Theatre Conference, the Southeastern Theatre Conference and the Association of Theatre in Higher Education, where he worked closely with the Playwrights’ Program, serving as Focus Group Chair for several years. Within the Playwrights’ Program, he served terms as coordinator of the David Mark Cohen Playwriting Award, and as Co-Chair of PlayWorks. He has also served as Dramaturg for several plays in the New Play Development Workshop. Podcast »
Rebecca Rugg, Dramaturg (2008, 2013)
Rebecca served as the Associate Chair of Playwriting, Yale School of Drama since 2005. She came to Yale from the Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, where she was Director of New Projects and Dramaturg. Her teaching and research concentrate in 20th and 21st century American performance — in particular, she focuses on contemporary U.S. playwriting, art and activism, and American musical theater. She also works as a translator, and her English translation of Serbian playwright Biljana Srbljanovic's Family Stories was produced at The Market Theater, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was published in American Theater, April 2003. From November 2005-November 2006, she was the producer of the university network of Suzan-Lori Parks' cycle 365 Plays/365 Days.
Cheryl Snodgrass, Director (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013)
Cheryl focuses on the production of new works. She has worked extensively with playwright Jeff Goode as a director, actor and producer. She directed the premiere productions of Poona the F***dog and other plays for children and The Eight: reindeer monologues, among others. She's directed and/or produced premier works by Rebecca Gilman, Brett Nevue, David Cerda and Todd Ristau. She has been Jeff Recommended for Die! Mommie, Die! as director and Poseidon! An Upside Down Musical as co-author. Most of 2010 was spent developing Big Top JoJo & His Towering Show of Wonders presents The Phenomenal Phantasmagoria as co-creator and director. Cheryl has been a guest artist at Lawrence University and a guest speaker at Hollins University. She was a founding member of No Shame Theatre, The Unusual Cabaret and Les Enfants du Mais. She has directed four new plays at Studio Roanoke (Rosalee was Here, Donny and the Monsters, Twelve Stations of the Cross and Frogger) and she is continuously impressed by the talent, dedication and inspiration she finds here. She returns in 2012 to direct The Emancipation of Alabaster McGill by Jeff Goode and To The New Girl by Samantha Macher. Podcast »
Dominic Taylor, Playwright and Associate Artistic Director (2013)
Dominic is a director, playwright and the head of Penumbra's OKRA New Play Development Program. Most recently, Mr. Taylor directed Black Nativity: A Season for Change at Penumbra. Other select directing credits include the new opera Fresh Faust at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, The Negroes Burial Ground at the Kitchen, N.Y.C., Uppa Creek at Dixon Place, and Ride The Rhythm in the Hip-Hop Theatre Festival. He is an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota where he has directed The Wiz, Night Train To Bolina and Execution of Justice. Mr. Taylor has worked with Crossroads Theater, Rites and Reasons Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, The Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, and Ensemble Studio Theatre, among others. He is an alumni member of New Dramatists and holds a Bachelor's and a Master of Fine Arts Degree from Brown University.
Rusty Thelin, Playwright, Director and Producer (2013)
Rusty has been directing, performing in, and occasionally writing plays since 1987, including several years puppeteering, and a ton of Shakespeare. He lived in Savannah, GA, for ten years, where he served as the Production Manager of a city sponsored children's theatre company. Rusty eventually became Director of Educational Outreach and Associate Artistic Director of the Savannah Shakespeare Festival for a season, before returning to New York. He was one of the first cohort of playwrights at Hollins. Rusty is currently focusing producing new plays & musicals, including those coming out of the Playwright’s Lab. He was associate producer of the New York production of The Arctic Circle and a Recipe for Swedish Pancakes by Samantha Macher. His project, FUTURITY: a musical by The Lisps, opened in March of 2012 at ART in Boston.
Adam Whisner, Actor (2013)
After completing his Theatre Arts BA at the University of Iowa in 1993, Adam was accepted into the Acting Apprentice Company at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. After a brief stint with a touring puppet theatre company in Cincinnati, OH, he moved to Minneapolis in 1995, to start a theatre acting career he assumed would lead him to New York. By mid-1996, however, he was working full-time doing theatre, commercial TV and radio, and industrial video and voice work. He took time off from theatre from 2002-2007, to play guitar in the rock band he started, but returned to the stage in late 2008. Adam lives in NE Minneapolis with his dogs and motorcycles.
Dan Whitten, Producer (2013)
Dan Whitten is President of TIGER ll, LLC, a company that produces theatrical productions and corporate events. Dan was the lead producer on the hit Off Broadway show Jacques Brel Is Alive And Well And Living In Paris which was nominated for Drama League, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards for OUTSTANDING REVIVIAL OF A MUSICAL. Dan was the 2007 Tony Award-winning producer of Jay Johnson's The Two And Only, which received rave reviews for its New York Off- Broadway run at The Atlantic Theater in the Spring of '04 and was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award. The show won the 2007 Tony Award in the "Best Special Theatrical Event" category. Dan's current producing projects include Carousel, 2 on the aisle... three in the van, and Cougar the Musical. Dan's marketing credits include The Secret Garden, Catch Me If I Fall, The National Tour of Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh, The Allan Sherman Musical and The United States of Poetry on PBS. In the corporate arena, while VP of Sales and Marketing at Caribiner International, Dan produced the Viagra Launch Meeting and all Viagra internal brand communications for Pfizer. For TSP, he executive produced The Worldwide Leadership Forum featuring Bill Clinton and Rudy Giuliani at Radio City Music Hall this past Spring. Most recently, for BroadStreet, he produced The New York Times Small Business Summit at The Pierre Hotel. Dan is a graduate of The Wharton School and The University of Pennsylvania. While at UPENN, he was a member of The Penn Players and starred as Eddie Carbone in Arthur Miller's A View From The Bridge. Dan is on the Board of Directors of Maccabi USA/Sports for Israel, and coaches kids basketball, tennis and yoga in New Jersey.
Dwayne Yancey, Playwright (2013)
Dwayne is a journalist by profession and a playwright by avocation. Most of his time is spent directing news coverage as assistant managing editor of The Roanoke Times. He took up playwriting several years ago to amuse himself and has been pleasantly surprised to find that others have enjoyed his work, as well--to the tune of over 200 productions! He lives in Fincastle, Virginia with his wife and two children, all of whom are veterans of the local community theatre stage.
* Because of the rotating nature of the program, faculty and guests are listed subject to availability. Please check this Web page frequently for updated information.
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