Todd Ristau, program director, is a distinguished graduate of the Iowa Playwright’s Workshop.  His work has been performed in theatres across the U.S. and England, including London’s West End. He founded No Shame Theatre in 1986 and oversaw its evolution into a national network of venues for new works in dozens of cities. Ristau has an extensive theatre background, with expertise in acting, directing, and design. He worked with Mill Mountain Theatre for five years as coordinator of their second stage and as literary associate overseeing new works programming. Ristau now serves as artistic director of Studio Roanoke, a storefront theatre space dedicated to new works development in downtown Roanoke.

Jason Grote, Playwright (2009) was born in New Jersey in 1971 and has lived in Brooklyn since 1997. This award-winning playwright’s work has been produced or developed in nearly all the nation’s important centers of new works development including Denver Center Theater, Mixed Blood, Marin Theater Company, Salvage Vanguard, Soho Rep, Woolly Mammoth, The Atlantic Theater, Circle X, Clubbed Thumb, The Flea, HERE, The Lark, The O’Neill National Playwrights’ Conference, Playwrights’ Horizons, Theatre of NOTE, and many others. He teaches playwriting and screenwriting at Rutgers University, is a member of PEN and New Dramatists, and a contributor to Comedy Central's "Indecision 2008" blog. He was co-chair of Soho Rep's Writer/Director Lab from 2004-07, and currently serves on their Artist Advisory Committee. He is represented by Antje Oegel at AO International, in Chicago and Berlin.

Bonnie Metzgar, Playwright/Director/Dramaturg/Producer/Artistic Director (2008, 2009)
Bonnie envisioned a radical new grassroots model for theatrical production with Suzan Lori-Parks' epic 365 Days/365 Plays. With the creation of the 365 International Festival, Metzgar launched an event that marked the largest collaborative effort in American theatrical history with over 600 participating theaters sharing in the world premiere. Metzgar was also a member of an American delegation to the 2007 World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya and promotes the participation of artists in the social forum movement. Metzgar served for eight years as Associate Producer at the Public Theater under George C. Wolfe and was the Founding Producer of Joes Pub. From 2004-2007, Metzgar was the Associate Artistic Director of the Curious Theatre Company in Denver where she was named 2006 Colorado Theater person of the year by the Denver Post. She was also the recipient of the 2006 Paul Green Foundation Award. Metzgar teaches in the Brown University Graduate Playwriting Program and is Artistic Director of the New Play Festival at the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium. Previously, Metzgar produced performance works at the award-winning BACA Downtown in Brooklyn where she was Artistic Director. She is currently Artistic Director of About Face Theatre in Chicago. Podcast

Planned Guests*

Joe Gilford, Playwright, Screenwriter, Director (Confirmed for 2010)
Joe has worked in film, TV and theatre, as a producer, writer and director for over 30 years. He has also served as story consultant and script doctor on numerous independent feature films. Since 1999, he has taught screenwriting at NYU’S Undergraduate Film Program. His feature screenplay, God’s Thumbprint is currently in development with Creative Differences Productions. His newest stage play, Finks, was presented as a mainstage production by New York Stage and Film at the Powerhouse Theater, Vassar College starring Jennifer Westfeld and Josh Radnor. Finks is a fictionalized chronicle of his parents’ real-life struggle as blacklisted actors in the 1950s. He is the screenwriter of the feature film adaptation of the French science fiction novel by Ivan Leveque Operation Pertica and its sequel Pertica II: The Awakening. He is the creator and writer of Game, a new digital animation comedy series. For PBS’s Great Performances & Time Warner Home Video he wrote the original script for The Great American Songbook, a history of American popular song hosted by Michael Feinstein. Also for PBS, he wrote the documentary Beyond Wiseguys: Italian Americans and the Movies hosted by John Turturro and featuring Paul Sorvino, and Marisa Tomei, and many others. He is the writer of the A&E Biography, Tom Hanks: Hollywood's Golden Boy. He also served as a writer on the award-winning Lifetime series, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. He is the author of the plays Knockdown, Not Tunisia, In Aisle 4, The End of Our Rope, The Love Museum, and No Fault. His plays have been produced or presented at Naked Angels Theater Co., Roundabout Theater Company, Circle Rep Lab, New York Stage & Film, The Westbank Downstairs Theater, Southampton Writers Workshop and Todd Mountain Theater Project. He is a longtime member of Ensemble Studio Theatre and its Playwrights Unit. He had also worked as a stage director for many years before turning to writing. He has had a long career producing television documentaries, winning a New York Emmy Award in 1997 for his work on WNET-NY’s (PBS) City Arts series. He has also been a writer and producer at Showtime, Bravo, Court TV, F/x, and New York's MSG MetroGuide channel. Joe earned his BFA at NYU's Institute of Film & TV where he wrote and directed Max, a short film starring his father, Jack Gilford, playing film festivals and television all over the world. He is a contributor to Brooklyn: A State of Mind (Workman Press), an anthology of essays and anecdotes about the borough of Brooklyn, NY, where he has lived since 1992. He has been a teacher and lecturer of screenwriting at Columbia University’s Graduate MFA Film Program, New York’s Gotham Writers Workshop, Pratt Institute, Hollins University (VA), Montclair State University (NJ), and American Comedy Institute. He has served on the judging panels of events such as the Fusion Film Festival (NY) and the Philadelphia Screenplay Festival. Since 1999 he has taught screenwriting at NYU’s Undergraduate Film & TV Dept., Tisch School of the Arts. He is also currently a Visiting Professional teaching screenwriting at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Joe was born and raised in Manhattan. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Jason Aaron Goldberg (Confirmed for 2010)
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 Goldbert 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 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.

David Gothard, Producing Artistic Director (2007, invited 2010)
David began with Broadway director Mike Ockrent at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. He was invited to Poland to work with Tadeusz Kantor during early rehearsals for The Dead Class. After the play’s legendary success, it transferred to open an empty Riverside Studios. Riverside would become London’s pioneering, international theatre where the likes of Dario Fo, Samuel Beckett, and the American avant-garde worked side by side with British talent. David became Artistic Director of Riverside Studios following the departure of Peter Gill to the National Theatre of Great Britain, and was Artistic Director at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre from 1987 to 1990. American writers premiered during that time include David Hwang, Jean Claude van Itallie, Emily Mann, Sam Shepard and Todd Ristau. David has created writing workshops in Derry, Northern Ireland and repeatedly been invited to adjudicate and teach at the Iowa Playwright’s Workshop, where began his pioneer work with Naomi Wallace, W. David Hancock, and other important writers. After resurrecting the National Theatre of Kosovo immediately after the war, his opening Hamlet toured devastated cities and opened the arts program of the World Aids Conference in South Africa. His portable, suitcase Hamlet with Joseph Fiennes toured Muslim China and Tibet, where they held the first ever workshops in Llasa University. Most recently he has been working as Artistic Associate for the world famous Abbey Theatre in Dublin, directing projects with the likes of Harold Pinter and Vaclav Havel.

Rob Handel, Playwright (Expected Summer 2010)
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.

Chris Jones, Critic (Confirmed for 2010)
Chris is chief theater critic for the Chicago Tribune. He has reviewed and commented on culture, the arts, politics and entertainment for the Tribune for more than a decade. Along with being the paper's chief voice on local and national theatrical productions, he also writes a weekly column on culture and the arts. Jones served for many years as Midwestern theater critic for Variety and Daily Variety, publishing several hundred theater reviews with a particular emphasis on pre-Broadway tryouts. Although a Midwest resident for 24 years, he has covered theater in numerous cities throughout the United States, including time as Variety's Broadway critic. He serves on the editorial board for the Best Plays annual and has also served on the drama committee of the Pulitzer Prizes. His arts criticism also has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, American Theatre magazine and numerous other newspapers and magazines. For much of the 1980s he contributed film reviews, interviews and reports for WCBE-FM in Columbus, Ohio and also served as the long-time film critic for Columbus Alive newspaper. He also has reviewed film and theater for WFMT radio in Chicago and has contributed chapters to several books. His numerous guest TV appearances range from "E! The True Hollywood Story" to "Nightline" with Ted Koppel. Jones spent 10 years teaching at Northern Illinois University, where he served as assistant chair of the School of Theatre and Dance. He also served as associate dean of DePaul University's Theatre School. A native of Manchester, England, Jones earned a doctorate from the Ohio State University in 1989. He lives with his wife Gillian Darlow and their two young children, Peter and Evan.

Emily Mann (Invited 2011)
Multi-awarding winning Director and Playwright Emily Mann is starting her 19th season as Artistic Director of McCarter Theatre where she has overseen over 90 productions.  Some of her McCarter directing credits include the world premiere of A Seagull in the Hamptons with Brian Murray and Maria Tucci, Miss Witherspoon by Christopher Durang and at Playwrights Horizons, the world premiere of The Bells by Theresa Rebeck, the world premiere of Last of the Boys by Steven Dietz, Nilo Cruz's Anna in the Tropics at McCarter and on Broadway with Jimmy Smits (2003 Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Award nominations), Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (also adapted) with Amanda Plummer, Edward Albee's All Over with Rosemary Harris and Michael Learned and at Roundabout Theater Company (Obie Awards for her direction and for Rosemary Harris's performance), The Tempest with Blair Brown, Romeo and Juliet with Sarah Drew and Jeffrey Carlson, The Cherry Orchard (also adapted) with Jane Alexander, John Glover and Avery Brooks, I.B. Singer's Meshugah (adaptor and director) with Elizabeth Marvel, the American premiere of The Mai by Marina Carr, the world premiere of Anna Deveare Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 and at the Mark Taper Forum, Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba (also adapted) with Helen Carey, the world premiere of Joyce Carol Oates' The Perfectionist, Strindberg's Miss Julie (also adapted) with Kim Cattrall, Donna Murphy and Peter Francis James, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Pat Hingle and JoBeth Williams,  Chekhov's Three Sisters with Frances McDormand, Linda Hunt, and Mary Stuart Masterson, Betsey Brown (co-author with Baikida Carroll and Ntozake Shange), The Glass Menagerie with Shirley Knight, Dylan McDermott and Judy Kuhn. She is also the author of Greensboro (A Requiem), author and director of Execution of Justice at The Guthrie Theatre and on Broadway (winner of the HBO New Plays USA award, the Helen Hayes Award, the Bay Area Critics Circle Award, and nominated for a Drama Desk Award); Still Life (6 Obie Awards including playwriting, direction and production of the season), and Annulla, An Autobiography.  Ms. Mann wrote and directed Having Our Say, adapted from the book by Sarah L. Delany and A. Elizabeth Delany with Amy Hill Hearth at McCarter and on Broadway (3 Tony nominations including Best Play and Best Direction, and a Drama Desk nomination;  a Joseph Jefferson award, an NAACP award, and for the screenplay, Peabody and Christopher Awards). A winner of the Dramatists' Guild Hull-Warriner Award, she is a member of the Dramatists Guild and serves on its Council. In 2002 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from Princeton University.

Robert Harris Moss (Confirmed for 2009)
Robert Moss ran the Edward Albee Playwrights' Unit from 1970 to 71. He founded and ran Playwrights Horizons from 1971 to l981.   He was the Artistic Director of the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, New York from 1983 to 1996. In the Fall of 1996, he became the Artistic Director of Syracuse Stage, and ran that theater until January,  2008. In the summer of 2008, Moss took the reins of the Hangar again, as they searched for another new Artistic Director.  He ran the Playwrights Horizons Theatre School (an affiliate school of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts for more than ten years.  He has guest directed at theatres across the country.  Favorite playwrights include, but not limited to, Michele Lowe, Wendy Wasserstein,  Max Posner,  David Hare,  Tom Stoppard,  and the Mssrs: Shakespeare and Shaw.  Prior to all this directing and running of theaters,  he was an active stage manager,  a career that culminated with the APA Repertory Company in residence at the Lyceum Theater on Broadway.

Jonathan Price, Composer (Invited 2010)
Jonathan is a composer for stage and screen. His most recent musical Lao Jiu: The Musical, featuring a libretto in Mandarin and Chinese dialects, opened at The New Drama Centre in Singapore to packed houses and overwhelmingly rave reviews. His latest film scores are for the feature Cyber Wars, released by New Line, and Necrosis, released by American World Pictures. His opera The Lion and the Wood Nymph was a winner of New Opera Works' OIAM competition. Jonathan's music for television has been heard on Showtime, The Discovery Channel, TLC, Oxygen, MTV, PAX, PBS, and Fox. With playwright/lyricist Jeff Goode (The Eight: Reindeer Monologues), he composed the song "The Hubba Hubba Hula" for The Disney Channel's American Dragon: Jake Long as well as the musical Marley's Christmas, which was a finalist in the Search for New Voices in American Musical Theatre. Their children's musical Rumpelstiltskin is published by Baker's Plays. His music for film includes the features Necrosis, Cyber Wars, Rustin, and Dark Woods. His work as a soundtrack producer and synthesist can be heard in An Unfinished Life, The Grudge, Runaway Jury, Shade, The Core, The Country Bears, The Shipping News, and Bandits. He is currently composing the music to the ballet Floral Arrangements choreographed by Susan Shields (Washington Ballet).

Tanya Saracho, Playwright, Artistic Director (Confirmed for 2010)
Tanya was born in Sinaloa, México and moved to Texas in the late 80's. She is a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, and Teatro Vista. As Founding Artistic Director of Teatro Luna: Chicago's All-Latina Theater Ensemble, Tanya's writing has been featured in most of Teatro Luna's ensemble-built works including Generic Latina, Dejame Contarte, The Maria Chronicles, SOLO Latinas, SOLO Tu, S-E-X-Oh! and Lunatic(a)s. Productions include: Our Lady of The Underpass with Teatro Vista (2009), Surface Day with Chicago Children's Humanity Festival (2008) and Jarred (A Hoodoo Comedy) with Teatro Luna (2008). Tanya's play Kita y Fernanda, a finalist for the 2003 Nuestras Voces playwrighting competition, received productions at Teatro Luna (2003) and 16th Street Theatre (2008). Other Awards include: The Ofner Prize given by the Goodman Theatre, Finalist for the Christopher B. Wolk Award at Abingdon Theatre in NYC, nominee for the Wasserstein Prize and winner of the Khan Award. Saracho's solo play Quita Mitos received a world premier with Teatro Luna in November of 2006 and has toured colleges and festivals, including the International Hispanic Theatre Festival and the Goodman's Latino Theatre Festival. Tanya is working on a fellowship in a collaboration between The Goodman Theatre and the Institute for Women and Gender Studies at Columbia College on an interview-based piece titled 27 where she will interview one woman from each of the 27 countries that make up the Latin Diaspora. She is also under commission from Steppenwolf Theatre to craft a musical adaptation Sandra Cisnero's "The House on Mango Street" slated to open in the fall of 2009. Tanya's voice can be heard around the country in radio and television commercials.

Naomi Wallace, Playwright (2007, confirmed for 2010)
Naomi Wallace’s work is widely produced in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States. Her plays include One Flea Spare, In the Heart of America, Slaughter City, The Inland Sea, and The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek. In 2007, her new trilogy The Fever Chart: Three Short Visions of the Middle East, received its first public performance as part of the Norfolk Southern Festival of New Works at Mill Mountain Theatre. Her work has received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, and an Obie. She is also a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. Her award-winning film Lawn Dogs is available on DVD. She continues to create new works of great power and generosity, writing new plays for the Public Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Clean Break of London.

* 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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