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. He has an extensive theatre background, with expertise in acting, directing, and design. He worked with Mill Mountain Theatre for six years as coordinator of their second stage and as literary associate overseeing new works programming. Ristau served as the first artistic director of Studio Roanoke, a storefront theatre space dedicated to new works development in downtown Roanoke. Todd is an Active Member of the Dramatists Guild, and member of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of America.

Planned Guests for Current Summer Session*

Che'Rae Adams, Playwright, Artistic Director (2012)
Che'Rae is the Producing Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Writers Center, a writing teacher and a director. She has been the Development Executive with Playhouse Pictures Studios, Co-Artistic Director of the award winning Road Theatre Company, and Managing producer for the Los Angeles Women's Theatre Festival and worked in development for Showtime Networks & Alliance/Atlantis Film & TV. She has directed for Cincinnati Opera Outreach, Disney/ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop, Highways Performance Space, The Road Theatre Company, The Lee Strasberg Theatre, The Celebration Theatre, The Los Angeles Theatre Center, The National Black Theatre Festival, The HBO Workspace, The Aspen Comedy Festival, The Stella Adler Theatre, The Comedy Central Work Space, The John Anson Ford Theatre; and is a resident director with the Syzygy Theatre Company. She has a B.A. in theatre from California State University, Northridge, and an M.F.A. in directing from the University of Cincinnati, College Conservatory of Music.

Art Borreca, Dramaturg (2012)
Art is associate professor of dramatic literature and dramaturgy and head of the playwriting and dramaturgy programs. He has worked as a dramaturg with a number of leading theatre artists, including Athol Fugard, Wole Soyinka, Theodora Skipitares, David Gothard, and Naomi Wallace in such venues as the Yale Repertory Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, LaMama ETC, Oxford Stage Company in the U.K., and T.P.T (Theatre Project Tokyo) in Japan. His research interests include contemporary British and American theatre, new play dramaturgy, and political dramaturgy. His articles and reviews have appeared in TDR (The Drama Review), Modern Drama, and Theatre Journal; as well as in several books, including Dramaturgy in American Theatre, What is Dramaturgy? and Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America. Professor Borreca is a contributor to the forthcoming Norton Anthology of Drama and is at work on a comprehensive study of the British history play since World War II.

Megan Gogerty, Playwright (2012)
In 2010, Megan’s play Bad Panda was officially banned in China. Other career highlights include Feet First in the Water with a Baby in My Teeth, which will debut in a variety of theatres across the country in 2011. Her album of comic songs, Big Damn Heroes, is a tribute album to the defunct TV show Firefly and is available on CDBaby.com, iTunes, and wherever online music is sold. She also has an album about Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Her musical Love Jerry, a fact-based drama about the long-term effects of child sexual abuse, continues to be produced around the country despite the odds of a sex abuse musical getting produced anywhere. It was last seen in Philadelphia in June 2010. Her solo show, Hillary Clinton Got Me Pregnant, was listed in the Top Ten Best Shows of 2009 by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

David Gothard, Producing Artistic Director (2007, 2010, 2012)
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.

W. David Hancock, Playwright (2011, 2012)
David has received Obie Awards for his plays The Convention of Cartography and The Race of the Ark Tattoo. He earned his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Playwright's Workshop. Hancock’s work has been produced and/or developed by The Foundry Theatre (New York), Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre (Austin), Rude Mechanicals (Austin), New City Theatre (Seattle), Empty Space Theatre (Seattle), McCarter Theatre (Princeton), The Studio Theatre (Washington, DC), A Contemporary Theatre (Seattle), People’s Light & Theatre Company (Philadelphia), C.S.P.S. (Cedar Rapids), Sundance Theatre Institute, Midwest PlayLabs, Salvage Vanguard (Austin) and most recently his newest play, Booth, premiered at Studio Roanoke. Hancock is the recipient of a 2001 Bush Artist Fellowship, the 2000 CalArts/Alpert Award in Theatre, a Whiting Writers’ Award, the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and a McKnight Playwriting Fellowship.

Rob Handel, Playwright (expected Summer 2013)
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.

Jeffrey M. Jones, Playwright (2012)
Jeffrey M. Jones is a playwright whose works include 70 Scenes of Halloween, Nightcoil, Der Inka Von Peru, Tomorrowland, a series of Crazy Plays, Write If You Get Work, and J.P. Morgan Saves the Nation, a musical with a score by the late Jonathan Larson, directed by Jean Randich. His essays have appeared in The American Theatre Reader, Performing Arts Jounal, and introductions to the antologies Plays by Young Jean Lee and New Downtown Now. He has been manager of The Wooster Group, Richard Foreman and John Jesurun; taught playwriting at the Yale School of Drama and a series of Pataphysics workshops at the Flea Theater; and is currently co-curator of the OBIE-winning Little Theatre series at Dixon Place. His blog site is http://jeffreymjones.blogspot.com.

Kristin Newbom, Playwright (2012)
An ex-Seattleite, Kristin Newbom's plays include Telethon, Our Serial Remains, Educated Fleas, Happy?, Sakes Alive, Bluestory, The Pirate Play, and Subrosa. Before attending Brown University (M.F.A. playwriting 2005), Kristin was Co-founder and Co-artistic director of The Compound, Seattle's experimental performance group. Kristin has also directed many plays including; The Incubus Archives by W. David Hancock at The Playwrights Center, Eurydice and The Clean House, by Sarah Ruhl at Seattle Rep and The Women's New Play Festival, and Fefu and Her Friends by Maria Irene Fornes at Cornish College of the Arts.

Tira Palmquist, Playwright and Director (2012)
Tira is a writer, director, and teacher. Her full-length scripts include Ten Mile Lake, Fortune and Pain (at the Edge of the World), The Frequency of Stars and Other Matter, Coyote Rising, Lost Nation, and Age of Bees. In the past year almost all of her full-length plays have had a readings, including her newest play Ten Mile Lake, which was a part of exAngelus Playwrights: "A Month of Sundays" reading series. Age of Bees, which was featured in a SEEDS Development series reading at 9Thirty Theatre in NYC in June 2011, will receive its World Premiere Production at MadLab in Columbus, OH in Nov. 2012. Fortune and Pain (at the Edge of the World) was recently featured in the Mad Scene Reading Series in Los Angeles in January 2011, as well as being included in the Company of Angels’ January 2011 Playwrights’ Intensive (and was a semi-finalist for the 2011 Seven Devils conference). In February 2011, Breath of Fire Latina Theatre Ensemble presented of staged reading of The Frequency of Stars and Other Matter. In addition, Frequency was seen in a PlayLab at the 2010 Great Plains Theatre Conference, and was a semi-finalist for both the 2010 PlayPenn play development conference and the Seven Devils conference). Coyote Rising has had staged readings at UCI’s World Premiere Weekend, the Lyric Hyperion in Los Angeles, and the Gallimaufry New Works Festival in Laguna Beach; it was also produced as part of Coyote REP's 2007 Sound Plays and is available as a podcast at www.coyoterep.org. Her short plays have been produced across the country, and include: Predator (Hunger Artists’ Beyond Convention V, Nov. 2011), Breathing Water Instead of Air (Stage Door Productions, DeLand Theatre Festival, Total Theatre), Flood Stage (n.u.f.a.n. ensemble's Table and Chairs 2008), Last Rites (n.u.f.a.n. ensemble's Table and Chairs 2009, Short+Sweet Sydney 2011), Independence Day and Someone to Watch Over Me (Hunger Artists’ Dead Letter Office), Table for Three and 4th and Main (Company of Angel's L.A. Views), Off to Summer (Six Women Playwrights and 10 x 10 in the Triangle), Community/Property (Theatricum Botanicum’s Back Yard Fruit). Tira teaches research and writing at the University of California, Irvine and teaches playwriting at the Orange County High School of the Arts, where she also produces their yearly 10-minute play festival. She is a founding member of exAngelus Playwrights, and is a member of the Dramatists Guild.

Cheryl Snodgrass, Director (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012)
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

Adam Szymkowicz, Playwright (2012)
Adam’s plays have been produced throughout the U.S., Canada, England, the Netherlands, Germany, and Lithuania. His work has been presented or developed at such places as MCC Theater, Ars Nova, South Coast Rep, Playwrights Horizons, LAByrinth Theater Company, Primary Stages, The New Group, Southern Rep, Rising Phoenix, The Lark, Kitchen Dog, Theatre of Note, Naked Stage, Azuka Theater and Studio Dante among others. Plays include Deflowering Waldo, Open Minds, Anne, The Art Machine, Pretty Theft, Food For Fish, Hearts Like Fists, My Base and Scurvy Heart, Herbie, Incendiary, Old Fashioned Cold Fusion, Bee Eater, Temporary Everything, Susan Gets Some Play, Clown Bar, Fat Cat Killers, The Why Overhead, Elsewhere, Where You Can't Follow, The Artist and Nerve. His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service and Samuel French. He received a Playwright's Diploma from The Juilliard School's Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program and an MFA from Columbia University where he was the Dean's Fellow. Szymkowicz is a two-time Lecomte du Nouy Prize winner, a member of the Dramatists Guild, Writer's Guild of America, Primary Stages' Dorothy Strelsin New American Writer's Group, the MCC Playwright's Coalition and was a founding member of the Ars Nova Play Group. He served as Playwright in Residence at the William Inge Center, received a grant from the CT Commission on Culture & Tourism, and was commissioned by South Coast Rep. He is the premiere Resident Playwright at The Chance Theater in Anaheim, CA and the first playwright to participate in Bloomington Playwrights Projects' Square One Series.

* 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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