| Current and Recurring Faculty |
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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. Todd works with Mill Mountain Theatre as Literary Associate and oversees its alternative programming and CenterPieces Reading series. Additionally he is working closely with Kenley Smith to launch Studio Roanoke, a storefront theatre space dedicated to new works development in downtown Roanoke. He is an Active Member of the Dramatists Guild, and member of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of America.
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Jason Grote 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.
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Rebecca Rugg 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.
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| Jeffrey Sweet has been a playwright, screenwriter, lyricist, critic, journalist, teacher, theatre historian, and sometime songwriter and director. He is a resident member of Chicago's Victory Gardens Theater, which has produced twelve of his plays. Sweet is also the author of Something Wonderful Right Away (an oral history of Chicago's The Second City troupe), The Dramatist's Toolkit and Solving Your Script. He has written for television and adapted some of his plays for radio. His work for the soap opera One Life to Live resulted in a Writers Guild of America Award for writing for a daytime serial in 1992 and an Emmy nomination. Sweet serves as a member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild, is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, and is an alumnus of New Dramatists. He contributes a regular column to the magazine, Dramatics and the British website on film and theatre music, Stage and Screen Online. |
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| Dr. Melody A. Zobel is an actress, director, scholar and acting coach. A transplant to Virginia from the West Coast, she holds a PhD in Theatre from University of Colorado in Boulder, an MFA in Acting from UCLA and a BA in Literature from Pepperdine University. A current resident of Blacksburg, Virginia, Melody most recently directed Neil Simon’s Rumors, Jose Rivera’s References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, and Tom Stoppard’s On The Razzle. She recently performed in productions of Annie Get Your Gun, Death of a Salesman, Never In My Lifetime, and Into the Woods. She is particularly fond of the works of Edward Albee having directed Old Times, and performed in Three Tall Women, All Over, and Old Times. Melody currently teaches all levels of performance courses and directs for the Hollins Theatre Department. She is married to Dr. Chris Zobel of Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business. They have a five-year-old son, Joey, who keeps them wildly entertained at all times of the day and night. |
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Ernie Zulia chairs
the Hollins undergraduate theatre department. He has directed
hundreds of plays, musicals, operas, and world premieres.
His stage adaptation of Robert Fulghum’s international
best-selling book, All I Really Need To Know I Learned
In Kindergarten, has been produced around the world.
He is the founding director of the International Theatre
Laboratory of Crete, and has served as associate artistic
director for Mill Mountain Theatre.
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Planned Guests*
Erin Courtney (Confirmed for 2009)
Erin Courntey is a playwright whose plays have been produced or developed by Clubbed Thumb, The Public Theater, Birmingham Repertory, The Vineyard, The Flea, and The Actors Theater of Louisville, the Soho Rep writers/directors lab, New York Stage Film. Currently, Ms. Courtney is collaborating with Elizabeth Swados on a musical , Kaspar Hauser, which will be produced by the Flea Theater in February 2009. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell colony, a recipient of a NYSCA grant and a MAP Fund grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. Her play Owls is published by Smith and Kraus in Humana Festival 2001: The Complete Plays and Demon Baby is published in two anthologies New Downtown Now and Funny, Strange, Provocative: Seven Plays from Clubbed Thumb. As an undergraduate, Ms. Courtney studied with Paula Vogel at Brown University and as a graduate student she studied with Mac Wellman at Brooklyn College. She currently teaches playwriting at Brooklyn College and is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb. She is also a member of 13P, as well as the co-founder of the Brooklyn Writer’s Space and Room 58.
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.
Emily Mann (Confirmed for 2009)
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.
Carl Hancock Rux (Confirmed for 2009)
Head of Writing for Performance Program Carl Hancock Rux is a published poet, essayist, novelist and playwright. His plays and performance works for theater have been produced and or commissioned throughout the United States and internationally at venues including The Joseph Papp Public Theater, the Robert E. Fischer Center for the Performing Arts, PS 122, the Kitchen, HERE Arts Center, New Victory Theater, Lincoln center (Serious Fun & Outdoors Festival), Aaron Davis Hall, the BAM Harvey Theater (Next Wave Festival), REDCAT (Los Angeles), Mass MOCA (Mass.), the Central District Forum for Arts and Ideas (Seattle, Washington), Theater X (Milwaulkee, Wisconsin), University of Ghana at Legon (West Africa), Ebenezor Experimental Theater Festival (Sweden) Maison des Arts (Creteil, France), and the Victoria Theater (Singapore) among others. Plays include include Geneva Cottrell, Waiting for the Dog to Die, Mycenaean, Chapter & Verse, The No Black Male Show, Smoke, Lilies & Jade, Singing In the Womb of Angels, Yanga, Song of Sad Young Men and the libretto for two operas: The Blackamoor Angel and Makanda. As a radio journalist he has been a guest commentator on WNYC and for XM radio's The Bob Edward's Show as well as co-wrote and hosted National Public Radio's Walt Whitman: Song of Myself, winner of the New York Press Club Journalism Award for Entertainment News. As a recording artist he has recorded three cd's: Rux Revue (Sony 550), Apothecary Rx (Giant Step) and Good Bread Alley (Thirsty Ear). Rux is the subject of Carl Hancock Rux, Coming of Age, (Larry Clamage/Richard Maniscalco for Voices of America) recipient of the CINE Golden Eagle award for television documentary. Carl Hancock Rux has written for (and performed with) several dance companies including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Urban Bush Women, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co., Jane Comfort & Co., and created the title role in the Robert Wilson/Bernice Johnson Reagon opera The Temptation of Saint Anthony which had its world premiere at the Paris Opera (Garnier). Mr. Rux is the recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts Prize, and the Bessie Schomburg Award, the Village Voice Literary Prize, Fresh Poet Award, National Endowment for the Arts/Theater Communication Group Playwright in Residence fellowship, NEA Leadership Initiatives Meet the Composer Grant, the Kitchen Theater Artist Award, Rockefeller Map grant, Creative Capital Artist grant, New York Foundation for the Arts Gregory Millard fellowship, NYFA Prize, Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) Arts & Artists in Progress Award and was shortlisted for the United Artist Fellowship. He is the author of the Village Voice Literary prize winning collection of poetry Pagan Operetta (Fly By Night Press/Autonomedia), the novel Asphalt (Simon & Schuster) and the OBIE award winning play Talk (TCG).
* 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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