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Joseph Bruchac (Sky Legends, with Rita Kohn), Abenaki Indian storyteller and writer, was born in 1942, in Saratoga Springs, New York. A graduate of Cornell University, he obtained his Ph.D at the Union Graduate School in 1975. He is currently on tour for his new book from Fulcrum Publishing, Roots of Survival - a collection of his own essays focussing on Native American Storytelling and the Sacred. For the last 25 years, Bruchac has been a major voice in Native storytelling and writing, both as a writer/performer and as an editor and publisher of other Natives. He is the author of more than 60 books, the editor of more than 30 books, and has been published in over 500 publications, from American Poetry Review and Akwesasne Notes to National Geographic. This year Bruchac has been a featured storyteller at the National Storytelling Festival, received a Boston Globe Honor Award for his book The Boy Who Lived with the Bears (HarperCollins) and won the Paterson Children's Writing award for Dog People (Fulcrum). Larry Gard (Hard Hat History, with Mary Jane Walsh) is a member of the Dramatists Guild and Actors Equity Association. He has written 18 scripts, 15 of which have received a combined total of 30 productions with over 600 performances. While serving as director of the Lilly Theater at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, he wrote and directed adaptations of fairy tales, including Cinderella, The Yellow Dwarf, Beauty & the Beast, The Hare & The Tortoise (and Other Tales) and The Reluctant Dragon. His one-act, one-woman script about novelist/naturalist Gene Stratton-Porter titled A Song In The Wilderness toured Indiana for five seasons under grants from the Indiana Humanities Council. He has written two short plays for performance in museum galleries. One of them, titled Stories from Modern Times, ran for five years in the Mysteries In History gallery of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis. The other, titled Hard Hat History, was written with Mary Jane Walsh and produced at the Science Museum of Virginia. Larry is currently serving as president of the International Museum Theatre Alliance. Rita Kohn (Sky Legends, written with Joseph Bruchac), a member of the Dramatists Guild, has 14 published books and two dozen produced plays. Her full length, one-woman script about Louisa May Alcott (written with Kathy Fletcher), Necessities, was the winner of the first Indiana Festival of Emerging American Theatre. Her work was also recognized by the 1998 ATHE Jane Chambers Competition. She has created scripts under commission from the National Endowment for the Humanities/Indiana Humanities Council, Indianapolis Children's Museum, National Extension Homeakers, Indianapolis Civic Theatre, churches and Equity actors. Rita's historical plays highlight the lives of Queen Victoria, Samuel Johnson, Marcia Lee Masters and Edwin Booth. Her script A Different Journey, celebrating the lives of Leona Rostenberg and Madeline Stern, was co-produced in 1999 by the Indianapolis Phoenix Theatre and the University of Indianapolis. Her plays Ruth, Sarah & Hagar and Cat's Cradle were featured during the city-wide "POLIS Spirit & Place" festivals in Indianapolis. Rita is a co-founder of Heartland Productions in Normal, Illinois. Jon Lipsky (North Star Light: Pathways To Freedom) is an actor and director, as well as a playwright. He teaches acting as an associate professor on the theatre faculty at Boston University. He has directed productions at regional theatres such as The Merrimack Repertory Theatre, The Counterpoint Theatre, Pilgrim Theatre, TheatreWorks, and at the Vineyard Playhouse, where he serves as associate artistic director. He is a former playwright-in -residence for The Merrimack Repertory Theater, TheatreWorks, and Reality Theater. His original scripts include Call of the Wild, The Survivor: A Cambodian Odyssey (Humana Festival, 1994) Maggie's Riff, Living in Exile -- a retelling of the Iliad, Dreaming with an AIDS Patient, They All Want to Play Hamlet, and Beginner's Luck. Jon's plays have appeared at the American Repertory Theater (Guest Series), The Actor's Theater of Louisville, The Berkshire Theater Festival, The Merrimack Repertory Theater, Theatre Emory, and other regional theaters. His play titled Matters of the Heart was written for the Museum of Science in Boston, and developed as part of the national A Science Odyssey Project. Mary Jane Walsh (Hard Hat History, with Larry Gard; Socked In, The Comet Hunter and Take Two) is a journalist, playwright, actor and former museum tour guide and educator. She holds a bachelor's degree in English and political science from LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York, and a master's degree in education from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. On stage, she has portrayed a variety of roles, such as Mrs. Morehead in The Women (Dogwood Dell), Blanche in Broadway Bound (Swift Creek Mill Playhouse), Grace in Under Poppa's Picture (DuPont Players), and Kate in Brighton Beach Memoirs (Barksdale). Her original scripts, such as the one-woman play Finishing It Off and Overheard Conversations at the Wickham House have received critical acclaim, and another of her scripts is currently being translated for production in Uraguay. A member of the Dramatists Guild, Mary Jane has written three other scripts for the Science Museum of Virginia: Hard Hat History (written with Larry Gard), Socked In and Comet Hunter. Bo Wilson (At The End Of The Wire and Here's Pi In Your Eye) makes his home in Richmond, Virginia, where he works as a professional playwright. He has won a variety of national awards and fellowships for his work; most recently, his play War Story was selected as the winner of the Mill Mountain Theatre's New Play Competition, and was honored as a participant in the U.S. West New Play Festival at the Denver Center Theatre Company. Among those plays which have received professional productions in various cities across the country are Manly Men, A Wireless Christmas, Boy-Girl-Boy-Girl, Mister Dicken's Carol and Listen Close. Among the plays commissioned from him for young audiences are Arthur and Merlin, The George Washington Carver Story and The Emperor's Nightingale. He has also scripted theatrical events which support other museums and/or historic sites, including A Parson's Cause at the Hanover Courthouse, Arts Alive! in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the recently commissioned First Landing, which will be presented by the Division of State Parks at Cape Henry National Park in Virginia Beach during the summer of 2001. A graduate of Virginia Tech's Theatre Arts Department and of the National Theatre Institute, Bo is also a professional voice talent, with over 500 radio and television commercial's to his credit. Bo is a member of Actors Equity Association and of the Dramatists Guild. |
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