Mary Resing, Playwright/Artistic Director Active Cultures Theatre
Mary is an award-winning playwright whose play,
Hansel and Gretel Eat Crabs, was recently produced at Joe’s Movement Emporium. She was co-creator of the microbiology vaudeville
Petri Dish Circus, also produced at Joe’s as well as the ten-minute musical
Individual Medley. She has dramaturged eleven world premieres, including plays by Carlos Murillo, Craig Wright and Mark Medoff. Her dramaturgical work includes productions at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Arena Stage, Theatre of the First Amendment and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. Mary has served on panels for the Theatre Communications Group, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Fulbright Organization and the Maryland State Arts Council. She is a proud alumna of IPS, Spring Hill College, NYU, Leningrad State University (LGU) and U-Mich, Ann Arbor.
Suzanne Richard, Artistic Director Open Circle Theatre/Co-Director
SUZANNE is an actress/director and the founder of Open Circle Theatre. She has worked as an Accessibility Specialist with the National Endowment for the Arts and has a BA in Theatre from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of the chapter “Dealing with Being Different” for the Osteogenesis Foundation’s book on growing up with OI and is a speaker on genetics and disability in the arts. She has performed with the following companies in the Greater DC area: Ford’s Theatre,The Folger, Washington Shakespeare Company, Studio Secondstage, Project Y, Imagination Stage, Kaiser Permanente Educational Theatre Program, Seize the Day, Venus Theatre, Baltimore Shakespeare Festival; and her film credits include The Snowflake Crusade, Franmeister, and La Ver. She frequently directs at Open Cirlce and is a company member of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange.
Tom Prewitt/Co-Director
Tom Prewitt is a professional director, educator and administrator with over twenty five years in the field. He has directed widely in the Washington, DC region, staging many productions for Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Round House Theater, Theatre of the First Amendment and Signature Theatre, among others. He has also directed numerous New York and regional productions, from Portland, Maine to Carmel, California. He served as Associate Artistic Director at Woolly Mammoth for nearly ten seasons, during which time he not only directed for the mainstage but helped create and produce a new play reading series and many of the theatre’s acclaimed outreach programs, such as the Community Playbuilding project, which yielded fully-staged productions of Invisible City (2001) and The Other River (2006), about the 14th Street corridor and Southeast, DC, respectively. Mr. Prewitt also served as the first Executive Director of the DC Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative, and currently serves on the Board of Directors and as Managing Director for City at Peace, a non-profit youth development and performing arts group in Washington.
Monique Holt, Associate Artistic Director Open Circle/Sign Master
Monique Holt, a storyteller/actress/director/ASL translator/theater producer... - was born in Seoul, South Korea, and was adopted by a white American deaf family. Being an Asian was not cool until the late 1980's and it took her a long time to embrace her origins. Monique realized it was okay to be Asian through reading many Asian stories. She created an original play: THE NIGHT WAS SO HUNGRY THAT ATE THE MOON which she premiered at Draumasmidjan - Iceland's International Deaf Theatre Festival in 2006. Monique resides in Washington, DC. She is now in her final semester at Towson University and expects to graduate in December 2008 with an MFA in Theatre. She is, also a Gallaudet University Presidential Fellow and Adjunct Professor. She teaches for the Theatre Arts Department.
Andy Welchel, Composer
Andy Welchel (Composer) has composed music for Active Cultures’ productions Hansel and Gretel Eat Crabs and Petri Dish Circus. Andy served as music director for Shawn Northrip's "Cautionary Tales for Adults" at the 2007 CapFringe Festival and in 2009 at Round House Silver Spring and for Northrip and Mike Pettry's "Wonderful World of Zidney" at the 2007 Kennedy Center Page-to-Stage Festival. He is currently composing music for Visible Language, an Active Cultures/Open Circle Theatre musical about deaf communication.
Jacqueline E. Lawton, Dramaturg, Active Cultures Theatre/Dramaturg
In May of 2003, Jacqueline E. Lawton completed her MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin. Since then, she has worked diligently to remain actively involved in theatre as an actress, dramaturg, playwright and teaching artist. Jackie has dramaturged References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot at Rorshach Theatre, After Darwin at Didactic Theatre, Jitney at Ford’s Theatre and The Clean House at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. As an actor and writer, she has worked with CHAW, Extreme Exchange, Folger Shakespeare Library, Ford’s Theater Society, Journeymen Theater Ensemble, Shakespeare Theater Company, Stage Door, Woolly Mammoth, and Young Playwrights’ Theater.
Ian Armstrong, Executive Producer, Open Circle Theatre
Ian Armstrong is a nationally known educator and artist. As an independent producer, he has steered productions of Edward III at Washington Shakespeare Theatre and Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar (recipient of four Helen Hayes nominations), Low Level Panic, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle at Open Circle Theatre. A DC native, Ian has served on the faculty of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, McLean High School and The Kennedy Center Theatre for Young People. Ian was artistic director of Voices from the Street, a homeless advocate theatre company, founded by the Community for Creative Non-Violence. Outside DC, he has worked for the Governor's Committee for the Employment of Disabled Persons in Los Angeles, directing the 15th annual Media Access Awards; was literary associate for The Mark Taper Forum's New Works festival; artistic director of Laughing Dog Productions; and has directed for CollaborAction in Chicago, Illinois. In his spare time, he acts--Ian has appeared at Arena Stage, The Shakespeare Theater, Studio Secondstage, The Washington Shakespeare Company, and was a member of the Source Theater's resident acting company. He currently serves on the boards of Active Cultures Thealtre (www.activecultures.org), The Washington Shakespeare Company (http://www.washingtonshakespeare.org) and Open Circle Theatre (http://www.opencircletheatre.org). He is a graduate of the Corcoran School of Art and The Catholic University of America.
James Hesla, Producer, Active Cultures Theatre
James is in his second year at Active Cultures where he contributes to all things visual, technical and artistic. A playwright, his work at Active Cultures includes
Long Shot and
Petri Dish Circus. Other productions include
Home/Abroad (Beowulf Alley Theatre, Tucson),
Behold! (Rorschach Theatre, DC),
Relative Gravity (Late Night Theatre, Honolulu), and
Graves' Rule
(Inkwell, DC). He is a national member of the Playwrights' Center and the Writers' Guild.
