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WHO'S WHO AT PLAYWRIGHTS THEATRE
John Pietrowski, Artistic Director David Winitsky, Producing Director James V. DeVivo, Director of Education Alysia Souder, Director of Program Development Jennifer DeWitt, Director of Marketing and Public Relations Alex Sarian, Education Associate Becky Deitsch Skoff, Marketing Associate Lani Kennedy, Development Consultant James Glossman, Associate Artistic Director Samuel Brett Williams, Literary Associate Jim Ligon, Box Office Manager/Webmaster
John Pietrowski (Artistic Director) has been at Playwrights Theatre since its inception twenty-one years ago, and in his current position for the past sixteen years. At Playwrights Theatre, he has directed the Premiere Productions of Whores by Lee Blessing, Big Boys by Rich Orloff and Spain by Jim Knable (all co-productions with NJ Rep), The Good Girl is Gone by D.W. Gregory, Foreign Exchange by Peter Hays, Sally’s Porch and Song of Grendelyn by Russell Davis, I See My Bones by Kitty Chen, Sister Calling My Name by Buzz McLaughlin and three shows in Rowing To America: The Immigrant Project. He recently directed Richard Dresser’s Rounding Third at What Exit? Theatre Company, and is seated to dire ct Midnight Cry at Growing Stages in January. He has also directed productions of Acts of the Apostles, Mark’s Gospel, and Genesis at Playwrights Theatre, the latter piece also moving to productions at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland and the Lamb’s Theatre in NYC. Other New York productions include Song of Grendelyn by Russell Davis, at the Public Theatre and Alice’s Fourth Floor, I See My bones for Urban Stages. He has directed two radio plays for the WNYC Radio Stage Consortium, St. Joe’s Takes the Radio Stage and The Rehearsal, both of which have aired on National Public Radio. He also directed the stage adaptation of The Rehearsal, by J. Rufus Caleb, at the New Harmony Project. His two plays Black Madonna and The Buda have been performed at Playwrights Theatre, Foundation Theatre, Loaves and Fish Theatre and Arts Club Theatre. Mr. Pietrowski was also the Program Coordinator of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Theatre Program for Teachers and Playwrights from 1988-94. A graduate of Northwestern University’s Performance Studies Department, he also holds an Masters of Public Administration in non-profit management from Seton Hall University and teaches theatre history at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He is a member of the 2001 class of Leadership New Jersey, Secretary of the New Jersey Theatre Alliance, President of the Madison Arts and Culture Alliance and a Board Member of the National New Play Network.
James V. DeVivo (Director of Education) is a teaching artist, director, writer and actor who has been involved in the field of educational theatre for 11 years; this is his sixth at Playwrights Theatre. Jim is passionate about the creation of new work for and by young people and coordinates the statewide and local Young Playwrights Festivals for PTNJ. He has been a Reader/Adjudicator for numerous writing and recitation contests including the Scholastic, Inc. Art & Writing Awards, Young Playwrights, Inc., and the theatre exit exams for the NJ Department of Education. Jim is the creator and director of the Playwrights Theatre Youth Troupe and has taught or directed at New Victory Theatre, Capital Repertory Theatre, Niagara Middle School, New York University, and Oak Hill Academy. He has presented playwriting workshops at the NJEA Convention in Atlantic City and the Monmouth County Teen Arts Festival. As an actor, Jim has performed with the New Plays for Young Audiences Series at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York City and with the Artpark Repertory Theatre (ART) in Lewiston, NY. Additionally, Jim spent one summer leading the mid-inning mayhem as the Onfield Master of Ceremonies for the Aberdeen IronBirds, the Single-A affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles. He holds a BFA in Theatre and English from Niagara University and a Master of Arts degree in Educational Theatre from New York University. Jim will begin doctoral study at NYU in the fall.
Alysia Souder (Director of Program Development) is an accomplished playwright and director who has been working as a teaching artist for the past 9 years. She has taught theatre, playwriting and conflict-resolution throughout NJ with many arts organizations including: Playwrights Theatre, The Arts Council of the Essex Area, The New Jersey Performing Art Center and the New Jersey School of the Arts. As an arts administrator, Alysia is passionate about the importance of the arts in the lives of children and young people. "After many years of rewarding teaching work with Playwright’s Theatre, I am excited to join the administration team in bringing quality arts programming to the community". Souder’s recent work in the theatre includes directing a dramatic piece written by homeless individuals that participated in an on-going writing workshop at the Hoboken Clergy Coalition Shelter. A full-length production of Voices from the Shelter, which includes computer-generated sets, is scheduled go into rehearsal this fall.
Jim Ligon (Webmaster, Box Office) is an actor, director, and teacher and has worked with Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey in all three of those capacities for the last 18 years. He is a teaching artist in the New Jersey Writers Project in high schools and elementary schools across the state. He holds an M.F.A. degree from the University of Virginia and teaches acting at Montclair State University where he has directed numerous productions including, Radium Girls which premiered here at Playwrights Theatre in the 1999-2000 season, A Few Good Men, Nunsense, Deathtrap, Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Pippin. He was on the theatre faculty at Northern Kentucky University for two years, and has directed in such diverse locales as New Jersey, Alabama, and Mannheim, Germany. As an actor he most recently appeared at Playwrights Theatre as Bob in Where the Sun Never Sets by Robert Clyman. Jim played Papa in the world premiere of The Good Girl is Gone, by D.W. Gregory and was in the award-winning drama, Radium Girls, also by D.W. Gregory, in Playwrights Theatre's 1999 - 2000 season and appeared in the staged reading of Big Boys, by Rich Orloff. In NYC he created the role of Joe Spinelli in the hilarious new off-off Broadway comedy Skin Deep by Jon Lonoff. Also in New York he was Paul in the New York premiere of Jim Grimsley's The Lizard of Tarsus, playing opposite John Pietrowski and directed by Joseph Megel. He was also in Heathen Valley and A Woman Without a Name, both in the Romulus Linney season at Signature Theatre Company. Among his many regional theatre acting credits, he counts as favorites: Waiting for Godot, Greater Tuna (6 productions at different regional theatres across the country), How the Other Half Loves, Rounding Third, Speed the Plow, ART, All in the Timing, and A Midsummer Nights Dream. Jim can also be seen on your TV set in many regional and national commercials, most recently for Chase Bank and Snickers. Check out his web site at www.jimligon.com.
Jennifer DeWitt (Director of Marketing and Public Relations) has marketed a variety of products and services in many diverse industries such as publishing, conferences/trade shows, software, plumbing and air conditioning, recycled ink-jet cartridges and theatre. Prior to moving to New Jersey, she was the Director of Marketing for Main Street Theatre in Houston, Texas implementing key marketing strategies for their Main Stage productions, Concert Musical series, Youth Theatre and Kids on Stage educational program. Jennifer is also an actress and a company member of New Jersey Dramatists & Waterfront Ensemble and 12 Miles West Theatre Company. She has appeared Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway and in the New York International Fringe Festival, Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival, The Strawberry Festival, The Best of The Strawberry Festival and numerous times with numerous plays at The Producer's Club. In addition to her theatre work, she is a voice-over actress for several successful Japanese animes. She starred in the wildly popular Martian Successor Nadesico as Yurika and played the overly-enthusiastic baseball manager, Nene, in the Princess Nine series to name just a few. She has studied in Rome, Italy and Cuernavaca, Mexico, and enjoys traveling the globe.
Becky Deitsch Skoff (Marketing Associate)is a recent graduate of the Master’s program in Arts Administration at Boston University. She has an extensive background in administrative work for numerous non-profit performing arts organizations, including the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, the New Harmony Theatre, The Lincoln Amphitheatre, and Curtain Call Performing Arts Theatre in Tampa, FL. She was most recently associated with the Citi Performing Arts Center in Boston, and has also coordinated national educational tours with Chamber Theatre Productions. Becky is an alumni of the University of Florida, where she received her undergraduate degree in Public Relations and Theatre.
James Glossman (Associate Artistic Director) For Playwrights Theatre’s mainstage, he has directed Circumference of a Squirrel, and the world premiere of his own play, The Special Prisoner, starring William Schallert, adapted from the novel by Jim Lehrer---after the play first won first prize at the Southwestern Festival of New Plays in Houston, TX. At Playwrights Theatre he has also directed the concert reading, last spring, of Mr Lehrer’s play, The Will and Bart Show, with an all-star cast including Josef Sommer, Frank Converse, Pamela Payton-Wright, and John Astin. Over the last several seasons at Playwrights Theatre, he has also directed the Rose City Project, an ongoing series of prose and play readings funded by the NJ State Arts Council, and other readings for Playwrights Theatre, featuring such notable actors as Mason Adams, Jayne Atkinson, Sam Coppola, Frankie Faison, Maryann Plunkett, Priscilla Lopez, Ron McLarty, Joe Morton, Vin Scelsa, Jay O. Sanders, and Louis Zorich, among others. Also in New Jersey---in addition to the first leg of Circumference of a Squirrel at NJ Rep---he has directed, at Luna Stage in Montclair, his own adaptation of Jim Lehrer’s novel Kick the Can, followed by productions of Waiting for Godot, Macbeth, Travesties, True West, The Collection, his own adaptation of Kate Atkinson’s Whitbread-winning novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum, the world professional premiere of Sheldon Harnick’s musical, Dragons, and Immoral Imperatives (which he also directed at Wellfleet Harbor Actors’ Theatre [WHAT] on Cape Cod, w/Laura Esterman and Malachi Throne). He recently directed Jeffrey Sweet's The Value of Names (w/Jack Klugman and Louis Zorich) at the Nebraska Repertory Theatre, after directing a workshop of the same play the previous fall (w/Edward Asner and Howard Morris), at the Matrix Theatre in L.A. He will re-direct this play, with Klugman and Zorich, in NYC in Feb ’05. For Shadowland Theatre in upstate NY he staged the East Coast premiere of Jeffrey Sweet's play Bluff (w/John Astin); and rediscovered and directed the lost American political thriller Spread Eagle at L.A. Theatre Works (w/Edward Asner, Sharon Gless, Fred Savage, Paul Murphy,& Jamey Sheridan.) His adaptation, for radio, of Stephen Crane's The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, was produced at WGBH-Boston and broadcast on NPR Playhouse, and his performance, at Luna, as Charlie in The Foreigner was nominated for Best Comic Performance by the Star-Ledger. Among his upcoming projects this season will be the workshop and production of All That is Here, an exploration of the 1994 Rwandan genocide---the script of which he has been developing with actor/writer Jay O Sanders. His screenplay adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Bluebeard, has been optioned by Quince Productions in Los Angeles. He has adapted and directed works by Twain, Faulkner, O Henry, Joyce, Fitzgerald, Cheever, Runyon, and others. His performance as Charlie in The Foreigner was nominated for Best Comic Performance by the Star-Ledger of Newark. Co-author of a series of musicals with composer Stephen Randoy, one of which (In Orbit) had its world premiere with actress Gwyneth Paltrow as Halley's Comet. His adaptation of Twain's The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg is published by Dramatic Publishing, with recent productions in Chicago, Indiana, Kansas, Florida, and California. Mr Glossman is a graduate of Northwestern University, ACT-San Francisco, BADA-Oxford, and the Yale School of Drama. He runs the drama program at Far Brook School, and during 2004-05 will be a visiting professor of Directing at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Lanie Kennedy, (Development Consultant) has directed foundation and corporate fundraising at Playwrights Theatre since fall 2005. Over the past decade, she has consulted in fundraising, special events, strategic planning and board development with dozens of theatres, dance companies, design studios, service organizations and other arts groups in the New York/New Jersey area. Ms. Kennedy was previously development director at Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for professional theatre, and ArtsConnection, New York City’s largest arts-in-education provider to public schools; and was managing director of Senta Driver=s modern dance company. She holds an M.A. in ethnomusicology from Columbia University and serves on the board of directors of the National Asian American Theatre Company.
David Winitsky, (Producing Director) has worked as a director on Broadway, off-Broadway, and regionally at Paper Mill Playhouse, Steppenwolf Theatre, California Shakespeare Festival and Philadelphia Theatre Company. His arts management experience includes commercial General Management with Blue Man Group, Maria Productions, and Broadway on Broadway, as well as non-profit leadership as General Manager of the Obie-Award winning HERE Arts Center in Lower Manhattan. At Playwrights he is responsible for a fundraising portfolio of over half a million dollars, human resources, and will direct Doris Baizley's SEXSTING this season. Mr. Winitsky is also the Associate Artistic Director at What Exit? Theatre, a company dedicated to the healing power of laughter. In New Jersey he has directed at Playwrights, What Exit?, Luna Stage, the Theater Project and 12 Miles West. In his artistic work, Mr. Winitsky often works with Jewish themes; he created a puppet-theatre adaptation of Sholem Aleichem's Another Page from the Song of Songs and a bissel schpiel, a piece for young families based on Yiddish short stories (both with Elizabeth Samet). His a large-scale production of Ansky's The Dybbuk was hailed as "inventive....and haunting" by the Chicago press, and critics praised last season's production of Beau Jest as "gently and expertly directed". He holds an MFA in Directing from Northwestern, a BA in Mathematics from Cornell, and is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab and New York's Emerging Artists Theatre. David is the proud husband of playwright and painter Elizabeth Samet and father to Ezekiel and Alexander.
Alex Sarian (Education Associate) is an Argentine theatre artist and educator who has been living in New York since 2002. As an artist and educator, he has been associated with New York organizations such as City Lights Youth Theatre, TADA! Youth Theatre and Second Stage Theatre, as well as with The British Arts Centre, the Actors’ Repertory Theatre and the Teatro Picadilly in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he worked with artists such as Oscar-winner Eugenio Zanetti. A member of the Argentine Actors Association and a graduate of The Actor’s Institute, Alex has performed on Off-Broadway stages as well as in feature length films, and has composed music for several children’s shows in New York. His studies have taken him to University of Puerto Rico and the Center for the Theater of the Oppressed, in Brazil; his work as a guest artist and arts administrator have lead him to design and teach high school and graduate classes in New York, Philadelphia, Buenos Aires and Barcelona. Before coming to Playwrights, Alex aided in the creation of Shakespeare At School, a non-profit arts education organization that aims to promote the works of Shakespeare in New York City public schools, where he served as the Administrative Director, Web Designer and a Teaching Artist. He holds a B.S degree in Educational Theatre and a M.A. degree in Educational Theatre and Performing Arts Administration from New York University.
Samuel Brett Williams (Literary Associate) Samuel Brett Williams hails from Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he was raised in a strict Southern Baptist environment. He received his B.A. in English and Political Science from Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, and his M.F.A. in Playwriting from Mason Gross School of the Arts, where he studied under Lee Blessing. A few of the theatres where Brett’s plays have been produced are Cherry Lane Theatre, Stageworks/Hudson, Mile Square Theatre, and New Orleans Theatre Experiment. His plays have been selected for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights’ Conference, the Philadelphia New Play Festival, the New Plays from the New South Festival, and other festivals/conferences across the country. Brett’s play Arkadelphia will be published in Best New American Plays 2004-2005 by Applause Books. Brett is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, and Ars Nova Play Group. He is currently the playwright in residence at Playwrights’ Theatre of New Jersey, and he teaches Screenwriting, Expository Writing, and Playwright/Director Relationship for Rutgers University. Brett is twenty-six years old.
