CREATIVE TEAM BIOGRAPHIES ANNA DEAVERE SMITH Anna Deavere Smith is an actress, playwright, and author. It has been said that she created a new form of theater. When granted the prestigious MacArthur Award, her work was described as "a blend of theatrical art, social commentary, journalism, and intimate reverie." She has performed in film and television as well as on stage. She is probably most recognizable in popular culture as Nancy McNally, the National Security Adviser on NBC's hit series, "The West Wing." However, it is Ms. Smith's work in the theater that has been her intellectual focus. Looking at controversial events from multiple points of view, Ms. Smith's theater combines the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects with the art of interpreting their words through her performance. The New York Times in reviewing her Broadway show Twilight: Los Angeles, about the 1992 Los Angeles riots, said of her performance, "[she is] the ultimate impressionist: she does people's souls." Jack Kroll of Newsweek proclaimed the work "an American Masterpiece." She does hundreds of interviews while creating a play. Using verbatim excerpts of the interviews, she has performed up to as many as 46 people in the course of an evening. Ms. Smith performed Twilight: Los Angeles around the US and on Broadway. It received two Tony nominations, an Obie, a Drama Desk Award, a Special Citation from the New York Drama Critics, and numerous other honors. President and Mrs. Clinton and Vice President Al Gore attended her Washington, D.C., performance. She produced, wrote and performed the movie version of Twilight for PBS. Another of her plays, Fires in the Mirror, examined a race riot that occurred in Crown Heights, Brooklyn (1991) when age old racial tensions between Black and Jewish neighbors exploded. It received an Obie Award, numerous other awards and wasa runner up for the Pulitzer Prize. She performed the play around the US, in London and Australia. The film version of Fires in the Mirror was also broadcast on PBS. Fires in the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles are two of several plays performed and created using her journalistic technique, and are part of an ongoing series that Ms. Smith calls On the Road: A Search for American Character. Other works in the series include House Arrest, which deals with the American presidency, and Hymn, a collaboration with world famous choreographer and dancer, Judith Jamison, for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. She is currently developing a new play in the On The Road series called Let Me Down Easy. Its subject is the resilience and vulnerability of the human body. This play was inspired by work she did at the Yale School of Medicine where she was visiting professor. While at Yale, she created a performance for medical grand rounds, called Rounding It Out (2000). She has been featured in several films, among them, The American President, where she played the press secretary to Michael Douglas's president. She was featured in Robert Benton's film, The Human Stain. She appeared in Dave and Rent. She was a regular on the CBS series Presidio Med, and had a recurring role on The Practice. She co-starred in HBO's 2007 film Life Support, which starred Queen Latifah. She has just completed work on Dancing With Shiva, a new film by Jonathan Demme, starring Anne Hathaway. She founded and directed the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue, which was originally funded, in large part, by the Ford Foundation. She was The Ford Foundation's first artist in residence (1997). The Institute was launched at Harvard University, where it was held for three summers (1998, 1999, 2000). The Institute is now being re-developed at New York University. She was Artist in Residence at MTV Networks from 2001-2004. She was the Inaugural Harmon/Eisner Artist in Residence at The Aspen Institute in July 2006. Her latest book is Letters to a Young Artist (Vintage Random House). Her book, Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines, is based on her observations of time she spent in Washington, D.C. To prepare for that book, she followed both President Clinton and Bob Dole on their 1996 campaign trails. Other books include publications of her plays, Fires in the Mirror, Twilight, House Arrest, and Piano. Her articles and writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, The New Yorker, O Magazine, O HOME, ELLE, THE ATLANTIC, A Public Space, Essence, Fortune, and The Drama Review. She is University Professor at New York University, where she is appointed in the Tisch School of the Arts, and affiliated with the New York University School of Law. She was Ann O'Day Maples Professor of the Arts at Stanford University where she taught from 1990 - 2000. She also taught at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Southern California. She recently taught, at the invitation of Oprah Winfrey, at Oprah Winfrey's Leadership Academy For Girls in South Africa. In 2007, Americans for the Arts presented her with the Kitty Carlisle Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts. She also received the Mayor's Award for Art and Culture by the Mayor of New York City in 2007. She was the recipient of the Alphonse Fletcher Fellowship in 2006. The fellowship recognizes work by scholars, writers, and artists who addressand carry out the broad social goals of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision of 1954. She was twice nominated for the NAACP Image Award. She will receive the prestigious New York Women in Communication's Matrix Award for her remarkable achievements and outstanding leadership roles in her field in Spring 2008. She has several honorary degrees and medals of recognition - among them those that represent Barnard, Northwestern, Smith, Bates, Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan, Holy Cross, Cooper Union, and Radcliffe College. She will receive an honorary degree from Juilliard in 2008. She is on the board of the Museum of Modern Art where she chairs the Committee on Film. She is also on the board of the Center for American Progress and of Studio in a School. STEPHEN WADSWORTH Mr. Wadsworth previously directed Marivaux's The Triumph of Love and Francesca Faridany's Fräulein Else at Long Wharf Theatre. He recently directed Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride at the Metropolitan Opera and Wagner's The Flying Dutchman for Seattle Opera, where his productions include Gluck's Orpheus with Mark Morris and Wagner's Ring cycle, due to be revived in 2009. His productions of plays by Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Molière, Goldoni, Marivaux, Wilde, Shaw and Coward have established him as a master of the classical repertoire. In 2008 he will direct Aeschylus' Agamemnon at the Getty Villa's Greek theater in Los Angeles. For his work on the plays of Marivaux and Molière - as translator, director and scholar - he was recently named Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. He has also translated plays and operas by Monteverdi, Handel, Goldoni, Mozart and Udo Zimmermann, and worked closely with many contemporary composers and playwrights including Leonard Bernstein, with whom he co-authored the opera A Quiet Place, Peter Lieberson, Beth Henley and now Anna Deavere Smith. He was a 2007 Harman/Eisner Artist in Residence at the Aspen Institute, succeeding Ms. Smith, and he has just been named the James S. Marcus Faculty Fellow at the Juilliard School, where he will teach acting and direct the post-graduate opera program. DAVID ROCKWELL Mr. Rockwell designed the sets for Hairspray (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle nominations), Legally Blonde The Musical (Drama Desk nomination), The Rocky Horror Show (Drama Desk Nomination), All Shook Up (Drama Desk Nomination), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Armed and Naked in America, Omnium Gatherum, and, for film, Team America. He is the founder and CEO of Rockwell Group, a New York-based architecture and design firm. Projects include Adour Alain Ducasse at The St. Regis, JetBlue's Terminal 5 at John F. Kennedy International Airport, Imagination Playground, the Elinor Bunin-Munroe Film Center at Lincoln Center, Aloft Hotels, W New York, W Union Square, Nobu, Nobu Fifty Seven and Café Gray. Rockwell is included in Interior Design magazine's Hall of Fame and received the Presidential Design Award. He is currently the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA) and serves on the board of Citymeals-on-Wheels. Spectacle, a book by David Rockwell with Bruce Mau, was published by Phaidon in 2006. ANN HOULD-WARD Broadway: A Catered Affair (upcoming), Company (Tony Award, Best Revival), Dance of the Vampires, Beauty and the Beast (Tony Award, ATW's Design Award, Ovation Award, Olivier Nomination, Best Costume Design), Into the Woods (Tony Award, Drama Desk, OCC nominations; L.A. Drama Critics Circle Awards), Falsettos, Sunday in the Park with George (Tony Award, Drama Desk nominations), Harrigan 'N' Hart, Dream, St. Joan, Three Men on a Horse, Timon of Athens, In the Summer House, Little Me, The Moliere Comedies. Off-Broadway: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Antony & Cleopatra, House Arrest, Cymbeline (Public Theatre), Surviving Grace, Lobster Alice. Film: Strike! Other credits include Peter Grimes (upcoming Metropolitan Opera), Alvin Ailey, New York City Opera, Ballet Hispanico, White Oak Project, American Ballet Theatre. DAVID BUDRIES Mr. Budries is delighted to design his first production at Long Wharf Theatre. He has created numerous sound designs for Broadway, Off-Broadway, and American regional theatres, including Hartford Stage, Center Stage, McCarter Theatre, Huntington Theatre, Dallas Theater Center, La Jolla Playhouse, Ford's Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Trinity Rep, Alliance Theatre and Yale Repertory Theatre. He is the owner of Sound Situation, an independent music production studio specializing in the creation of sound scores and music for the performing arts, including numerous CDs, radio broadcasts, and museum installations. He chairs the Sound Design Department for the Yale School of Drama. Mr. Budries' work has been recognized with three Connecticut Critics Circle Awards, three Los Angeles Drama-Logue Awards and a nomination for the LA Stage Alliance Ovation Awards for his work on Souvenir at the Brentwood Theatre, LA. ELIZABETH ROXAS-DOBRISH Ms. Roxas-Dobrish was born in Manila and became the youngest member of Ballet Philippines. After receiving scholarships to Joffrey, Graham and The Ailey School, she danced with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Ohad Naharen and Joyce Trisler Dancy Company before joining Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, where she was a principal dancer from 1984-1997. In a 2000 New York Times article, Jennifer Dunning described her as "a cool, still, lyrical center of the Ailey storm." While dancing, Ms. Roxas-Dobrish worked with many of the most significant choreographers, including Alvin Ailey, Katherine Dunham, Jerome Robbins, Talley Beatty, Lar Lubavitch and Judith Jamison, to name a few. She performed in the Emmy Award winning PBS specials "Two By Dove" and Judith Jamison's "A Hymn For Alvin Ailey" among others, and was featured in a 1997 Dance Magazine cover article and named by Avenue Magazine as one of the 500 most influential Asian-Americans. After leaving Ailey as a dancer, Ms. Roxas-Dobrish was invited to perform on Broadway in The King and I as Eliza and made several guest appearances in the United States and abroad before she turned full time to teaching. She has worked with Anna Deavere Smith at the Graduate School at New York University and has taught the Actors Studio class at the Alvin Ailey School. She had done some choreography in regional theatres Off-Broadway and restaged ballets of Alvin Ailey's works. She also works with Jacobs Pillow. Currently, she is on the faculty at Cap 21 for NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and The Ailey School. AMY STOLLER Ms. Stoller is delighted to be making her Long Wharf Theatre debut with this production. She is Resident Dialect Designer/Coach and occasional Dramaturg at the Mint Theater Co. in New York, where her next project will be the premiere production of The Fifth Column, a play by Ernest Hemingway. Credits earlier this season include the US premiere of The Oxford Roof-Climber's Rebellion at Urban Stages, the US premiere of The Shape of Metal, starring Roberta Maxwell and directed by Brian Murray at Origin; and the Boomerang Theatre Co. 2007 rep season. Other clients include the Pearl Theatre Co., Keen Co.; Drama League DirectorFest; Peterborough Players (NH); Distilled Spirits (OOBR Award, Northanger Abbey), and Nickelodeon's "Dora the Explorer." Amy is also Co-Director of Cheer From Chawton, currently touring the US and UK. She is a proud member of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association. For more information, please visit her website. DORINNE KONDO Ms. Kondo, Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at USC and the former Director of Asian American Studies, is the author of two award-wining books: Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace, and About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theatre. She is currently writing a new book (Re)visions of Race, that analyzes issues of race, power and truth through the work of Anna Deavere Smith, the Chicano-Latino trio Culture Clash, and David Henry Hwang. Ms. Kondo was a dramaturg for the world premiere of Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles in 1992 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and for its filming for PBS. Other dramaturgy includes workshops for Smith's House Arrest for Arena Stage and the Mark Taper Forum. Ms. Kondo's first play (Dis)graceful(l) Conduct received Mixed Blood Theatre's "We Don't Need No Stinking Dramas" national comedy playwriting award; she is currently revising her play Seamless, which was read at New York Theater Workshop. Education: B.A. Stanford University; M.A. and Ph.D. , Harvard University, all in Anthropology. Kondo was Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Harvard and held the MacArthur Chair in Women's Studies at Pomona College before joining USC. Thanks to Anna for this opportunity to work together again! ALISA SOLOMON Ms. Solomon is a teacher, writer and dramaturg living in New York City. A professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, she directs the Arts and Culture concentration in the MA program there. Her criticism, essays and political reporting have appeared in a wide range of magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, GuardianAmerica.com, Nation, Forward, Theater, and Village Voice (where she was on the staff for 21 years). She also provides occasional theatre commentary on WNYC radio (New York's NPR affiliate). Her book, Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender (Routledge, 1997) won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. She is the co-editor (with Tony Kushner) of the anthology Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Grove, 2003). DIANE DIVITA AMY PATRICIA STERN Amy Stern's Production Stage Manager credits include Mary Stuart (Pearl Theatre Company); Adam Baum and the Jew Movie and The Pitchfork Disney (Blue Light Theatre); Waiting For Godot, Therese Raquin and Another Part of the House (Classic Stage Company); and The Dying Gaul (Vineyard Theatre). Her Assistant Stage Manager credits include The Price, Uncle Vanya, Man of La Mancha, The Cocktail Hour and Rocket to the Moon, Travesties (Long Wharf Theatre); A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, Intimate Apparel and The Foreigner (Roundabout Theatre Company); Sorrows and Rejoicings, Crimes of the Heart and Tiny Alice (Second Stage); The Tale of the Allergist's Wife (Manhattan Theatre Club); Iphigenia and Other Daughters, Amphitryon and Endgame (Classic Stage Company); The Waiting Room (Vineyard Theatre); and Golden Boy (Blue Light Theatre Company). DARYL ROTH Ms. Roth is privileged to have produced five Pulitzer Prize winning plays: Proof (2001 Tony, Best Play); Wit; How I Learned to Drive; Three Tall Women; and Anna in the Tropics. Other distinguished productions: Curtains; A Catered Affair; Is He Dead; Die, Mommie, Die!; August: Osage County; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; The Year of Magical Thinking; Deuce; Inherit the Wind; Coram Boy; Caroline or Change; Salome; Medea; The Goat, or Who is Sylvia (2002 Tony, Best Play); The Tale of the Allergist's Wife; Twilight: Los Angeles; Bea Arthur on Broadway; Beckett/Albee; Old Wicked Songs; The Play About the Baby; Camping with Henry & Tom; Talking Heads; The Baby Dance; Thom Pain; Closer Than Ever; De La Guarda. Dedicated to nurturing and supporting theatre artists, The Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award is given annually to an artist who has demonstrated exceptional talent and promise in his or her field. Ms. Roth serves on the Board of Directors of Lincoln Center Theatre, Sundance Institute, New York State Council on the Arts. Love to Steven and my wonderful family.
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