Playwright, Composer, Director

I dreamed of being a concert pianist. So I could stay at home and practice, I started a mail order business selling celebrity photos. I made enough to pay for the ad in the Voice but not the gas, electric, or the bill from the movers who had hoisted my piano up to our 5th floor walkup. So I got a “real” job and practicing after work, when all our neighbors were home, was out. There was only so much they could take of the 3rd measure in Bach’s Italian Concerto.

Then one weekend we went to the North Fork. “What a great place for a theater!” I said to my husband. (He claims he said it.) Neither of us had any training, but if we had a summer theater, we thought, we’d have our own business, we’d only have to work for a few months, and in the winter we’d pursue our dreams.

So we mimeographed (!) a brochure, sold shares for $25.00 each and when we raised $2500.00, rented land in Greenport (next to Mr. Kramer’s drugstore because he agreed to let us use his bathroom), put up a tent and voila! – The Greenport Summer Playhouse. “What time is the show,” our first caller asked? “What time can you get here?” My husband answered.

Although the locals – mostly farmers and fishermen — were not too excited about our choice of plays, we decided to only do plays that we wanted to see. This gave us the opportunity to produce A View From the Bridge with Jason Miller; an African-American cast in A Taste of Honey featuring Hazel Scott; and one summer, The Fantasticks in which David Mamet played the Indian, a non-speaking role! And as I watched every rehearsal of every show, saw Jason Miller become Eddie Carbone one night and the next, Murray Burns in A Thousand Clowns, I thought: I want to do that; I can, I will. And that’s what inspired me to give up my dream of being a concert pianist (my teacher was very relieved!) and begin a career in theater.

Gail Kriegel is developing her musical Sweetie which began life when she was Artist-in-Residence at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Her play On the Home Front will be produced in LA next fall and she is one of the seven playwrights who wrote Seven which has been produced all over the world and translated into 10 languages.

Writer and Director

The play that changed my life would be Antigone. I was cast as Ismene for a radio production at Purdue University, where one of the theatre department’s directors was playing Creon. He asked me to join the cast of one of his productions and I spent the rest of my college years on stage in extraordinary roles, such as Julia in The Cocktail Party, Laurie in Green Grow the Lilacs, where I sang “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” a capella (!!), and Gertrude in Hamlet. Favorite line from a play: the last scene of Hamlet: “There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come – the readiness is all.” I also love Albee’s line in A Delicate Balance, which paraphrased is that we need to edit our memory in order to survive.

I remember one summer while I was in college reading D’Annuncio’s The Flame of Life, an autobiographical rendering about his relationship with Eleanora Duse, listening to the music of Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italiene. The music and the book are one in my memory.

My love of music covers a wide range–classical, new music (from Stravinsky to Steve Reich), fusion, folk, Latin, and I love country!

I look for inspiration in people I admire, the wonders of nature, art, ideas that either stimulate my mind or move me.

I feel most myself writing, painting…beside the Chilean sea, surrounded by the beauty of nature. My passion for other cultures stems from a summer spent in Mexico City when I was 19, living with a Mexican family and attending the National University. That also changed my life.

I don’t think I have any guilty pleasures. I just enjoy them.

My dreams include designing a house (I studied architectural design), painting professionally, acting again, adapting for theatre and film my book, Symbols of Resistance: The Legacy of Artists under Pinochet, about the influence of artists on the political process.

Joanne Pottlitzer, writer and director, has produced many Latin American plays in New York. She has received numerous producing and writing awards, including two Obies. Articles: NY Times, TDR, American Theatre, Theater. Teaching: Yale School of Drama, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Hunter College, Ohio University School of Theater.

Producing Director at T. Schreiber Studio


Where do you look for inspiration?
Art and music are a big inspiration for me. Whenever I need a pick-me-up a trip to the MET or a great concert always does the trick.

What’s your favorite book / movie / line from a play / pop culture guilty pleasure / cocktail?
My favorite book has always been Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, when I was little I used to re-read it every year over Christmas. My favorite movie is Chinatown, I love Polanski’s work and I love noir film so it is a marriage made in heaven. My favorite line from a movie has to be any line from Showgirls (which would also be my pop culture guilty pleasure). My favorite cocktail is a 3-way tie between a big glass of red wine, a dirty martini, and bullet bourbon on the rocks.

What play or production changed your life?
This is so cheesy but I have to say Les Misérables. My mom took me to see it when I was 6 or 7 and I turned to her during the show and said, “this is what I want to do” and I’ve been working in theatre ever since.

Is there anything you still dream of doing?
Travel the world. I’d love to just bum around the world for a few years seeing and experiencing as much as I can.

I feel most like myself when I …
am kicking ass. Metaphorically speaking that is, I don’t get violent with other people. I feel best when I’m really rocking on a project or doing the best I can on whatever it is I am working on.

What is your best escape?
Home. My apartment is my haven. I go there to be quite and alone and to recharge.

What’s the one thing nobody knows about you?
Nothing. I’m kind of an open book. Anyone who has ever talked with me for any length of time or has read either of my blogs can tell you I am a bit of an over-sharer.

Barb Kielhofer holds an M.F.A from Columbia University. She has been producing at T. Schreiber Studio for 3 years including the NYIT award-winning Balm in Gilead. She is a member of the League of Professional Theatre Women and Theater Resources Unlimited’s Producer Development Program.

Producer

Where do you look for inspiration? Music, musicals, plays, friends and family!

What’s your favorite book / movie / line from a play / pop culture guilty pleasure / cocktail? I don’t like to choose one favorite per category because I feel like it is so finite but to name a few favorite books… The Kite Runner, The Hunger Games, The Princess Trilogies, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

What play or production changed your life? Dreamgirls, when I was in the 5th grade. I seem to remember there being some simple staging and change of lights that suggested a change from the characters being backstage to being onstage within one of the songs – I just thought it was the most magical thing.

Is there anything you still dream of doing? Producing on Broadway

What is your best escape? A relaxing vacation

What’s the one thing nobody knows about you? I was very instrumental in the formation of www.nycshop.com

Regina Gatti, BFA Musical Theatre, East Carolina University. Currently the Business Development Manager for The Araca Group. Spearheaded the partnership with NYC & Company, forming www.nycshop.com. Recently produced Little Shop of Horrors (The Gallery Players, Brooklyn). Board Member New York Theatre Barn.

Where do you look for inspiration?
Most often, in history – to the point where I’ve toyed with the idea of thanking The History Channel, should I ever have to make an acceptance speech.

I’ve been fascinated with history since my childhood. In my elementary school library, there was a set of biographies that took up two to three shelves. In an extremely organized fashion (I am a Virgo, after all), I methodically and avidly read all the biographies of African-American figures, and all the ones of women; not surprisingly, I was particularly interested in their stories. I remember being disappointed when I read the last one. I didn’t realize then that those were only a few of the stories out there.

History is so full of wonderful stories, and so many of them are unknown to so most of us. I was inspired to write my musical Barnstormer when I was flipping through a book researching another historically-based project. I saw a picture of a beautiful Black woman wearing a leather flyers’ cap, which I knew placed her in the 1920s. I’d certainly never heard of an African-American aviatrix, so I did some research into this Bessie Coleman person. I found her story to be fascinating, inspiring, and eminently theatrical. Yet, despite the fact that her face was on a stamp some years ago (and her name is on a road leading to O’Hare International Airport), many people still don’t know who she is, let alone what she did. Hers is just one of the many stories “hiding in plain sight” in history – and on my bookshelves — that needs to be dramatized.

Cheryl L. Davis is the VP of Communications for LPTW. She has received the Kleban Award for her work as a librettist, and her play about the desegregation of America’s schools has received critical acclaim and tours regularly. She is a partner with the law firm of Menaker & Herrmann LLP.

Finance, production and general management

I was very lucky growing up. My parents are both professors and there was a summer stock at the college they taught at, so, from a very young age, I got to see three musicals and one children’s show every summer. And a good children’s show, at that. After one show, when I was about 9, I turned to my mom and asked her if they ever used kids in the shows. And her response was, “I don’t know. You should call them and ask.” She sat down with me and we planned out what I would say on the phone (she refused to be a stage mom and it helped that she knew that the guy who ran the program would be kind to me) and I called and left him a message. It turned out they were going to do South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music the next season. I later found out he was terrified of working with kids, but knew I was nice and would behave and listen to direction, so he cast me in South Pacific and The Sound of Music, the two productions he would be directing. From that point forward, I knew I wanted to do theatre. I loved everything about it, but was fascinated and downright entranced by what was happening backstage, which eventually led me to abandon performing for what I thought was the “interesting stuff”. That same summer stock changed my life, yet again, a few years later. I had pretty much only been exposed to “classic” musicals up to that point, but that summer they did Pippin. I didn’t know shows like that existed and the idea of a musical like that completely blew my mind. My brain raced with the possibilities of all of the interesting theatre that was out there for me to experience.

Sue Bartelt. Currently the Assistant Director of Finance for Frankel Green Theatrical Management, Sue has worked in many different capacities over her career.  Starting as a stagehand in a road house, she eventually moved into the management side of theatre and, after going back to school for her degree in accounting, into Finance.

Playwright/Theatre Director/Producer

I am the granddaughter of Romanian Jewish immigrants raised with many languages and cultures; a mixture of Northern English working class vaudeville and Central European traditions. This strange marriage has been the root of my theatre practice. It has also given me a fascination for other minorities and the experience of exile. Currently I am looking at a cross-cultural theatre piece in Arabic, Hebrew, English and French which focuses on the Bedouins which I will make with diverse theatre makers who come from other marginal groups.

Women who have led extraordinary lives are my major inspiration. In 2009, I met a NYPD cop whose witness helped create a central role in my new play Woman On The Bridge: spending time with her gave me an insight into a new, exciting world of action. In 2010, when I was in NYC, with The Dybbuk, I was supported by The League of Professional Theatre Women. This made me value the importance of our networking. I want to take what I learned from these wonderful women and extend their generosity to others.

My work has been generated by listening, particularly to older people whose lives have been dramatic. Their memories are often trigger source material. I teach writing at NYU in London and tell my students, interview your grandparents before it’s too late!

My theatre influences have been Bertolt Brecht, Joan Littlewood, Tadeusz Kantor, The Rustavelli Theatre, The Living Theatre. Watching so much European drama has encouraged me to include fragments of other languages in my texts. I speak French and German and enjoy theatre that challenges the ear and brain. My favourite movies are Oh What A Lovely War!, The Threepenny Opera, To Be Or Not To Be, Being John Malkovich, The Great Dictator, A Serious Man, Zelig, Blazing Saddles, Some Like It Hot.

Although I write theatre I would like my texts to become screenplays to engage wider audiences.

As for other important women in my life, I knew Martha Gellhorn when she was in her eighties. She taught me that to be a curious and fearless writer is to defy death.

Julia Pascal. Plays published by Oberon Books. Staged in UK, France, Germany, Poland, New York’s Theater for the New City. Scenes from text St Joan presented at The Lincoln Center’s Directors’ Lab. First woman director at The National Theatre. Associate Director at The Orange Tree Theatre. Artistic Director of Pascal Theatre Company.

Director / Choreographer / Actor

What play or production changed your life?
When I was eight, my parents took me to see a production of Oklahoma – I was smitten. I especially remember a dancer in the show who wore a straw hat with ribbons down her back. I had a hat just like it and assumed she was a child like me. At one point in the show, she fell down. She picked herself up right away and continued dancing. I’d been taking dance lessons, and the thought came to me…some day I could be a dancer in a Broadway show.

I kept that thought to myself, until one day, on my way home from college, I noticed a building from the bus window. It was the Long Island Institute of Music and Dance. I asked my dad if I could take a few classes there – he agreed and before long I was taking several classes a week.

One day, I announced to my parents my decision to drop out of college and become a dancer. My father said “over my dead body” but suggested I could major in dance at a university. Three years later, I graduated from Butler University and began auditioning for shows. I got my first job, dancing in the ensemble of the original Broadway production of Funny Girl.

Jump forward several years. I went to see the Broadway revival of Oklahoma. There was that same dancer, wearing the straw hat with ribbons and darned if she didn’t fall down again. I realized she wasn’t a child at all and that moment had been choreographed.

Several years after that, the great Agnes DeMille was being honored by the SDC with the Mr. Abbott award. I was asked to be one of the speakers at the gala. I related this story with Ms. DeMille sitting not ten feet away from me. I ended by thanking her for inspiring me to become a dancer and then a choreographer. She touched her heart and opened her hands toward me.

Seeing that show changed my life, and wonder of wonders, I actually got to tell Ms. DeMille and thank her. What a feeling!!!

Edie Cowan has had an extensive career in the theatre from performing in the original casts of three Broadway shows, playing featured roles in three national tours, to choreographing the original Off-Broadway production of Little Shop of Horrors. She’s directed and choreographed at many regional theatres and internationally under the auspices of the State Department.

Administrator / Fundraiser

At age 90, my greatest inspiration comes from waking up and facing the day. I loved Providence but am happiest in NYC and grateful to LPTW for new colleagues and friends. My life in the theatre began in the ‘60’s with a production of Harold Pinter’s Caretaker, directed by my mentor, Adrian Hall, with Richard Kneeland, William Cain and J.Frank Lucas. I contacted then-Managing Director Donald Schoenbaum to see if I could be useful.

Favorite play and line:  Skin of Our Teeth, “Mrs. Anthrobus…it is girls like I who invented the alphabet.”

Marion Simon, nee Faggen. Professional Regional Theatre Administration; Trinity Repertory Company, Prov., R I. 1964-1989; ESL instructor, Brown University 1962-1964. Devoted wife, mother and nonprofit fundraiser.

Theatre Director; Applied Theatre Practitioner

My best escape is a trip through the Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, following the Coast Range down towards the Kuchel Visitor Center and Lady Bird Johnson Grove. The Lady Bird Grove is a remarkable circular, wheelchair-friendly hike that provides the visitor with gorgeous redwoods – many of which are twinned or triplets – that you can walk around, stand under, and marvel at. For a much steeper climb, I’ll share with you “secret.” It’s not really a secret but it’s hard to discover – get a Tall Trees Access Permit. You obtain a code that changes every day to unlock a gate and drive a long way into old growth forest. (They limit the number of visitors so get the permit early in the day.) Then you park and hike in. The elevation change is somewhere around 800-1000 feet. The oldest coastal redwood is at the bottom of the trail (unmarked for safety – they are all magnificent). It’s about 38 miles south of Crescent City…. one of my dreams is to get a backcountry camping permit so I can stay in the redwoods for a several day stretch. The redwoods just put everything into perspective, and the air there is super invigorating.

Hilary Adams has been working as a professional theatre director for sixteen years. She invites you to please visit www.hilaryadams.com and like her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/theaterdirector. Member SDC.