Penny Landau

Publicist, Producer, Writer, Editor at www.nitelifeexchange.com

Where do you look for inspiration?
I look to the pros in my business. There is an exceptional group of women who paved the way for my generation; Betty Lee Hunt & Maria Pucci, Berenice Weiler, Dorothy Olim, Madeline Gilford. These are the women I learned from, or tried to. I only hope that I can be as good at my job as they are at theirs.

What’s your favorite book/movie/line from a film?
Exodus, by Leon Uris, which sent me on my first journey to Israel. The other is To Kill A Mockingbird, both Harper Lee’s novel & the film. Nothing has ever touched me the way those words did. My other favorite film is Random Harvest. It’s probably the most romantic film on the planet & everybody knows that Greer Garson can do no wrong. The opening number with her in a kilt & tam as a British dance hall performer circa WWI, alone is worth the price of admission. Movie line? “First of all, your name’s not Eve Harrington!” & it ends with Mrs. Fiske.

What play or production changed your life?
Funny Girl. I’d never seen anything like Barbra Streisand on a Broadway stage before. I was 16 & absolutely mesmerized & saw the show ten or twelve times. Well, in those days, standing room was $2.50 & a seat was $6.75…do the math.

Is there anything you still dream of doing?
Returning to Israel one more time & appreciating it in ways that I didn’t when I was younger.

What is your best escape?
Paradise? Hawaii. Mental Health Days? Atlantic City. I love the boardwalk & the beach. My mother told me that it was her mother’s favorite place to go & that was during the “Boardwalk Empire” days. It must have been glorious!

What’s the one thing nobody knows about you?
I’m a total SciFi junkie, obsessed with quantum physics, time-travel & the space/time continuum. Yup, I’m an egghead geek! And in my heart, still a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. They’ll be back; nobody can live in LA forever.

Penny Landau saw her first Broadway show, West Side Story, when she was 9 years old. Since then, she’s performed, stage managed, directed, teched, taught & for the past 28 years, run her own PR firm, Maya PR. MA: Brooklyn College/Theatre History; PhD: Bowling Green University/American Theatre History & Directing.

Lanie Zipoy

Producer/Publicist
New York, New York USA

Where do you look for inspiration? My friends, the tennis court, theater

What’s your favorite book?  
In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez tops my favorite books.

movie? I love the films, Earth As Seen from the Moon by Pasolini, Angela by Rebecca Miller, Simple Men by Hal Hartley and The City of Lost Children by Caro & Jeunet.

line from a play? “We Belong To Each Other.” — Mac Rogers’ Universal Robots

pop culture guilty pleasure? The Glades is one of my guilty pleasures. It’s sunny, slightly funny and doesn’t tax the brain. Love it.

cocktail? Margaritas. Good, delicious, mouth-watering margaritas make me happy.  I’m particularly a fan of guava and passionfruit.

What play or production changed your life? Justice Do It. A one-night only performance by fifth graders on Broadway in 1997. The New Jersey elementary students researched globalization and child labor, and then wrote an entertaining play about McDonald’s, Nike and other conglomerates based on their research. Their school’s principal deemed the work too controversial, and banned the students from performing it. Scott Ellis read about the student’s plight in the newspaper, offered to direct them and convinced Roundabout to produce the play for one night only. After hearing about the production’s background on NPR, I snagged a couple of tickets and thoroughly enjoyed watching the 10-year-olds hit their marks (and perform with glee). I will never forget that night.

Is there anything you still dream of doing? Going to the Australian Open.

I feel most like myself when I ….rollerskate or volunteer.

What is your best escape? Tennis. Playing, watching, and enjoying tennis.

What’s the one thing nobody knows about you? I did a lot of genetic research at major institutions in my teens. I wanted to be a scientist until I was subjected to listening to Rush Limbaugh all summer long in a lab I worked in.

Lanie Zipoy is the co-founder of Voices Inside/Out, an theatrical exchange program in prisons. Producer credits include: Universal Robots, 23 Feet in 12 Minutes, The Riverside Symphony. Lanie is a member of TRU’s Career Producers Group, and the NYIT Awards Honorary Awards Committee as well as a Huffington Post contributor.

Alexis Greene

Author, Editor, Public Relations Director
New York, New York USA

Where do you look for inspiration?
Plays, novels, myself.

What’s your favorite book / movie / line from a play / pop culture guilty pleasure / cocktail?
Book: Little Women
Movie: Gone with the Wind
Line from a play: “Sometimes–there’s God–so quickly!”
Pop culture pleasure: country-western music
Cocktail: Johnny Walker Red on the rocks

What play or production changed your life? 1973 Broadway revival of A Moon for the Misbegotten with Jason Robards Jr. and Colleen Dewhurst. This was a miracle of naked acting. Nothing I saw before or have seen since can compare with their moment-to-moment emotional connection to the roles and each other.

Is there anything you still dream of doing? Writing another biography.

I feel most like myself when I…am at the theatre

What is your best escape? Going to my cabin in upstate New York.

What’s the one thing nobody knows about you? Are you kidding?

Alexis Greene, author and/or editor of 10 books about theatre, holds a Ph.D. in theatre from CUNY Graduate Center and is PR director for Community Environmental Center in Queens (trying to make the world a better place). Member PEN and Authors Guild. www.alexisgreene.com