Mira J Spektor

Composer, Lyricist, Poet
New York, New York USA

Where do you look for inspiration? It comes unannounced!

What’s your favorite book / movie / line from a play / pop culture guilty
pleasure / cocktail?
Songs: Cecile Chaminade, Amy Beach and Clara Schumann
Books: Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides) and State of Wonder (Ann Patchett)
Poems: ee cummings
Movie: Gone With The Wind
Opera: The Counsul (Menotti)
Musical: Candide (Bernstein)

What play or production changed your life? First time I went to the ballet…The Ballet de Monte Carlo in Paris, with my mother when I was 8 years old!!

What is your best escape? Sci-Fi …right now having Gabriel Nussbaum & Elizabeth Wood’s Bank Street Films make a TV opera of my chamber opera Villa Diodati – about Mary Shelley who wrote the great Sci Fi “Frankenstein”…Villa Diodati had 6 well reviewed productions including in the NYMTF 2008, but am looking forward to this live TV filming on May 6, 2012, 7:30 pm at the York Theater in St Peters Church!!!

What’s the one thing few people know about you? That the award-winning Bank Street Films company’s producers are my grandson & his wife!!

Mira J Spektor writes songs, scores for films, TV & CDs. Operas & musicals include The Housewives’ Cantata (lyrics LPTW June Siegel); Lady Of The Castle; Villa Diodati; Giovanni The Fearless (libretto LPTW Carolyn Balducci). CDs at BookHampton. Since 1975 produces AVIVA PLAYERS. BMI, Dramatist Guild, LPTW. “An interesting composer”, “attractive and tonal” – The New York Times.

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