Below are thumbnail bios of a few of the remarkable people with whom I have created new works for the theater (in alphabetical order).

Professor James Barthelmess is Professor Emeritus of Classical and Medieval Studies at Cleveland State University who currently resides in Spokane, Washington. A lover of the theatre and theatrical literature, Professor Barthelmess has translated and seen produced Plautus' The Twin Menaechmi as Oh, Brother, Seneca's Medea, Euripides' Elektra. When he retired, he had begun work on Sophokles' Philoktetes, the completion of which we all await with eager anticipation.

Roy Berko, world traveller, raconteur, is retired professor of theatre from Lorain County Community College. He is currently active as the theatre critic for the Times Newspapers, and is a member of the American Theater Critics Association. It was a grant secured by Dr. Berko that enabled me to launch the Ohio New Play Festival in 1988 at the Stocker Center on the campus of Lorain County Community College in Lorain/Elyria. Dr. Berko ran all the practical administrive side of the operation, securing help from LCCC in promotions and providing all the technical facilities and expertise. It was in a way a Camelot for Ohio playwrights and actors.

Sebastian Anthony Birch, composer, native of Ohio, was brought up in Italy where he began his musical training with piano and harmony lessons. Upon his return to Cleveland in 1985, he attended Cleveland State University where he obtained a B. M. and an M. M. in Composition studying with Bain Murray, Edwin London, and Rudolph Bubalo. After a year at Kent State University studying with Dr. Waters and Frank Wiley, he attended the Cleveland Institute of Music where he studied composition with Donald Erb and electronic music with Dr. Wright earning a D. M. A. in composition. He is currently serving on the faculty at Kent State, Stark.

He is currently writing the score for A Cricket on the Hearth for Actors' Summit. He has provided scores for four earlier projects with Wayne S. Turney beginning with James Barthelmess' and Mr. Turney's translation of Sophokles' Aias. He provided original music for Turney's productions of As You Like It and The Eunuch's Mother-in-law and the Actors Summit production of Turney's translation of Oedipus Rex.

Dr. Birch has composed numerous works for the theater including the ballets Dance of the Furies for Tom Smith, Metaphormania and Arboretum for the Tom Evert Modern Dance Company, Collage for the Cleveland Ballet, and I Love Shapes and Color Me Red for the Cuyahoga Youth Ballet and the incidental music for Eugene Hare's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Factory.

Other commissions include the opera Ligeia, an adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe short story by librettist Tim Tavcar which was premiered at the Western campus of Cuyahoga Community College in 1990, and The Hidden City, a suite for piano commissioned by the WArehouse District and premiered in October of 1992 by Anita Pontremoli.

Joining the faculty of Kent State University this fall, Dr. Birch was Music Director of the Dance Department of the University of South Florida and has taught at Cleveland State University, Baldwin Wallace College and The Cleveland Institute of Music.

Jeanne Finn, Playwright author of Mom's Blue Guitar which was premiered at the Ohio New Play Festival, is a journalist who met the O'Brien family while she was covering the Niagara region for the Buffalo News. She is well known for her coverage of the "Love Canal" scandal that forever changed the way coporations, public and otherwise, have to handle their waste disposal policies. Now living in Connecticut, Ms. Finn has written a number of plays. Her latest,

Thomas Q. Fulton, Jr. A Director, actor, teacher for the past 30 years, Tom has served as Artistic Director for three professional theatre companies in Northeast Ohio, and is currently Artistic Director of the Fairmount Center for the Performing Arts.

In 1975, he founded and headed Center Repertory Theatre; in 1980, Fulton became Artistic Director for the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble which produced many noteworthy productions, including: Chekhov's The Three Sisters (translation by Randall Jarrell), which won the Cleveland Critic's Circle Award for Best Professional Production;
Marsha Norman's Getting Out, Anthony Burgess's powerful translation of Cyrano de Bergerac (produced at Cain Park Summer Theatre), Who's Life is it Anyway? Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Midsummer Night's Dream The Seagull and many others.
After a 5 year stint as an actor with the Cleveland Play House, Fulton created, along with Director/Actor Andrew May and Managing Director, William Meckler, The Cleveland Theatre Company. CTC was operated under a Small Professional Theatre Contract and was dedicated to the production of classic plays performed by the regional artists of Northeast Ohio. Utlimately the company formed an alliance with The Factory Theatre at Cleveland State University, in associate directorship with actor/director/professor Wayne S. Turney. Among the offerings were Hamlet
The Cherry Orchard, 'night Mother by Marsha Norman with Evie McElroy and Paula Duesing;
Andrew May's hilarious adaptation of The Canterbury Tales; Don Juan in Hell by George Bernard Shaw; Lee Blessing's Two Rooms; King Lear; A Christmas Carol for Three; Twelfth Night; George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at Actors' Summit; Don Quixote in Man of LaMancha at the Halle Theatre; Tom Fulton's adaptation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and a host of other plays and one-act play festivals. Members of the company included many noteable actors and directors from Northeast Ohio. Just recently, Fulton directed the professional Equity premier of The Interview at the Halle theatre. He starred in the title role in Mr. Turney's adaptation of Tartuffe at Actors' Summit.

David Gooding is a composer, performer, arranger, lyricist and music director with well over 300 productions to his credit from the WEst Coast to Broadway. For over a dozen years, he was resident Music Director/Composer for The Cleveland Play House and has maintained long associations as Organist with The Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell, at Lake Erie College as Professor of Jusic and as Music Director for The Temple. Currently he is Organist/Choirmaster for Fairmount Temple and has served in the same capacity at St. Peter's Episcopal Church and the Old Stone Church. Mr. Gooding was honored with an Emmy for his work as Music Director for NBC-TV's Hickory Hideout and in 1995 received the Cleveland Arts Prize in music. With lyricist Paul Lee, Mr. Gooding composed two critically acclaimed children's operas for Cleveland Opera on Tour, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and A Tale of Peter Rabbit, which have already reached an aggregate audience of more than a million people. His third opera for children, An Aesop Odyssey, based on a play by Mr. Turney, received its world premiere January 1997. For years, Mr. Gooding and Mr. Turney have delighted audiences with their musical revue Wayne and David Abuse Their Muse, comprised of all the songs you've never known and loved.

Guy E. Hare, designer, costumer, TD, director, teacher, puppeteer, racconteur, "Gene" is certainly one of the most prolific and creative minds in Cleveland Theater. He has been on the faculty of Cleveland State University for more than twenty years. He was the original designer for the Ohio Light Opera; he was in the company of the Cleveland Play House in various capacities, including onstage; he has written or adapted many works for the theatre and is an utterly fearless artist. He lives in Ohio city with his wife Charlotte, herself an accomplished actress and expert in oriental theatre.

Mark Lynch, director, writer, and arts education consultant, served from 1997-2002 as Artistic Associate for Education at Florida Stage in Palm Beach where he also received the 2001 south Florida Carbonell Award for Best Direction Of A Play for THE MUSIC LESSON. In his position, Mr. Lynch developed the Young Voices series, a student critics program, the school matinee series, and the Young Playwrights Festival. A founding partner of Arts Educational Theatre Company of Cleveland, his additional directing/choreography credits include Cleveland Opera, Interlochen Arts Center, Fairmount Theatre of the Deaf, Cleveland Institute of Music, Cornell University, Orlando Opera, and Lyric Opera Cleveland. He also recently directed for video an adaptation of Akin Babatunde's play WE WEAR WALLS. He is a frequent adjudicator and workshop leader, has twiced served as dramaturg for the Bondermann-IUPPI new play development symposium, as well as on the theatre fellowship panel for the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. A graduate of St. Olaf College, Mr. Lynch spent five years as actor-teacher with The Children's Theatre Company and School of Minneapolis. Still active as a performer, he is a member of the national Board of Directors of Opera For Youth, AFTRA, and GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Educators Network).

Harper Jane McAdoo (in real life The Reverend Harper Turney, Wayne's wife) was a well known actress and director before being ordained an Episcopal Priest. She appeared at the Hilberry Repertory Theater with Wayne, was featured in many roles at the Play House and has directed productions at the Cleveland Play House including Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted, and the multi-award winning The Middle Ages. Harper has directed several productions for The Actors' Company, CWRU, CSU, The Ohio New Play Festival, and Cleveland Actors' Theatre Company. She received the Hoosier Award for Excellence for her production of The Shadow Box at The Black Knight Theatre in Indianapolis. After completing her MDiv at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, she was prdaoms and has served as Assistant Rector of St Peter's Episcopal Church in Lakewood, Ohio, Associate Rector of St Paul's Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and Rector of St. Andrew Church in Mentor, Ohio. She served on numerous diocesan committes in the Diocese of Ohio including chairing the Standing Committee, and the Search Committee for Ohio's Eleventh Bishop. Harper represented the diocese of Ohio as a Deputy at the General Convention in 2000. She served on the liason committee with Ohio's companion diocese in Ireland and traveled to Ireland. Harper is currently Priest-in-charge at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, Hilltown, Pennsylvania.

Robert Thomas Noll Hickory Hideout Tree and Baby Bee was for many years a writer and producer for WKYC in Cleveland before joining the Communications faculty of John Carroll University. He teaches playwrighting and oversees the publication of the John Carroll newspaper.

Scott Plate came to Cleveland from Atlanta and quickly established himself as a working actor with the Working Theater, and joined us at The Cleveland Theater Company as Kent in King Lear, and the title character in Uncle Vanya. In addition to many other roles with CTC, Scott worked with GLTF, Apollo's Fire, JCC, Fine Arts Association, Dobama, and most recently debuted with Actors Summit in Jacques Brel... We've worked on many original works together: Scott created the role of Oscar Wilde in my A Wilde Evening, and directed both the Aias and A-Hunting We Will Go all at the Factory Theatre.

Cassie Wolfe