Mark Lazar (SMYTHE)

Mark Lazar is an eleven-season member of People’s Light & Theatre, where most recently he was seen in Cinderella (Fairy Godmother), Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Jersey Lily (Dr. Watson), and A Tale of Two Cities (ensemble). Among favorites at PLT, he includes performances in The Foreigner, Twelfth Night, The Crucible, The Miser, Arthur’s Stone, Born Yesterday, A View from the Bridge, The Little Foxes, Camping with Henry and Tom, Hearts, and the Holiday Pantomimes.

He is also a ten-season veteran of the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival. Other regional credits include Charlotte Repertory Theatre: Speed of Darkness, Prelude to a Kiss, Boca!, Inherit the Wind, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, and The Tempest. There he received awards for Best Actor in a Comedy in Darwin and Laughter on the 23rd Floor. He is a founding member of the acting company at Madison Rep and performed regularly in Wisconsin with Milwaukee Rep, American Players, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, Next Act, Tesseract, Next Generation, Wisconsin Shakespeare Festival, and New American Theatre.

He has toured nationally with the Great American Children’s Theatre. During the winter holidays he can be heard on NPR in the First State Children’s Theatre’s A Christmas Carol as Ebenezer Scrooge. Mark and his wife Elaine live near Valley Forge with their black Lab, Ralph.

J. Paul Nicholas (AMAL)

Paul was most recently seen in Scorched (with Ben Lloyd) at the Wilma Theater.

Recent performances also include Stuff Happens at the Olney Theater (Maryland) and Romeo & Juliet, Cymbeline, and The Count of Monte Cristo at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.

He has performed off-Broadway in Ibsen’s Rosmersholm at 59E59. Regional credits include the Geva Theater (Rochester NY); Seattle Repertory Theater; Wooly Mammoth Theater (Washington DC); Alliance Theatre (Atlanta); Everyman Theatre (Baltimore); and six plays at the Shakespeare Theatre (Washington DC).

He can also currently be seen on TV as attorney Linden Delroy in Law & Order: SVU. Paul earned an MFA from the Academy for Classical Acting at the George Washington University.

Marcia Saunders (DEBBIE)

Marcia Saunders has been with the acting company of People’s Light and Theater for thirty-three years, performing in roles ranging from Lady Macbeth to Amanda in The Glass Menagerie and Ariadne in Heartbreak House.

She won a Barrymore Award for her performance as Claire in A Delicate Balance and  received Barrymore nominations for A Flea in her Ear; Six Characters in Search of an Author; The Man from Nebraska; My Mother Said I Never Should; Hard Times; and A View from the Bridge.

She has performed off-Broadway at Atlantic Theater Company; regionally at Two Rivers Theater Company (New Jersey) and the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival (Allentown); in Philadelphia at the Arden, the Lantern, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Walnut Street Theatre, and the Wilma.

She is thrilled to be included in this beautiful new play. Thanks Ben & Bill.

Amanda Schoonover (SARAH)

Amanda Schoonover is a six-time Barrymore Award nominee, receiving two awards (supporting actress and ensemble in a play) for her work as Dottie Smith in Theatre Exile’s Killer Joe, directed by Joe Canuso.

She has worked with many theaters in Philadelphia, including the Arden, People’s Light, Bristol Riverside, Pig Iron, Brat Productions, New City Stage, and the Lantern. Favorite roles include Lucy in Mr. Marmalade (Exile), Flora in The Loyalist (Fictitious), Sara in Grace (Luna) and Emily in Our Town (Hedgerow).

She also co-produced and performed in the critically acclaimed 4.48 Psychosis (Theater Catalyst).

Christopher Colucci (composer, sound)

Christopher Colucci makes sound and music as a theater artist, composer, producer, and guitarist.

This season he designed A Streetcar Named Desire, A Tuna Christmas, and Born Yesterday (Walnut Street); The Hothouse and Sizwe Bansi is Dead (Lantern); Gee’s Bend (Arden); The Day of the Picnic and Eggs (People’s Light & Theatre); Dark Play, Blackbird, and American Buffalo (Theatre Exile); Copenhagen, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, and All the Great Books (Delaware Theatre Company); The War Party (InterAct); Long Day’s Journey into Night (Villanova); and Disco Descending (LiveArts Festival).

He received the 2008 Barrymore Award for Outstanding Sound Design.

Jennifer Dillon (stage manager)

Jennifer Dillon earned her BFA in stage management at Pennsylvania State University.

In the last seven years, she has worked with just about every theater company in Philadelphia.

Since 2006, she has also traveled yearly to Nashville, Tennessee, to stage-manage the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, featuring the Rockettes.

She recently began yoga practice, which she hopes one day to be able to do without swearing under her breath.

Regina M. Rizzo (costumes)

Regina M. Rizzo earned her bachelor’s degree in theater from Middle Tennessee State University.

Credits include Long Day’s Journey into Night (Simpatico); Romeo & Juliet (Delaware Theatre Festival); Jump/Cut, The Faculty Room, and Impending Rupture of the Belly (Flashpoint); Compleat Works of Wm Shkspr Abridged and Working (Theatre Horizon); Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1812); Trad and Crazy Gary’s Mobile Disco (Inis Nua); Iron Kisses (Gay & Lesbian Theater Festival); Two Rooms (Azuka) From tha Hip (Prince Music Theater).

Thanks to Ben!

Teri Rambo (vocalist)

Teri Rambo is a singer and lover of songs.

Teri cultivated strong ties to all types of folk music after dropping out of music school in 1992, where she received formal voice training.

She is a founding member of Birth of Venus, a female vocal trio whose repertoire includes Irving Berlin and Leonard Cohen.

Teri has appeared in public performance over the last 20 years, including musical theater, coffeehouses, bars, benefits, weddings, funerals and festivals. She is also a mother, a writer and a photographer.

www.myspace.com/terirambo

Joshua L. Shulman (lighting)

Joshua L. Shulman holds his MFA from Boston University.

He is the recipient of the Barrymore Award for his lighting design of Art at Delaware Theater Company. His credits include productions for the Wilma Theater, Azuka Theatre Collective, Hotel Obligato, Flashpoint Theatre Company, InterAct Theatre Company, Media Theatre, Theatre West Virginia, the Rebecca Davis Dance Company, Inis Nua Theatre Company, Arcadia University, Theatre Exile, Madhouse Theater Company, and many more.

He is looking forward to the Hidden City Project.

Kim Comer (assistant to Mr. Saunders)

Kim Comer is a local set, light, and projection designer.

She recently graduated from Swarthmore College. Design credits include lighting for Moving Research Project's Slip; Mascher Space co-op's IN FLUX for the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival; set and lights for Ad Hoc Theater's The Destruction of a City and Also an Itinerary for Visitors (Philly Fringe).

She is the resident Lighting Designer for Green Chair Dance Group. Recently she technical-directed Pig Iron Theater Company's tour of Hell Meets Henry Halfway.

In the summers, she is the Assistant Production manager at the Cherubs program in Chicago.

Benjamin Lloyd (director)

Benjamin Lloyd is a Philadelphia-based theater artist. He teaches acting at Temple University and has taught acting at Princeton, Arcadia, and Villanova Universities. In addition to performing in every major theater in Philadelphia, he has acted and directed in New York, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and in Prague, the Czech Republic. His directing credits include The Dreamer Examines his Pillow (Theatre Exile), Life without Parole, Please (Kraine Theater); and Hamlet Quarto 1 and Eccentrics (People’s Light & Theatre).

As an actor, Ben most recently appeared as Alphonse Lebow in Scorched at the Wilma. Other recent credits include Thurston and nine other roles in Greater Tuna at Walnut Street Theatre; Katharina in Ceal Phelan’s production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Lantern; Thomas/Louise in Lillian Gorag’s production of The Imaginary Invalid; and Reverend Hale in The Crucible at People’s Light & Theatre. He has been nominated for six times for the Barrymore Award for performances in Philadelphia. His New York credits include roles at Theater for a New Audience, NADA, HOME for Contemporary Theater and Art, and the Public Theater.

His book, The Actor’s Way: a Journey of Self-Discovery in Letters, was published by Allworth Press in May 2006. He has had articles and book reviews published in New Theater Quarterly, Theater Topics, Friends Journal, and The Friend (United Kingdom). He has an MFA in acting from the Yale School of Drama and a BA with honors in Theater Studies from Yale College. He lives in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two children.

William di Canzio (playwright)

Winner of a Julie Harris Playwright Award for Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier, William di Canzio has written thirteen plays, staged at such venues as the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Yale University, Ensemble Studio Theatre LA, Theatre of the Open Eye, West Coast Ensemble, and Haverford College.

His work has been commissioned by Actors Theatre of Louisville. He has been three times a resident at the National Playwrights Conference (C-Section, Open Heart, and Hindustan) and, in recognition of Dooley, was named playwright-in-residence at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, by the Jerome Foundation.

He has received two fellowships in theater from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (in recognition of Hindustan and Last Night Home) and was a finalist for the 2008 Pew Fellowships in the Arts. His nonfiction has been published in Commonweal.

He has taught at Smith College, Yale University, and Haverford College. At Yale he was also appointed dean of Trumbull College. Born in Philadelphia, he is an alumnus of Saint Joseph’s Preparatory School and the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a PhD from Johns Hopkins University and MFA from the Yale School of Drama, where he was awarded the Eugene O’Neill scholarship in playwriting.

Randolph Curtis Rand (co-producer)

Randolph Curtis Rand is an Obie Award-winning artist-designer, director, dramaturg, performer, teacher—working for more than twenty years in New York and throughout the country in avant-garde and classical theater. He has performed with Douglas Dunn, Elevator Repair Service, Richard Foreman, The Foundry Theatre, Joshua Friend, The Rude Mechs, Meredith Monk, The Talking Band, Target-Margin, Jeff Weiss, and The Wooster Group. Regionally he has worked with Actors Theatre of Louisville, Burning Coal Theatre, the International Theatre Festival UCLA, Jacobs Pillow, Charles Mouton, On the Boards, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, Pig Iron Theater, and the Walker Arts Center.

As a director he has worked at NADA (The Tragicall History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke; The Tragical Historie of the Life and Death of D. Faustus; The Brother's Murder Punished); the Drama Dept (Uncle Tom's Cabin, or The Preservation of the Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life; Hope is the with feathers); Burning Coal theatre (Uncle Tom's Cabin; St. Nicholas; The Historie of Kynge Henrie IIII); Cleveland Public Theatre (Uncle Tom's Cabin); the Hangar Theatre (Cyrano de Bergerac); Inverse Theatre (Othello); the National Shakespeare Company (The Tempest; Hamlet); NYU/Tisch School of the Arts (The Suicide; A Bright Room Called Day); Shakespeare Santa Monica (The Taming of the Shrew); and Swarthmore College (The Tempest).

He has both directed and taught at Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Governor's School of North Carolina, Hangar Theatre, Naropa University, the New School, NYU/Tisch, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Tennessee.