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LEADERSHIP

Susan Johann
JOSEPH
MEGEL

Joseph Megel is artist in residence and Teaching Professor in Performance Studies at The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Department of Communication, where he runs the Process Series: New Works in Development, a program of the Department of Communication. Mr. Megel has spent the last 25 years focusing on the direction and development of new works for theatre, film, and video. He is Artistic Director of StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance. Previously, he served for six years as Artistic Director of Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, and continues to serve as Co-Executive Director of Harland’s Creek Productions; producer of premiers of new plays, developmental producer of screenplays and readings, and producer of short films. Directorial credits include: Guillermo Reyes’s Men on the Verge of a His-panic Breakdown in its Off-Broadway production (Outer Critics Circle Award) and in Los Angeles (Best Director Ovation Award nomination, Best Production Award winner); Jennifer Maisel’s The Last Seder at EST West in Los Angeles, Theatre J in Washington D.C., The Organic Theatre in Chicago (winner of the Kennedy Center’s Fund for New American Plays Grant and other awards); Elisabeth Lewis Corley’s adaptation of The Miser at Duke University; Derek Goldman’s adaptation of Studs Terkel’s Will The Circle Be Unbroken in Chapel Hill and Washington D.C. (starring David Strathairn, Theodore Bikel, and Kathleen Chalfant); Freight: The Five Incarnations of Abel Green by Howard L. Craft and featuring J. Alphonse Nicholson, in North Carolina and both Off-Off Broadway and Off-Broadway. Recent directing includes: Dean Gray's The Pattern at Pendarvis (Off-Off Broadway), Kane Smego's Temples of Lung and Air (NC and Detroit), Sonny Kelly's The Talk (NC), and Howard L. Craft's Orange Light (NC).

Alex Maness
ELISABETH LEWIS
CORLEY

Elisabeth Lewis Corley was founding artistic director of the Atlanta Shakespeare Company, now operating as The Shakespeare Tavern. Corley’s poems have appeared in Michigan Quarterly ReviewSouthern Poetry Review, Hyperion, Carolina Quarterly, Feminist Studies, BigCityLit, MahMag, New Haven ReviewCold Mountain Review, and other publications. In New York she worked for Signature Theatre Company in its first four seasons as an actor and producer and produced and performed in plays by Jim Grimsley for Harland’s Creek Productions. She served Harold Levy, Chancellor of the New York City Board of Education, as an artistic advisor and consultant for special projects. She wrote the screenplay for John David Allen’s short film Love and Roadkill, seen nationally and internationally in its award-winning festival rounds. Her short film About Time, directed by Joseph Megel, screened locally, across the country, and at NewFilmakers in New York City. She played Mrs. Gross in Derek Goldman’s adaption of The Turn of the Screw and other roles for StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance and appeared regionally in The GoatBest of Enemies, and A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney at Manbites DogSteel Magnolias at Triad Stage, and as Mother Courage for Justice Theater Project. She holds an MFA in poetry from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and a B.A. with Highest-Honors-in-Poetry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she has taught screenwriting and performance of poetry. Corley is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Actors’ Equity Association, and SAG-AFTRA. She is a 2018 Artist Fellowship recipient in poetry from the North Carolina Arts Council.

 

Chatham Arts Council has a Meet-the-Artist feature here

DEREK GOLDMAN

Derek Goldman is Founding Artistic Director of the StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance. Under Goldman’s leadership, the company was named by the New York Times as “one of Chicago’s top theater companies”; and, after the company’s move to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, by The Spectator as “the region’s leading producer of cutting-edge work.” He is currently Professor of Theater and Performance Studies at Georgetown University and co-Founding Director of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, which he co-founded with Ambassador Cynthia Schneider in 2012 with a mission "to harness the power of performance to humanize global politics." At Georgetown he has overseen numerous world premieres, produced the nationally-acclaimed Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival (in partnership with the American Studies Program) which featured over 30 events at Georgetown and Arena Stage, and hosted and collaborated with world-class artists such as Edward Albee, Belarus Free Theater, Dah Teatar from Belgrade, Ping Chong & Company, Freedom Theater, The Civilians and Michael Friedman, Anna Deavere Smith, Heather Raffo, Moises Kaufman and Tectonic Theater Project, Pig Iron, Michael Rohd and Sojourn Theater, Danny Hoch, Theodore Bikel, John Waters, Michael Kahn, Joy Zinoman, David Strathairn, Kathleen Chalfant, Sister Helen Prejean, Target Margin Theater, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Robin Becker Dance, and dozens of others. He is an award-winning stage director, playwright, adapter, developer of new work, teacher, and published scholar, whose artistic work has been seen around the country, Off-Broadway, and at numerous major regional theaters, as well as internationally. He has directed Off-Broadway, internationally, and worked regularly as a director and adapter/playwright with leading regional theatres such as Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, Lincoln Center, Arena Stage, Center Stage, Folger Theater, Round House, Theater J, Everyman Theater, Synetic Theater, Forum Theater, the Kennedy Center, and many others. He is the North American representative on the board of the UNESCO/ITI World Conference of Theater School Directors and received his Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University. More information about current projects and past performances here.

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