Michele Volansky is Chair and Associate Professor of Drama at Washington College and an Associate Artist for PlayPenn. She has worked on over one-hundred and fifty new and established plays in her professional career and has served on the artistic staffs at Actors Theatre of Louisville (1992-95), Steppenwolf Theatre Company (1995-2000) and Philadelphia Theatre Company (2000-2004). She has served as an artistic consultant for the TCG playwright residency program, a reader for the Eugene O’Neill Center’s National Playwrights Conference and the New York Shakespeare Festival/The Joseph Papp Public Theatre’s Emerging Voices Program and is the 1999 inaugural co-recipient of the Elliot Hayes Award for Dramaturgy. She is a past president of LMDA, the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (2002-2004). Her book on playwriting and collaboration with Bruce Graham entitled The Collaborative Playwright was published in March, 2007 by Heinemann Press. She holds a B.A. in English from Washington College, an M.A. from Villanova University and a PhD from the University of Hull (England); her dissertation explores the politics and advocacy of the critics Kenneth Tynan and Frank Rich.

B.A. – University of Maine at Orono, 1977

M.F.A. – University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1989

Productions directed by Professor Daigle have been seen in Maine, Hawaii, Scotland, Kyoto, Samoa, Denver, Los Angeles, and D.C. as well as the more exotic locales of Chestertown and Church Hill. His most recent work is on the world premier of All Blues by Robert Earl Price in conjunction with 7Stages Theatre in Atlanta. The play premiered at Washington College in the fall of 2011 and travelled to Atlanta.

Research interests: Acting, Directing, Japanese traditional theatre

As a research fellow at the Kyoto Arts Center, he performed the kabuki role of Tandanyu at the imperial palace in Kyoto. He has studied for a year with Nomura Shiro and Nomura Mansaku, two of Japan’s “Living National Treasures” in the traditional forms of Noh and Kyogen. His translation, with Junko Sakaba, of Buaku was the first English language Kyogen play performed at the National Noh Theatre in Tokyo. His main focus in the last several years has been on new plays (he has directed 5 premiers).

Plays directed at WAC:

Under Milk Wood

Shrew

Drinking in America

Waiting for Godot

Angels in America

My Children! My Africa

Hamlet

Pounding Nails…All in the Timing

Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll

Too Much Light…Lebensraum

Molly Sweeney

Buaku

THe Cripple of Innishman

The Laramie Project

Extreme Exposure

Duchamp Sat Here

Twelfth Night

My Name is Rachel Corrie

Zoo Story

We Tiresias

Monologues From the Edge

Golden Sardine

Death and the Maiden

B.A. – Clark College

M.A. – American Film Institute

For over three decades, Robert Earl Price has amassed writing credits in fiction, drama and poetry. His imaginative work has drawn praise for its lyric attention to the ‘mutual truths’ mined from human interaction. His many awards include The Theater Communications Group/NEA Playwright’s Residency, The American Film Institute’s William Wyler award for screenwriting, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry and a Cultural Olympics commission for theater. Currently REP is artist in residence in the drama department at Washington College as well as coordinator for the annual Kent County Poetry Festival.

Bloodlines, Blood Elegy, Blues Blood and Wise Blood are the titles of his four volumes of poetry. His poems have appeared in scores of journals and magazines including most currently Drum Voices Revue and The Chattahoochee Review. He has performed hundreds of readings in places as diverse as Berlin, Havana and Johannesburg and is also an ‘old school’ denizen of the open mike and poetry slam scene. Price is the recipient of a Broadside Press Award, a Bronze Jubilee Award, and dozens of other prizes and notices for his poetry.

As playwright in residence at 7 Stages Theater in Atlanta his recent plays, Hush: Composing Blind Tom Wiggins and View Finder have premiered to wide ranging acclaim. On the international stage, Robert Earl Price’s play Blue Monk was recently produced in Johannesburg, becoming one of five plays nominated for the National Theater Award in South Africa. The Berlin production at Theater Am Winterfeldtplatz of Yardbird’s Vamp, an amusing and macabre look at the life and art of Charlie Parker, closed to SRO audiences. Nine professionally produced plays include: an adaptation of Claude Brown’s Man Child in the Promised Land and a ritual play, Black Cat Bones For Seven Sons.

Robert Earl Price is a graduate of the American Film Institute, a protégée of the Oscar winning film director Jan Kadar and Pulitzer/Emmy winner Alex Haley. He was the script consultant for the Peabody Award winning production of The Boy King, the story of Dr. Martin Luther King’s youth and a principal writer on the CBS/Alex Haley series Palmer’s Town U.S.A.

Hofstra University, 1969

M.F.A. – Columbia University, 1972

Ph.D. – New York University, 1991

Jason Rubin, who lives in Baltimore, started teaching at Washington College in the Spring of 1986. He has also taught at George Mason University and Loyola College in Baltimore. He has been a professional set designer since 1970. Among the theaters he has designed for are Theater of the First Amendment in Fairfax, Virginia, Totem Pole Playhouse in Fayetteville, Pennsylvania, and The Folger in Washington, D.C. A long time ago he was artistic director of Children’s Theater Association in Baltimore. He belongs to AAUP, Actors’’ Equity Association, American Society of Theatre Research, Associations for Theatre in Higher Education, and Theater Library Association, for which he was a juror for the George Freedley Award for ten years. He is researching Baltimore popular entertainments from 1876-1932.

Productions Designed at WC:

Threepenny Opera

Henry IV, PartI

Madame Butterfly

Hamlet

Anne Frank

Shrew

Beckett Plays

Leocadia

Hedda Gabler

Under Milkwood

Antigone

Cinders

My Children! My Africa!

The Three Sisters

Camino Real

Only You

Waiting for Godot

The Government Inspector

Leave It to Jane

R.U.R.

Cloud Nine

Medea

Volpone

The Boys From Syracuse

Chicago

Too Much Light

The Love of a Nightingale

The Baltimore Waltz

The American Clock

I Have Song to Sing

O!

She Loves Me

Twelfth Night

Good

The Cherry Orchard

Top Girls

Crimes of the Heart

[sic]

The Golden Sardine

Troy Women

A Funny Thing…

An Evening of Tennessee Williams One-Acts

Productions Directed at WC

Madame Butterfly

Anne Frank

Leocadia

There’s a Girl in Havana

Medea

Leave It to Jane

The Show-Off

The Boys from Syracuse

Chicago

The Baltimore Waltz

I Have a Song to Sing

O!

She Loves Me

Good

Death of a Salesman

[sic]

A Funny Thing…

The Imaginary Invalid

B.A. – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1997

M.A. – King Alfred’s College, 2002

B.A. – Washington College, 1981

M.A. – Western Washington University, 1989

B.S. – Oklahoma State University, 1977 M.F.A. – Acting University of Hawaii, 1980

Joshua received his B.A. in Drama and History from Washington College and a M.F.A from Boston University. Joshua was the 2008 Barrymore Award winner for his lighting of Art at Delaware Theatre Company. He was also nominated for a Barrymore in 2009 for lighting Rock ‘N’ Roll at Wilma Theatre. Work for other companies includes People’s Light and Theatre Company, Azuka Theatre, Media Theatre Company, InterAct Theater, Flashpoint Theater Company, Lantern Theater, The Hidden City Festival, Theatre West Virginia, Rebecca Davis Dance Company, Hotel Obligato, and many more.

B.A. – King’s College, 1961

M.A. – University of Delaware, 1966