DIRECTOR

MARY MCDONALD-LEWIS holds her MFA in Directing from the University of Portland, and has been working in the region since 1993. She has been working professionally since 1980. With dozens of shows to her credit, favorite projects include Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, David Ives' Land of Cockaigne, Marsha Norman's The Holdup, Neil Simon's Broadway Bound, and Richard Greenberg's The Author's Voice.

Reviewers have called her work: “…confident, sometimes breathtakingly beautiful” and “a delight to watch.” MaryMac is a recipient of the Meritorious Achievement Award - Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival.

Nationally, MaryMac serves on the board of the Screen Actors Guild. Regionally, she sits on the board of AFTRA, and served on the Portland Creative Conference board for a dozen years. She works closely with the Oregon Film and Video Office on legislative and other issues, and has been an active volunteer for groups such as Cascade AIDS, Habitat for Humanity, OHRC, Oregon Episcopal School, RACC, Saturday Academy, and WIC.

MaryMac has most recently been seen onstage at COHO's By the Bog of Cats and ART's Metamorphoses, and most recently directed San Antonio Sunset. She is an artistic director of Readers Theatre Repertory.

ACTORS

TOBIAS ANDERSEN is Artistic Director of East County’s Mt. Hood Repertory Theatre Company, now in its tenth year. A Drammy-award winning regional theatre veteran, he has been resident artist with The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, California Shakespeare Festival, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre and the Pacific Conservatory of Performing Arts. Locally, Tobias has appeared with Portland Center Stage, Artists Repertory Theatre, Profile Theatre Project and Northwest Children’s Theatre.  His critically acclaimed solo performance of Clarence Darrow has been seen throughout the United States and was selected by the United States Information Agency to represent America at the Second International Drama Festival in Lahore, Pakistan. Tobias recently produced, in conjunction with the Multnomah County Library’s “Everybody Reads” program, a new production of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 which included special performances and discussions for local high school audiences.

Tobias is a member of both the Gresham Chamber of Commerce and East County Chamber of Commerce, and has served on the Cultural Arts Center Committee for the City of Gresham.

Tobias has most recently been seen in ART's Uncle Vanya, starring with William Hurt.


MICHAEL MENDELSON holds his MFA from the University of Washington, and his BFA from Wayne State University. He has worked locally, regionally and nationally since 1989. In Portland, some of Michael's favorite performances are Larry in Burn This, and Steven in the Lisbon Traviata, both at Profile Theatre Project; Gary Essendine in Present Laughter and John/James Jeckel in Love! Valour! Compassion! at ART. Michael has also worked with Triangle Productions, Tygre's Heart Shakespeare Company, New Rose Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Miracle Theatre Group, and OSF, Portland. Nationally, Michael has worked at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Revolving Shakespeare Company, Penobscot Theatre Company, St. Michael's Playhouse, and Berkshire Theatre Festival.

Michael is a two time Drammy winner, for Max in Bent and for Sterling in Jeffery, and produced and starred in the successful Intimacies, More Intimacies by Michael Kerns which ran for five weeks in Portland.

Michael has most recently been seen in ART's Portland premiere of Richard Kramer's Theatre District, ART's Mr. Marmalade and Profile Theatre's Heidi Chronicles.

PLAYWRIGHT

FRANK DUNLOP (Editor), worked as associate director with Laurence Olivier at London's National Theatre, during which time he founded, built and directed the acclaimed Young Vic Theatre. For almost 10 years, Mr. Dunlop was Director of the Edinburgh International Festival, where he had earlier premiered Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. His directoral credits are extensive, both in London and internationally - in both theatre and opera. In New York, he directed Richard Burton's return in Camelot. He is also the Founding Director of BAM Theatre Company, among whose distinguished members are Blythe Danner, Ellen Burstyn, Toval Feldshuh, Rex Harrison and Richard Dreyfuss.
 

AUTHOR

KATHRINE KRESSMANN TAYLOR (Author, 1903 - 1996), was called "the woman who jolted America." She was born in Portland, Oregon and lived in California, New York and Pennsylvania (where for 20 years she was a professor at Gettysburg College). Her story, Address Unknown, was a national sensation in 1939, and the first fiction ever published by Reader's Digest. It was republished in America by Story Press in 1995, by Washington Square Press in 2001, and in 17 other languages worldwide since 1997, becoming a best-seller in France, Italy, Germany and Israel, and being adapted for the stage in seven countries so far. Ms. Taylor also wrote two other books, Day of No Return (1942) - an account of a real-life struggle against the Nazi takeover of the German Lutheran Church, and Diary of Florence in Flood (1967) - published in England as Ordeal by Water. She is also the author of ten short stories, one of which, "The Blown Rose," was dramatized on TV, and another, "The Pale Green Fishes," was chosen for Best American Short Stories of 1954. Retiring to Florence, Italy in 1966, Taylor met and married American sculptor John Rood, with whom she kept two homes, one in the Val de Pesa outside Florence, and another in Minneapolis, MN, where she lived her last years, dying alert, dynamic and sharp-witted just before her 93rd birthday.