Callie Kimball (Playwright) earned her MFA under Tina Howe at Hunter College, where she won the Rita & Burton Goldberg Playwriting Award two years in a row. Her plays have been produced and developed in New York, Chicago, LA, Boston, and DC, at the Kennedy Center, MCC Theater, Lark Play Development Center, Portland Stage Company, Rep Stage, Ashland New Plays Festival, The Drama League, Echo Theatre, The Brick Theater, Dramatic Rep, Mad Horse Theatre, Project Y Theatre, Team Awesome Robot, Washington Shakespeare Company, Halcyon Theatre, Florida Studio Theatre, Greater Boston Stage Company, Everyman Repertory Theatre, Absolute Theatre, and many colleges and festivals across the country. She’s an Affiliate Artist at Portland Stage Company, an Affiliate Writer at the Playwrights’ Center, Playwright-in-Residence at Theater at Monmouth, and a former MacDowell Fellow. She won a Ludwig Vogelstein grant to research her play Sofonisba, which won Portland Stage’s Clauder Gold Prize, was a finalist for the O’Neill, a semifinalist for the Princess Grace Award, and was included on The Kilroys’ 2016 List. Her themes range from historical dramas and classical adaptations to socio-political comedies and futuristic dystopias. Many of her plays feature characters balanced at the intersection of language and power, who struggle to break free from societal assumptions around gender, class, and race.

PERSEVERANCE "PERCY" TURNER. Nedra Snipes*

"JUDGE" ELMER Vin Knight*

LELAND "MOSS" TARKER William Oliver Watkins*

DAWN DAVIS Catherine Buxton

COOPER "COOP" DAVIS Brendan D. Hickey*

DILLY Sally Wood*

[*member Actors' Equity Association]

Director Jade King Carroll***

Scenic Designer Anita Stewart**

Costume Designer Kathleen Brown

Light Designer Bryon Winn**

Sound Designer Karin Graybash**

Stage Manager Myles C. Hatch*

[*member Actors Equity Association]

[**member United Scenic Artists]

[***member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society]

Julia Gibson is very happy to return to Portland Stage. Last year she directed Searching for Mr. Moon, and several years ago …. Greater Tuna. She has directed with Rattlestick, Barrow Street, Origin Theatre, ManhattanTheatreSource and Epic Theatre Company in New York City; and at Chautauqua Theatre Company, Gulfshore Playhouse, New London Barn, Juilliard, NYU Graduate Acting, SMU in Dallas, The Actors Center Conservatory, A.C.T. Conservatory in San Francisco, Stony Brook University and Stella Adler Conservatory. She was Associate Director of the revival of Angels in America at The Signature Theatre. As an actor she has performed on and off Broadway and at major theatres across the U.S., as well as on TV and film. She is currently Co-Head of the Graduate Acting Program at UNC Chapel Hill where she also serves as a company member of PlayMakers Repertory Company. She received her MFA in Acting from New York University and is a founding member of The Actors Center in New York City as well as the National Alliance for Acting Teachers; she is a Fox Fellowship recipient and has narrated over 160 audio books. Julia recently received a Carolina Women’s Center Faculty Scholarship grant to create a theatre piece about women and aging.

Tom Ford Portland Stage: Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure, The Last Ship to Proxima Centauri, A Christmas Carol, Read to Me, Greater Tuna, Bach at Leipzig, The Mystery of Irma Vep, I Am My Own Wife, The Snow Queen, Iron Kisses, The Woman in Black, Lend Me a Tenor, Art, and Gaslight. Boise Contemporary Theater: The Show on the Roof (World Premiere of a New Musical, book by Tom Ford, music and lyrics by Alex Syiek), Lewiston, Tru and This Wonderful Life. Northern Stage: It’s a Wonderful Life: A Radio Play and Miss Trunchbull in Matilda. Idaho Shakespeare and Great Lakes Theater: Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Wargrave in And Then There Were None, the Fool in King Lear, Sidney Bruhl in Deathtrap, Sweeney in Sweeney Todd, Thenardier in Les Miserables, Argan in The Imaginary Invalid, Mr. Paravicini in The Mousetrap, Baker in Into the Woods, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened…, and the title role in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. New London Barn Playhouse: The Odd Couple, The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Drowsy Chaperone, A Funny Thing Happened…, Hairspray, Harvey, The Pirates of Penzance, The Producers, and She Loves Me. Broadway: By Jeeves. tomfordactor.com.

Nathaniel P. Claridad Off-Broadway/NYC include: Here Lies Love (The Public Theater), Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade History…(St. Ann’s Warehouse); Regional credits include work at The Kennedy Center, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Folger Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Two River Theatre, Cape Fear Regional Theatre, Imagination Stage, Hangar Theatre, Barrington Stage Company, Florida Studio Theatre. International credits include work at the Brisbane Festival and the Sydney Opera House with Dead Puppet Society. TV: New Amsterdam, Harlem. As a director, credits include work at Weathervane Theatre, Imagination Stage, Southern Rep., Out of the Box Theatrics, as well as being named a Drama League Resident in 2019 & 2016. MFA: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Actor 1 Tom Ford*

Actor 2 Nathaniel P. Claridad*

[*member Actors' Equity Association]

[**member United Scenic Artists]

[***Stage Directors and Choreographers Society]

Director Julia Gibson

Scenic Designer Randall Parsons**

Costume Designer Cole McCarty**

Lighting Designer SeifAllah Salotto-Cristobal

Sound Designer Seth Asa Sengel

Stage Manager Myles C. Hatch*

Manford Ray Yamamoto

Connie Eileen Doan

Wen Chang Norman Garcy Yap*

Saul Jim Shankman*

[*member Actors' Equity Association]

[**member United Scenic Artists]

[***Stage Directors and Choreographers Society]

Director Natsu Onoda Power***

Scenic Designer Anita Stewart**

Costume Designer Nicole Wee**

Lighting Designer Alberto Segarra**

Sound Designer Kathy Ruvuna

Projection Designer Dylan Uremovich

Stage Manager Myles C. Hatch*

Rev. Mervin Oglethorpe John Vessels Jr.*

Burl Sanders Larry Tobias*

Vera Sanders April Lee Uzarski*

Stanley Sanders Andrew Crowe*

Denise Sanders Elleon Dobias

Dennis Sanders Daniel Emond*

June Sanders Sarah Hund*

[*member of Actors' Equity Association]

Director Jeff Stockberger

Musical Director Andrew Crowe

Scenic Designer Anita Stewart**

Costume Designer Kathleen Payton Brown

Light Designer Jamie Grant

Sound Designer Chris Fitze

Stage Manager Meg Lydon*

Assistant Stage Manager Grace Kellar-Long

[*member of Actors Equity Association]

[** member of United Scenic Artists]

[***member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society]

Edward Albee (1928-2016) - was born on March 12, 1928, and began writing plays 30 years later. His plays include The Zoo Story (1958), The American Dream (1960), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961-62, Tony Award), Tiny Alice (1964), A Delicate Balance (1966, Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award), All Over (1971), Seascape (1974, Pulitzer Prize), The Lady From Dubuque (1977-78), The Man Who Had Three Arms (1981), Finding The Sun (1982), Marriage Play (1986-87), Three Tall Women (1991, Pulitzer Prize), Fragments (1993), The Play About The Baby (1997), The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2000, 2002, Tony Award), Occupant (2001), Peter and Jerry: Act 1, Homelife; Act 2, The Zoo Story (2004), and Me, Myself and I (2007). He was a member of the Dramatists Guild Council and President of The Edward F. Albee Foundation. Mr. Albee was awarded the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1980, and in 1996 received the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts. In 2005 he was awarded the special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement.

John Cariani - is an actor and a playwright. He grew up in rural northern Maine and attended Amherst College where he majored in history, with a concentration in Black Studies. He planned to be a history teacher, but a last-minute detour landed him an acting internship at a regional theater, and he became an actor. John has spent his career performing in plays and musicals on and off-Broadway and at regional theaters across the country. He has been nominated for a Tony Award, two Grammy Awards, and has won an Outer Critics Circle Award. Well known for his film and TV work, John has had recurring roles on television shows like Law & Order and Numb3rs, and he has shared the big screen with Christopher Walken, Gina Rodriguez, and Robert de Niro. As a playwright, John is best known for his first play, Almost, Maine, which has become one of the most popular plays in the world. It has received nearly 6000 productions to date and has been translated into over a dozen languages. Over the past decade, it has become the most frequently produced play in high schools, outpacing classics like A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Our Town. John’s other plays have been produced over 500 times around the world and have been translated into several languages. As an artist, John is passionate about making room for the people who made him what he is: rural Americans. Rural Americans are woefully underrepresented in contemporary theater. When they do appear on stage, they are portrayed as sad, addicted, and uneducated people. But they are so much more than that. John’s newest plays explore the hopeful, joyful parts of hardscrabble lives. And they take a loving look at what it is to grow up queer—like he did—in rural America.

Bess Welden - is a theater maker living and creating in her adopted home state of Maine. She spent 2022 as a National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow for her work at the intersection of art-making and social change. She served as the 2024 Playwright-In-Residence for the Maine Playwrights Festival and recently created a commission for the Lives Eliminated, Dreams Illuminated project, an interdisciplinary visual art, music, and theater exhibition honoring girls and young women who died in the Holocaust. She is the Founder/Core Artist of Death Wings Project (www.deathwingsproject.org).

Bess’ play Madeleines won the 2022 National Jewish Playwriting Contest and was a finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Madeleines has been developed in New York City with Jewish Plays Project, in Palo Alto with TheaterWorks Silicon Valley, in Indiana with the Jewish Theatre of Bloomington, in West Hartford, CT with Playhouse on Park, and with Portland Stage as part of the Little Festival of the Unexpected. Madeleines will make its world premiere at Portland Stage in 2025.

Her play with songs, Death Wings, won the 2020 Maine State prize of the Clauder Competition for New England Playwrights and was produced in Maine by Dramatic Repertory Company, The Theater Project, and Meetinghouse Arts with major support from the New England Foundation for the Arts and the Maine Arts Commission. Death Wings was a 2020 semi-finalist for the prestigious O’Neill New Play Conference and was workshopped with Fresh Ink Theatre at Boston Center for the Arts.

Her play Refuge Malja, winner of the Tel Aviv Jewish Plays Contest and a finalist in the 2020 National Jewish Playwriting Contest, premiered on Portland Stage’s mainstage. Refuge Malja and Madeleines were both nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Monologues from Death Wings and Madeleines are featured in The 2021 and 2024 Best Stage Monologues for Women published by Smith & Kraus.

Her short plays Celebrity Exit and All I Ever Wanted Was to Play were produced by Colby College’s Department of Performance, Theater, Dance. Mergirl Saves the Waves, Bess’ feminist, environmentalist adaptation of The Little Mermaid, was developed with support from the Maine Arts Commission and staged by A Company of Girls at the Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine. Her solo comedies The Passion of the Hausfrau and Big Mouth Thunder Thighs premiered in Portland Stage’s Studio Theater, and her collaborative theater performance project with live music and illustration, Legbala is a River, premiered at Mayo Street Arts. She participated as an invited writer at the National Winter Playwrights Retreat (HBMG Foundation) and with Company One Theatre’s PlayLab Unit in Boston. You can hear her 15-minute audio rom-coms “What I Miss Most,” “Under My Skin,” “Island Time” on the Meet Cute Podcast (www.meetcute.com).

Debra Moritz Danielle Levin *

Jennifer Moritz Carine Montbertrand *

Rose Moritz/Lilia Kaminsky Carmen Roman *

____________

* Member, Actor's Equity Association

** Member, United Scenic Artists

*** Member of Stage Directors & Choreographers Society

Director Annette Jolles ***

Scenic Designer Kimberly Powers **

Costume Designer Michelle Handley

LIghting Designer Weston Wilkerson **

Sound Designer Seth Asa Sengel

Stage Manager Myles C. Hatch *

Steven Dietz - His forty-plus plays and adaptations have been seen at over one hundred regional theaters, as well as Off-Broadway and in twenty-five countries internationally. Dietz has been named one of the “20 Most-Produced Playwrights in America” by American Theatre Magazine on multiple occasions. Recent premieres include Gaslight, adapted from Patrick Hamilton; Murder on the Links, adapted from Agatha Christie; and the serio-comic thriller, How a Boy Falls (Joseph Jefferson nomination for Best New Play). Dietz’s widely-produced play, Shooting Star, was adapted into the Meg Ryan movie, “What Happens Later” by Dietz, Ryan, and Kirk Lynn. Awards include the American Theatre Critics Association’s Steinberg New Play Citation for Bloomsday; Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award for Fiction and Still Life with Iris; PEN USA Award in Drama for Lonely Planet; and an Edgar Award® from the Mystery Writers of America for Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure. Dietz taught in the MFA Playwriting and Directing program at UT/Austin for twelve years, and continues to regularly conduct master classes in playwriting, directing, story-making, and collaboration across the US. Dietz and his wife, playwright Allison Gregory, divide their time between Seattle and Austin.

Hercule Poirot Tom Ford *

Captain Hastings Lauren Karaman *

Man One Andrew Rein *

Woman One Brenny Campbell *

Man Two Ross Cowan *

Woman Two Michela Micalizio

___________________

* Member, Actor's Equity Association

** Member, United Scenic Artists

*** Member of Stage Directors & Choreographers Society

Director Kevin R. Free ***

Scenic Designer Anita Stewart **

Costume Designer Jacqueline Firkins **

Lighting Designer Mary Lana Rice

Sound Designer Seth Asa Sengel

Stage Manager Meg Lydon *