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Who We Are
Playwrights' Platform is a diverse group of Boston-area playwrights who share a commitment to the cooperative development of quality theater. On this page, we post the bios and contact information for some of our member playwrights.
(If you are a member of Playwrights' Platform and you would like to be included on this page, please Send an email to the webmaster. We'd be happy to include you!)
Regina Eliot-Ramsey / Co-President
Regina Eliot-Ramsey is an artist, photographer and an art historian specializing in 19th and 20th American artists and Asian antiques. She is the author of “A.C. Goodwin: Impressionist Cityscapes” and “Winkworth Allen Gay: An American Artist in Japan,”
as well as, numerous catalogues and art journal articles. She holds degrees in music, art history, law, finance and economics. Regina attended Simmons College, the New England Conservatory of Music, Harvard, the Academie d’Belle Arte’ in Florence, Italy, and the Kyoto School of Art in Japan. She received her Juris Doctorate from Boston College Law School and an L.L.D. from Georgetown University.
Regina is currently a producer for Newton television. Her program “Studio Playhouse,” features the work of local playwrights. She also produces the series, “Stage and Film”, a showcase for short films created by New England filmmakers.
She is pleased to be a member of Playwright’s Platform and is grateful for the opportunity to present her work at the readings.
| Christopher King / Co-President
Chris enjoys finding a home at Playwrights' Platform, where the depth of
talent is impressive and the feedback from other playwrights so
insightful. Chris began penning plays after college with S.P.A.C.
a short play about student protests. For many years his primary
scripting was for educational videos and recordings. In the last decade
he has taken up creating drams again. His one act, A Mother In My Head has won
several awards and Our Appointed Rounds has been performed in community theater.
His wedding farce, Wendy and Wendell's Wonderful Wacky WASP Wedding
was performed at the Sherborn Inn. Chris also enjoys writing ten-minute
plays and musical comedies. An experienced director, he is also interested in
staging others' works.
| Robert Boulrice/Vice President
Mr. Boulrice has been affiliated with professional acting companies for many years. He was financial manager of The Human Ensemble Repertory Theatre in Salt Lake City, Utah during the mid-seventies. The playwright wonders why it took him so long to put down the ledger and pick up the quill. Recent productions of Bob's plays include: Oy Yea, Oy Veh at the Stagecrafter's Festival produced by the Baldwin Theatre, Royal Oak, MI; Uncle Colin's Garden Party was performed at the Fort Point Theatre Channel in Boston, MA; and Bob's updating of the Robin Hood saga, Tidewater 4-10-0-9 was produced as a radio play for the Spoken Word program at WBRS 100.1 FM, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. Bob’s play “A Bar A Man Walks Into” was performed at the Image Theatre in Lowell, MA and was awarded the coveted Playwright’s Choice Award for Best Play at the 36th Annual Playwright’s Platform Festival in Boston. The playwright is a member of Boston’s Playwright’s Platform and the Write-On group, as well as the Dramatists Guild of America, Inc.
| Andrew (Sandy) Burns /Treasurer/Membership Director
Sandy Burns has been writing and co-writing plays since 1992. He writes comedy, following the aphorism of Horace Walpole, "To those that feel, the world is a tragedy; to those that think, the world is a comedy." After a brief career on the technical side of theatre in college and in summer stock, Andrew went on to an even more checkered career in academia and industry. He is now trying playwriting as his next career alternative, while also teaching at MIT.
| Hortense F. Gerardo / Chairman
Hortense Gerardo is a writer and anthropologist and is the director of the performing arts organization, in vivo Productions. She inaugurated the Gecko Play Reading Series on Cape Cod and since 2005 it has been produced annually by the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, currently known as The First [W]rites Series. Her work has been performed locally at Playwrights in Performance at MIT, and at the Annual Summer Festival of New Plays by the Playwrights’ Platform in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Her short drama, In the Wake of the Horsemen, was selected for the 2007 Boston Theater Marathon (BTM) and was a finalist for the 2005 Heideman Award of the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville. Cigarette Boy, was produced by the Boston Playwrights' Theatre for the 2008 BTM . She was a visiting artist at the Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive in 2007 and the
2008 Great Plains Theatre Conference , where her one-act comedy, Weekend in St. Moritz was featured. Her feature-length screenplay, Fourhand, won an Audience Award for Best Cape Cod Film in the 2008 Woods Hole Film Festival , as well as Audience Award and Panelist Award for Best Feature Film in the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre Filmmaker Takeover 2009 . She is the recipient of artist grants and professional development awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Humanities Foundation and Women's Guild at Boston University, The Vermont Studio Center, a Leighton Artist Studio Residency at the Banff Centre, the Berwick Fund for the Humanities and the Putnam Family Foundation. She is an associate member of the Dramatist Guild, the International Centre for Women Playwrights and The Lizard Claw Playwrights . Hortense extends sincere thanks to Regina Ramsey, Christopher King, Kelly Dumar and her other mentors and friends at the Playwrights’ Platform.
| Dan Bancroft / Secretary
Dan’s first play, "Five Guns, Four Bullets," was highlighted in New York Magazine when it was performed in the 2006 8 Minute Madness Festival in NYC. It was seen again in September 2007 as part of the Mill City Minutes Festival in Lowell, Massachusetts. His short play, "Choices," won the Audience Choice award for Best Play in June 2007 at the 35th Playwrights’ Platform Summer Festival in Boston, Massachusets. His play, "What’s Really Good," was produced in NYC in the
2007 8 Minute Madness Festival and in September 2007 was included in the
Ghostplays reading series of the Tennessee Williams Festival in Provincetown,
Massachusetts as well as in the October 2007 New Provincetown Players Fall
Festival. In July 2008 he attended the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive in
Washington D.C. He is Secretary of the Board of Directors of Playwrights’
Platform and an associate member of the Dramatists Guild.absb@rcn.com.
| Sherry Alpert
Single Again is Sherry Alpert's first play.
She took a playwriting course with nationally acclaimed playwright Kirsten Greenidge at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education in Cambridge, MA, and has been working with Greenidge in subsequent revisions. Alpert has also taken several fiction writing courses, including advanced creative writing in the MFA program at Emerson College. She attended both the Bread Loaf and Bennington Writers Conferences and has written three novels.
Alpert has been involved with Playwrights' Platform for two years, and her play has benefited from two staged readings with the organization.
She has worked as a journalist and a public relations practitioner and consultant over the past 31 years and continues public relations consulting and writing today.
More important, Alpert is a lifelong theatergoer with a provocative sense of humor, which has given her a significant education about playwriting, comedy writing, timing and economical staging. That, in concert with having 100-plus post-divorce dates and several relationships under her belt, as well as the courage to expose the vulnerabilities we all share, should engross an audience in Single Again.
| Ludmila Anselm
Ludmila Anselm was born in Siberia, where she lived through the war and studied until entering Leningrad State University. She graduated in 1956 and did research in solid state physics for many years until she decided she was more interested in theater than in atoms. She has been living in Boston since 1997. She is a specialist in Shakespere and Russian authors and poets.
Her full length play Now I Love You Best (Having assumed as a basis the sonnets by Shakespeare, she made an effort to penetrate into Shakespeare’s inner world) was vanity published in Russian and English in 2004. The first act was read at Playwrights' Platform in 2005.
Other plays in progress are:
Rehearsing 'The Idiot' (40 min) (Pointing out Dostoevsky’s study of a person trying to be absolutly perfect ie. Christ-like);
Marina (50 min) (The life of Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva typifies the nightmare like life of most people in Russia under Stalin, sudden imprisionments and executions);
Three Friends (10 min) (Three illegal Russian immigrant girls discuss the strange new courting life in America, phone sex, classified ads, etc.);
Declaration of Love (10 min) (A crafty woman gets her wayward man back);
To Moscow, to Moscow (25 min) (Within their intimate knowledge of Checkov’s Cherry Orchard decide whether to apply in the US for asylem or return to Moscow in the midst of Yeltsen’s shelling the communist Parliment);
Inner voice (10 min) (A family PG 13 comedy involving a shy man who is a nudist);
Mother and Daughter (10 min) (A very young child learns the comforts of Religion to face childhood fears, darkness, distressed parents etc to the further distress of her mother in Soviet Russia);
She is a member of Sean Bennett's Playwrights' workshop and Playwrights' Platform both of Boston, and The Dramatists Guild of America, New York City.
Published plays and stories:
Play Orpheus (45 min) (insights into the uncertain hell of Russian communal living compared with Orpheus and Eurydice experience in hell) in Russian, Novi Journal 3.93 issn 0869-24 Saint Petersburg 1993.
Story: "French Relatives" in Russian, Novi Cosmopolitan December 2004, Boston, Mass.
| Marika Barnett
Marika Barnett was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1934. A survivor of the Holocaust, she escaped Hungary as a young college student after Soviet troops crushed the anti-communist revolution of 1956.
A published photographer, she is currently working on her book: "Beauty and Dignity in the Slums of India".
In 1967 the Harvard Film Club made a 10 minute film of her screenplay, "The Square".
In 1976 a short play of hers -- in verse and in Hungarian -- was performed to a limited audience in Boston.
Her non-fiction articles have been published both in Budapest and in New York.
She is a member of The Dramatists’ Guild of America, the International Centre for Women Playwrights and the Playwrights Platform of Boston.
Marika has taken the Dramatic Writing Seminar with Jonathon Myers (earlier with the Kennedy Center of Washington, DC).
One of her latest works is "A Villa in the Andes". The story of this play has been in her fantasy for decades after World War II. After the world learned in the early eighties that Dr. Joseph Mengele, the infamous Nazi Doctor has died a natural death in 1979 in South America without ever being brought to justice, she forgot about this particular fantasy for the next twenty years. Last year she realized that fantasies don’t have to die, they can continue to live on as literature and she sat down to write this play.
Her short play, "The Troop" was read at the Devanaughn Theater of Boston and at the Playwrights’ Platform.
Her "Ten Minute Play" will be read at the Playwrights’ Platform on November 6th.
Marika is currently working on a screenplay with the working title: "The Last Laugh". She hopes it will be hers.
| BJ Bell
I discovered over the course of fifty years that I was raised in southeast Missouri near the St. Francis River Valley, the grandson and great grandson of the Cherokee. I belong to the Western Cherokee Tribe in Salem, Missouri. My life’s experiences (so far) have included two years of military training, twenty-five years of carpentry, forty-five years of gardening, ten years of university studies, including a Master of Arts in playwriting from the Goddard Graduate Program and a Master of Education, Language Arts. I began writing plays in November, 1974. As a writer, I have been a Fellow of the McDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, the Edward Albee foundation, and the Playwrights Lab sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust. I am the recipient of several monetary grants from Pennsylvania and productions in New York City and Washington D.C.
I’ve taught playwriting from grade school to graduate school, and in art institutes and theatres: UCAL, Wilma Theatre. I’ve taught in the Young Playwrights Program: From “Dream to Drama” in a middle magnet school in Philadelphia. I live in Brookline, MA, where the writing goes very well.
| Jerry Bisantz / Advisory Board Member
Jerry has worked in the Boston area for the past 25 years as an actor, singer, playwright, and director. Two of his plays, Sex Education and Romance 101 will be published by Baker’s Plays. Jerry’s new play What I Did On My Summer Vacation won the 2003 Best New Play Award at Boston’s Playwrights’ Platform Festival. His comedy, Boys At Play was the recipient of the IRNE Award for Best New Play, 1999 from the Independent Reviewers of New England. Jerry’s play Sunday Visitors was a finalist for the Maxim Mazumdar Award and recipient of the Playwrights Choice Award in 1999 at the Playwrights Platform Festival in Boston and his play Fallen Star won the Excellence in Playwriting Award at the 1998 EMACT Festival at Brandeis University.
Jerry’s plays have been performed throughout New England. Jerry serves on the Board of Directors of Boston’s Playwrights Platform, and he is the founder and producer of the seven year old Summer Shorts Festival, which highlights the works of local playwrights and composers. He resides in Lowell, MA with his wife, Sharon, and two great kids, Kate and Max.
| Patrick M Brennan / Advisory Board Member, Webmaster
Patrick M Brennan wrote and directed his first full-length play in 1983. Since then, his plays have been performed in and around Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and around the world. His one-act No Politics was recently produced by the Theatre Cooperative, where it ran to sold-out houses. His play Bits was performed at the Samuel French XXX Off-Off-Broadway Festival in New York in 2005. His play Hack the Vote won the Playwrights' Choice Award at the 2004 Playwrights' Platform Summer Festival in Boston, and was subsequently adapted into a short film by Yellow Taxi Productions of Nashua, New Hampshire. His play dog_eat_dog.com was performed at the 2003 Playwrights' Platform Summer Festival and was published this year by JAC Publishing and Promotions along with his play Simbiotic. His play Get Out Of My American Way was performed at the 2002 Boston Theater Marathon and was subsequently published by Baker's Plays. He is also the author of three full-length plays, including First Person Shooter, which won the Best Plays 2000 competition at Stageplays.com, was published by the Internet Theatre Bookshop in 2001, and has had several enthusiastic productions, including a staging by an Australian secondary school.
Patrick's plays have also been produced at the WPI New Voices Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, on public radio WICN, at the Arlington Center for the Arts New Plays Festival, the Write On Plays Before Stage, Theatre Cooperative's Ritalin Readings, the Pregnant Chad Theatre Festival, Hovey Summer Shorts, Acme Theatre Productions Winter New Works Festival, the New York City 15-Minute Play Festival, Yellow Taxi Productions New American Playwrights Festival, AYTB Theatre Company One-Acts, and the Devanaughn Theatre's Dragonfly Festival.
Patrick created the Playwrights' Platform website in 2002 and has served as the Platform's webmaster since then. From 2004-2007, Patrick was president of Playwrights' Platform.
| Lydia Plumleigh-Bruce
A member of The Dramatists’ Guild of America, Lydia Bruce has been writing and co-writing plays since 1992. She greatly appreciates the early intervention and input from Platform members, and attributes many successes to the constructive feedback from the organization. A full-length play, At The Heart of Art, that she co-wrote with Andrew Burns, won the 10th Annual Regional Playwrights Festival at GeVa, a LORT theater in Rochester, New York. As a member of the Ethics Officers Association of America, Lydia managed ethics investigations, developed training programs, and coordinated ethics activities for a corporation based in Stamford, CT. Playwriting has always provided a creative balance to business commitments. Her home, in upstate New York, was converted from a grain storage barn. She can be contacted at lydiabruce@mac.com.
| Anthony Donahoe
Anthony Donahoe lived his first ten years in Westmeath, Ireland and grew up in
Boston, Massachusetts. He has acted on over twenty productions in New
England and six of his own plays have been presented in Boston public libraries.
In last year’s festival he performed and directed in his play Snackers. He has
used theatre with teens in Streatham, London on issues of violence and
communication and uses a dialogue process in regards to social concerns.
Anthony is a published poet and can be reached at
www.windweaver.com/anthony
| Kelly DuMar /Advisory Board Member, Writer-in-Residence Coordinator
Kelly DuMar began writing plays just after publishing her non-fiction book, Before You Forget - The Wisdom of Writing Diaries for Your Children in 2001. As a psychotherapist for many years, Kelly expressed her passion for theater by directing psychodramas in therapeutic settings. Currently, she devotes her time to writing plays and offering Diary Door writing workshops, and she has been a member of Playwrights' Platform since 2001.
Selected Play Credits: Hothouse, a finalist for the Arts and Letters Prizes, The Robert Lehan Award, and the Nantucket Short Play Festival, was produced by the Hovey Summer Arts Festival, 2005, and is published by Heuer Publishing (www.hitplays.com). Hovey also produced Kelly's one-act play, What We Save, in July 2006. Kelly's full-length play, Weekend at the Dreaming Cloud, has been a finalist in The John Gassner New Play Festival, Stony Brook Univ., NY, The Boston Actors Theatre, and is one one of four finalists in the Yellow Taxi Productions Susan McIntyre New Play Festival, NH. Bloom, produced by Playwright’s Platform Summer Festival, 2005, won the Playwrights' Choice Award, and was produced at the Philipstown Depot Festival, the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Festival, The Acme New Works Festival, Flint City Theatre, MI, has been published by Heuer Publishing (www.hitplays.com) and was produced by Studio Playhouse, Newton Cable TV, and is available for airing. Kelly's original 10-minute play, Away Message, was selected for The New American Playwright’s Festival, Nashua, The 15-Minute Festival, Belfast, ME, The Havermeyer Playwright’s Competition, Greenwich, CT, and the Ritalin Readings, Theatre Coop, Somerville. Away Message, now a full-length play, includes two scenes that have been produced: New Digs won the Playwrights' Choice Award at The Playwrights' Platform Summer Festival, 2006, and This Byte was produced by the 10 by 10 in the Triangle Festival, NC, 2006. Spa Reservations was produced by the Boston Theatre Marathon, 2004. Practicing Peace, a finalist in the Theatre Oxford Ten Minute Play Contest, was produced by the Playwright’s Platform Summer Festival, 2003, where it won the Audience Choice Award and is published by Brooklyn Publishing.
Kelly has a Master's Degree in Education from Harvard University, and she's a certified psychodramatist, a Fellow in the American Society for Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama, and a member of the National Association for Poetry Therapy and a member of the International Centre for Women Playwrights.
Kelly lives with her husband, three children, and dog Flash on the Charles River in Sherborn, MA. Kelly's Stagedoor Blog, or go to her webpage Kelly DuMar, and you can e-mail her at diarydoor@aol.com.
| Peter M. Floyd
Peter M. Floyd is a New Hampshire native who currently lives in
Brighton. Although he has been involved in Boston-area community theater
for many years as an actor and director, he began writing plays only in
2004. His plays Possibilities and The Little Death had their
premieres at MIT in the Summer of 2005. Since then, Possibilities was
included in the 2006 Boston Theater Marathon, and The Little Death
appeared in the 2006 Playwrights' Platform Summer Festival, where it
received the Audience Choice award for best play. By day, Peter is a
software quality engineer. He can be contacted at peterfloyd@verizon.net.
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| Geralyn (G.L.) Horton/Advisory Board Member
Geralyn Horton has been a member of Playwrights' Platform and written and directed and acted in plays for longer than she cares to recall -- mostly in church basements. Horton's writing career high point may have been the summer of 1990, when her play set in a Boston aborton clinic, Under Siege (aka Choices) was picked for the Sundance Lab, and she rubbed shoulders with Tony Kushner and Richard Schenkkan. Her acting high points include appearing at the 1989 Edinburgh Fringe in Martha Mitchell, a musical monologue about the loud-mouth wife of Nixon's Attorney General written for her by Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro; and in supporting roles in the American premieres of Rona Munro's Bold Girls, Marina Carr's Portia Coughlan and Liz Lockhead's Perfect Days, all at the Sugan Theatre. Horton is also a Marathoner-- in 1999 she directed Eliza Wyatt's Marathon script Chronic Competition at the Boston Center for the Arts; in 2000 she ran in the role of a centenarian Irish sodomite in Aidan Parkinson's play 10 minute play The News during the Boston Playwrights Marathon, and two of her own scripts, Beyond Measure and the mini-opera Lullaby, appeared in Marathons 2000 & 2002. Dozens of Horton's play scripts -- most of them workshopped at Playwrights' Platform or premiered at the Platform's Annual Festival of New Plays -- are published on her web site at www.stagepage.info. Through the Internet and the International Centre for Women Playwrights, Horton has had productions of her work in England, Ireland, France, Italy, Greece, New Zealand, India, and South Africa; and more than 150 productions in high schools and colleges in the USA, mostly instigated by students who find her plays on the web.
| Holly L. Jensen
Holly Jensen's passion is playwriting, but she also enjoys dabbling in poetry, short stories and creative nonfiction. Her short play, One Two Many, appeared in the 2006 Playwrights' Platform Summer Festival, where it received the Playwrights' Choice Award for Best Play. One Two Many also appeared in the 5th Annual Culture Park Short Plays Marathon in New Bedford, MA; the Image Theater's "Naughty Readings" program in Lowell, MA; Theater One's 2007 Slice of Life Play Festival in Middleboro, MA; and the BCC Theatre Rep's Matchsticks--A Night of Brief Flare-ups. She's also written The Cherry Corset, a one-act comedy, and Lizzy Izzy, a one act drama about the increasing violence among teenage girls. Holly received her masters of art degree in professional writing from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and she is a member of Playwrights' Platform and the Dramatists Guild of America. Holly lives in Providence and can be reached at holly.jensen@cox.net. She hopes one day to dabble into documentary filmmaking, but she first needs to find a partner who'd be willing to work the camera…any takers?
| George Matry Masselam
George has had five plays produced, including Alone Together, which was also short-listed for the Selection Committee at the O’ Neill Playwrights Conference in Waterford, CT, and A Thin Thread which was directed by Charles Werner Moore at Brandeis U in Waltham, MA. He had, or is having short plays produced at the Ritalin Readings and Theatre Diversified at the Theatre Cooperative in Somerville, MA, the Pregnant Chad New Plays Festival 2004 in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, The Playwrights Platform Summer Festival in Boston, the Arlington Friends of the Drama Short Works Festival in Arlington, and the Hovey Summer Shorts Festival in Waltham. He received his MFA from Brandeis and has two wonderful and unusually gifted daughters.
| Lida McGirr
Lida McGirr has been writing short plays since the birth of her first son 20 years ago. The playwrighting was born out of the guilt of being away nights at rehearsals. So she stayed home, stayed connected to theater by sitting at her computer and writing short plays while her precious first-born sat next to her in his babyseat, crying. NONSTOP. This soon drove her back to rehearsals, but she still whips up a short play every now and then. She has had several of her plays produced by Playwrights' Platform: "A Family Portrait in Three Sittings", "Tuning In" and "The Test." Several other plays have been performed at such locales as the Hovey Summer Shorts, ACME Winter Festival, Romance Novelist Conventions, The Seven Ages Festival at TCAN, the Concord Players, the BCA, retirements centers and a bakery in Concord, MA. She is proud to report that her son is graduating NYU's Stern School of Business Spring '06, is brilliant, witty, moral, looking for a finance consulting job in NY -- any takers?, loves theater, fine dining, and, from a loose background in Protestant and Jewish faith, has grown into a devout Catholic.
| Richard Pacheco
Richard is an award-winning playwright,
poet, artist, journalist, filmmaker and educator. He was a finalist
in the grant competition in playwrighting for the Massachusetts
Artists Foundation (1976) and recipient of an ARTA (American Regional
Theatre Award) best new play award in 1986.His play, "Happily
Ever After", received an Honorable Mention in the Writer’s
Digest playwrighting competition in 2004. His has had staged readings
and productions at various places in Massachusetts.
He was
mentored in poetry writing by Pulitzer Prize nominees Daisy Aldan and
George W. Hayden Jr. as well as Everett Hoaglund, contributing editor
to American Poetry Review.
He is a member of the Dramatist
Guild, Playwright’s Platform and The Playwright Stuff. He was
written four screenplays and several full length plays. He has acted
in over 30 plays and acts professionally and regularly with Comedy
Theater of Boston and other theaters. He holds a BFA in painting and
an MFA in art education/printmaking from U. Mass. Dartmouth (UMD).
He was awarded the Key Club Award for Excellence in Teaching,
was named to Who’s Who of American Teachers, and twice nominated
for a Disney All American Teaching Award. He created one of the first
high school courses in the nation in computer graphics in 1987. He is
an Intel Teach to the Future Master Teacher and online facilitator
for PBS's Teacherline. He occasionally teaches for SouthCoast
Learning Network. He also was a guest speaker several times for
different topics from writing to web design at UMD. He taught
painting courses at the former Swain School of Design in
painting.
The city of New Bedford honored him for his
contributions to the arts as artist, writer, and arts writer with a
special recognition. He was a three time member of the New Bedford
Arts Council under three different mayoral administrations. When he
retired from teaching, he received a special recognition from the
Massachusetts House of Representatives and Governor Jane Swift for
his contributions to the people of the Commonwealth in education and
the arts.
As a journalist, he wrote for the New Bedford
Standard-Times on the arts, writing a weekly column for years. He
writes for Southcoast Magazine and Southcoast Insider Magazine. His
awards include the American Press Institute for feature writing,
American Regional Theatre Awards for criticism and arts writing. He
was also editor and general manager of the Greater New Bedford Arts
and Entertainment Magazine, and arts editor and contributing writer
to New Bedford Magazine.
As an artist, he has exhibited in New
York at the Kottler Galleries and had his first one person show at
Boston City Hall. He was a member of the Boston Visual Artists Union
(BVAU)and served as chairperson on multiple committees. While chair
of the legislative committee, he helped craft the first major
revisions of the copyright law in 1976, as head of the Cultural
Institutions Committee, he helped the Boston MFA keep its
contemporary arts wing open during renovations and was chairperson of
the speaker committee of the Second American Artists Congress held in
Boston in 1976.
He produces Healthwise, Page to
Stage on New Bedford Cable access and other cable stations and
received the Business Challenge grant from the Woodbridge Club for
$4,000 for Health Wise. He is Associate Producer on Wolfgang Pictures
cable series, Wolfgang Presents.
He studied filmmaking and
video at the Boston Film and Video Foundation. He studied
screenwriting with Syd Field, producing with Michael Weise, and
directing with Dezyos Magyar at the American Film Institute. He is a
graduate of the Hollywood film School. He studied acting with the
American Theater Training Institute with Paul Mann and Mary Carver.
He studied directing with the late Alan Schneider (Arena Stage,
Washington, DC) and Ed Sheerin ("The Great White Hope" on
Broadway)
As a web designer/consultant, he has designed web
sites since 1995and designed for small businesses and subsidiaries of
Fortune Five Hundred companies.
Retired from teaching he lives in
New Bedford, Massachusetts where he pursues his multiple careers,
muralist (and painter), actor, director, web design consultant,
producer and writer.
You can reach Richard at
rpacheco@imagination-unlimited.net.
| Gail Phaneuf / Advisory Board Member
Gail Phaneuf has penned several plays and her
musical, (co-written with Ernie Lijoi), MONSTERS! was chosen as a 2005
finalist for the Rod Parker Playwriting Competition, and was produced in
September 2006 at CentAstage in Boston. Visit: (www.monstersthemusical.com). MONSTERS! is currently (2008) being considered for an Off Broadway run in NYC. Gail's newest musical THE LOVE NOTE was produced in 2009 at Curry College. Gail wrote book, music and lyrics for THE LOVE NOTE.Visit: (www.thelovenote.com).
Her play STOP REQUESTED (published by Heuer www.hitplays.com) was voted Best Play by both audience and playwrights at the 2008 festival. GAMES and PUZZLES was produced by Image Theatre for the 2008 Boston Theater Marathon. Her edgy play Random Selection was well
received at the 2004 Boston Theatre Marathon and her prickly Urban Gardens was awarded an
Audience Choice award at the Playwrights' Platform 32nd Annual Summer
Festival, and was produced in 2007 by The South Camden Theatre Co. in New Jersey. Gail has been acting on New
England stages for over 20
years. Most recently, she played the role of Stevie in The
Goat or Who is Sylvia for the New Provincetown Players. Other stage credits
include leading roles in Laughing Wild, The Baltimore Waltz, Closer Than Ever, Six Degrees of
Separation, Educating Rita, South Pacific, Follies and Agnes of God.
Directing credits include
STOP REQUESTED for the Playwrights' Platform 2008 summer festival (*Best Director), RANDOM SELECTION for Hovey Summer
Shorts, CHOICES (Best Director), and DANCERS for The Playwrights' Platform summer festivals, FALLEN STAR at the Shea Theater, and THE NEW FRONTIER for the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival. Gail currently teaches Scriptwriting and produces the New Plays festival at Curry College.
Gail (www.gailphaneuf.com) lives in Boston and is cleverly disguised as The Computer Doctor by day (www.computerdoctor.org) . She also plays piano, writes music, and is lead singer for the Boston band, "Who’s Leslie." (www.whosleslie.com) You can email her at gphaneuf@computerdoctor.org .
| Judith Plummer/Advisory Board Member
While it’s true that Judith Plummer hails from Tennessee, she
doesn’t really consider herself a "Southern playwright." Born in
Nashville, she first left home to attend Concordia University in
Montreal to study cinema and then headed for Los Angeles, where she
received a Master of Professional Writing degree from the University of
Southern California. While in L.A., she interned for a producer on the
Warner Brothers lot and pursued a career as a screenwriter.
Judith
moved to Northern California in the late 90s and became involved with
the Playwrights Center of San Francisco, where she redirected her
talents into live theater. After a relocation to the Greater Boston
area, Judith joined Playwrights Platform in 2006.
In May 2007,
Judith's play, The Eskimo Rule was selected for the Short Play Lab at
the Second Annual Great Plains Theatre Conference, cofounded by Edward
Albee, where she had the honor to attend a master class with Mr.
Albee. Since that time, "The Eskimo Rule" has had stagings in both the
Playwrights Platform 35th PLAYWRIGHTS' Annual Festival of New Plays and
the Seven Deadly Sins Festival at Amazing Things Arts Center.
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| Phyllis Rittner/Advisory Board Member & Actor-in-Residence Co-Coordinator
Since Phyllis joined Playwrights’ Platform in the fall of 2005, three of her plays have been produced at the Playwrights’ Platform Summer Festival, including The Offer, (runner up for the 2006 Playwrights’ Choice Award), Breeding Season, and most recently, The Entertainer(winner of the 2008 Audience Choice Award). She has had several staged readings of her comedy, “Pull a Costner” at the Image Theater in Lowell, SWAN (Support Women Artists Now) Day at Boston Playwright’s Theater and at the Our Voices Festival of Women Playwrights at Wellesley College. She is a published fiction writer, actress, voiceover artist and line coach.
As an actress, Phyllis has performed in over 25 theater and film productions in the Boston area. She has narrated two television series and has worked for over 50 clients in radio and television.
She can be reached at phyllis560@comcast.net.
| Ellen Davis Sullivan
Ellen began writing plays in 2006 after more than twenty years writing unpublished fiction. Apparently joining Playwrights’ Platform in 2007 was the secret to writing success because since then two of her short stories have been published. Yiddish Land was selected for the 3rd place prize in Moment Magazine’s short fiction contest and appears in the November/December ’08 issue (online at www.momentmag.com). Memoril appears in the debut issue of the literary journal 94 Creations. Her short play The Unveiling was given a staged reading in 2008 at Our Voices Together and was performed at the 2008 Playwrights’ Platform Festival. It was also selected by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education for its 2008 New Play Development Workshop. lndsullivan@comcast.net
| Scott Welty/Resident Photographer
If there is one through line in Scott Welty's life it is playwriting. From the time his
parent's trundled him off to Lakewood Little Theatre's Children's Theatre and up
to the present Scott has been writing plays. While in his teens, from his scenario,
Scott co-wrote with Ed Dee and Cathy Theobald the children’s play Elftrek. The
play received three separate productions in his home state of Ohio. In college,
Scott wrote comedy sketches for his friends at Kent State Theatre Dept.
With Noah Buddin, Scott also wrote for a soap opera produced by the
Telecommunications Dept. For a few years after college Scott wrote sketch
comedy for Cleveland comedy troupe The Group. Scott moved away from
theatre in the late 1980’s but never stopped writing. To him, writing is like
breathing. In early 1990s rolled around Scott decided to tackle longer forms then
the sketch. He also branched out into dramas. Scott twice took Kate
Snodgrass's playwriting class at Harvard Extension. In 1995 he completed his
first full length play, The Seven Deadly Sins Have Breakfast at Friendlys. Other
plays include the drama Muse; the comedy What Would Debbie Do?; the one-act
drama Borders; the one-act comedy Rusty The Dog: Episode 178 - Jimmy Down
the Well; the one-act drama What Time Is It?; and the one-act comedy Our
Relationship Is In The Toilet; Our Toilet Is In The Relationship. He joined
Playwrights' Platform in October of 2005.
| Andrew Wetmore
Andrew Wetmore lives in Lowell. His plays have been produced on both coasts and in eastern Canada. His oddest challenge so far was to write a murder mystery that was performed by Hampshire Shakespeare Company on the historic train running between Holyoke and Westfield. His biggest project to date has been to adapt the entire Bible for production as an audio play. The New Testament part of the project won Audio Book of the Year in 2007. Wetmore was the founding chairperson of the Dramatists' Co-op of Nova Scotia, and has worked with many playwrights to prepare their scripts for production.
| Eliza Wyatt
Eliza was born and raised in Brighton, Sussex and went to Boston University,
Boston to achieve an honors degree in Philosophy. She then had some success
with writing for a theatre company in Boston and took her M.F.A.
(Playwrighting) at Brandeis University, U.S.A.
Eliza went on to achieve prestigious American awards for her writing,
Massachusetts Playwrighting Fellowship, Playwrights-As-Thinkers, Mid-West
Playwrights Conference, Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and
was a finalist in the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. In 2002, she won the
Moondance Film Festival Radio Play Columbine award. She won **** in the
Millennium year Edinburgh Theatre Festival from The List, and Best
Playwright of The Year from Fringe Report.com for FLOWERS OF RED at The
Edinburgh Theatre Festival 2005. All of her ten full-length plays have been
produced and she is present working on TRIBE OF THREE a comedy about an
Iranian immigrant and the demons he faces, including his seventeen year old
daughter.
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