Authors Vol. 2 No. 3

  • Greg Allen

    Greg Allen is the Founding Director of The Neo-Futurists and creator of Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (30 Plays in 60 Minutes). He has written, directed, and performed over 600 original plays for Too Much Light... in its continuous run since the end of the Reagan administration — from the ever-popular Title (as heard on This American Life) to the infamous Another Play Which Makes The Audience Hate Greg. He has also written and/or directed twenty-five full-length productions for The Neo-Futurists. Collaborating with Theater Oobleck's Danny Thompson and Ben Schneider, Greg co-created The Complete Lost Works Of Samuel Beckett As Found In An Envelope (partially burned) In A Dustbin In Paris Labeled “Never to be performed. Never. Ever. EVER! Or I'll Sue! I'LL SUE FROM THE GRAVE!!!” , winning the Outstanding Production Award for Comedy during its sold-out run in the New York International Fringe Theater Festival in the summer of 2000. It later returned to NYC for a very successful off-Broadway run, enjoyed an extended sold-out run at the 2002 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and was picked up for a three month UK tour in 2003 starting with a six week run at Riverside Studios, London, (an old haunt of Beckett himself) and then moving on to Dublin, Bath, Brighton, and elsewhere.

    Greg was commissioned to write “phone plays” for the 2001 Humana Festival at The Actors Theatre of Louisville. His play Subliminable was chosen for production and was published in their annual anthology by Smith and Krauss. This began Greg’s long-term relationship with Actors Theatre which has included teaching two Neo-Futurist residencies for the ATL apprentice program, and collaborating with six noted national playwrights on Uncle Sam's Satiric Spectacular: On Democracy and Other Fictions Featuring Patriotism Acts and Blue Songs from a Red State for the 2005 Humana Festival of New Plays. This script will be published by Smith and Krauss in early 2006. ATL recently hosted a touring run of Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind as part of it’s 2005-2006 season.

    In 2005 Greg devised, wrote, translated, and directed The Last Two Minutes of the Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen which slammed the climaxes of all 26 Ibsen plays together in chronological order, just in time for Ibsen’s centenary. After a very successful extended run at The Neo-Futurarium, Greg took the production to New York in August where it won a rave review in the New York Times and sold out every night of its run. The script is now being reviewed for an off-Broadway run, productions around the country, and publication.

    Greg teaches Neo-Futurism around the country and here in Chicago at various theater programs and universities. He has taught residencies at University of Chicago, Roosevelt University, UMass Amherst, The Lexington Shakespeare Festival, and Actors Theatre of Louisville, including speaking stints at Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Amherst, DePaul, Northwestern, the Associates Colleges of the Midwest Chicago Semester in the Arts, and at the League of Chicago Theaters retreats. Greg also taught theater history for five years at Columbia College. Upcoming positions include an Artist in Residency at Columbia’s Glass Curtain Gallery, teaching Neo-Futurism at Second City, a residency at the Mitchell Center in Houston, and teaching Intermediate Playwrighting for the University of Chicago. He is now in his twelfth year teaching Neo-Futurist Performance Workshops at The Neo-Futurarium at the corner of Ashland and Foster over the funeral home. Greg is a proud father of Noah and Simone, and a graduate of Oberlin College.

  • Sarah Adair Frank

    Sarah Frank is only in the MAPH program. She hopes one day to live in a freezing climate and write novels.

  • Hugo Perez

    Hugo Perez is a filmmaker and writer whose work often focuses on his Cuban heritage. He has studied writing with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, worked with Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist William Kennedy, and collaborated with acclaimed theater director and artist Robert Wilson. Perez latest short film “Julieta y Ramon” was recently selected as a finalist in the 2005 Showtime Latino Filmmaker’s Showcase which spotlights the work of the best up and coming Latino directors.

    As a filmmaker, Perez is currently Producer and Director of In the Footsteps of Orpheus a feature documentary commissioned by the Carr Foundation. The film explores the life, work, and legacy of the Hungarian poet Miklos Radnoti who died in 1944 during the Holocaust. In addition, Perez is the Producer and Director of Summer Sun, Winter Moon, a documentary that follows celebrated composer and conductor Rob Kapilow and Blackfeet poet Darrell Kipp through the process of creating a symphony about the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803 from the point of view of American Indians today. Perez’ award-winning documentary short “The Old Man and Hemingway” was selected as one of nine ‘Outstanding Short Films’ for 2004-2005 by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

    As a writer, Perez work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Salon, indiewire, and Yahoo! Internet Life Magazine. Perez was a contributor to Cuba: On the Verge an art book published by Little, Brown/Bullfinch in April 2003. While juggling his many film projects, he is also writing his first novel for which “This Babalu…” was one of the initial character sketches.

    For more information about Hugo visit: www.m30afilms.com
    You can email Hugo at: hugo@m30afilms.com

  • Felicia Rosshandler

    Felicia Rosshandler, who grew up in Berlin, Antwerp and Havana, is the product of three antagonistic cultures: the German, the French, and the Spanish. She landed in the the United States at the age of seventeen where she quickly added Anglo pragmatism to the salad. She has raised three American sons in provincial New York.

    Always startling, her ability to navigate different cultures has opened bright and dark doors. Her novel, Passing Through Havana, examines the multicultural experience as propelled by love and war. Subsequent novels have also dealt with the cataclysm of dislocation. She is presently working on a series of memoir stories and meditations that chronicle her passing through the cruel and refined Twentieth Century. “Roberto Melendez A.K.A. Enrique Martinez” comes from this revisiting of the past. These narratives are called memoir stories because they are more than experience and imbedded in literature.

    Rosshandler has worked for the international press, including Tokyo Shimbun, Paris Match, and Life Espanol. While at LIFE, she developed an eye for photography. Her own images of naked Barbie, “The Venus of America,” have been exhibited at The Kitchen and other galleries in New York, Woodstock, and Venice, Italy.

    She lives in Manhattan with the writer Edmundo Desnoes.

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