Panelist Biographies

Michal Zadara, though a native of Poland (b. 1976), was educated in American schools in Frankfurt and Vienna before attending Swarthmore College. Zadara subsequently studied directing at the Cracow State Drama School with Krystian Lupa, Poland's most acclaimed contemporary director and teacher of directing. After making his professional debut in 2003-2004, Zadara quickly became one of the most visible and controversial young directors in contemporary Polish theater. He directed productions at Berlin's Gorky Theater and Warsaw's National Theatre in 2007, and created an original piece on contemporary Polish-Jewish relations at the Habima Theatre in Tel Aviv in 2008. He is scheduled to direct his first production at Warsaw's National Opera in 2010. In 2008, Zadara was given the prestigious Passport Award for Theater and was the featured artist in the biannual Warsaw Theatre Meetings Festival, a showcase of the most important Polish stage productions of the last two seasons. The festival program included seven of Zadara's productions.

Rita Gombrowicz was born Rita Labrosse in Montréal in 1935. Witold Gombrowicz's widow and literary executor since his death in 1969. She speaks English and French, and holds a doctorate in French literature from the Sorbonne (where she wrote on Colette). She is the author of two major biographical works devoted on the playwright: Gombrowicz en Argentine and Gombrowicz en Europe (both of which have been translated and published in several languages) as well as of an authoritative website on the playwright that will launch this year. For forty years, she has been both the public and literary representative Gombrowicz's work, most notably during the years of censorship of his writings in communist Poland, which included surveillance and harassment of her in Paris by Polish communist security forces in the 1970s and 1980s. She has served as the honorary patron of the International Gombrowicz Festivals held in Poland since 1993, and is an Advisory Board Member for Pig Iron Theatre Company in Philadelphia.

Thomas Sellar is an arts journalist and theater critic, is editor of Theater magazine and Associate Professor of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at the Yale School of Drama. His articles, reviews, and interviews have consistently championed modern and contemporary experimental artists, with an emphasis on international directors and playwrights. His reporting and criticism regularly appear in national publications including The New York Times, The Village Voice, TheatreForum, and American Theatre. Sellar has worked as a production dramaturge at theaters including the New York Shakespeare Festival/Joseph Papp Public Theatre, the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, PS 122, Theater for the New City, the Wilma Theater, Center Stage, and Yale Repertory Theatre. From 1991 until 1994 he was a founding member and assistant director of Potlatch (plays & spectacles), a Philadelphia-based company creating site-specific productions. Sellar is a graduate of Haverford College and holds both MFA and doctoral degrees from Yale University.

Allen Kuharski is a leading authority on plays of Witold Gombrowicz. His translations include Gombrowicz's posthumous play History (with Dariusz Bukowski), Ionesco's Rhinoceros (with George Moskos; produced in Philadelphia by Theatre Exile in 2000), and Teatr Provisorium & Kompania Teatr of Lublin's stage adaptation of Gombrowicz's first novel Ferdydurke, which premiered in Philadelphia in 2000 and won a Fringe First in Edinburgh in 2001. He was the dramaturge for Pig Iron Theatre Company's 2004 production of Hell Meets Henry Halfway, which was adapted from Gombrowicz's novel Possessed and won both an OBIE and a Barrymore Award in 2005. He is a co-editor for the sixteen-volume Collected Writings (Pisma zebrane) of Witold Gombrowicz being published in Poland and with Rita Gombrowicz is co-authoring the official Witold Gombrowicz website that will launch later this year. Kuharski is the Chair of the Department of Theater at Swarthmore College, where he was Michal Zadara's directing teacher and advisor.

Whit MacLaughlin is the Obie and Barrymore Award winning artistic director of New Paradise Laboratories (NPL). He has conceived, directed, and designed 13 original performance works with the company since its inception in 1996. NPL's work has been presented at the Ontological Theatre and PS 122 in New York City, the Walker Art Center and Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis, the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, The Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and many colleges and universities throughout the country. MacLaughlin has directed and performed in numerous productions along the East Coast as a freelance artist. Coming up from NPL: FREEDOM CLUB, a collaboration with the Riot Group, and MORT, the third part of a trilogy of pieces about American parties.

kanarinka, a.k.a. Catherine D'Ignazio, is an artist and educator. Her artwork is participatory and distributed - a single project might take place online, in the street and in a gallery, and involve multiple audiences participating in different ways for different reasons. Her practice is collaborative even when she says it's not. Her artwork has been exhibited at the ICA Boston, Eyebeam, MASSMoCA, and the Western Front among other locations. She is Co-Director of the experimental curatorial group iKatun and a founding member of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things. She teaches at RISD's Digital Media Graduate Program. kanarinka is the recipient of various awards, including a Rotary Foundation Scholarship for independent study in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a 2003 Turbulence.org networked art competition award and grants from the Cambridge Arts Council, the LEF Foundation, and RISD. She currently resides in Boston, MA.

Neil Kleinman is the senior fellow in the Corzo Center for the Creative Economy and professor of Media and Communication at the University of the Arts, where, until recently, he served as dean of the College of Media & Communication and director of the Philadelphia Applied Research Labs. Kleinman has published and taught in a number of discipline areas: law, literature, writing, technology, design, the digital economy and marketing, as well as on the influence of technologies on society. He’s been a book, magazine, and newspaper editor and co-author of a book on German propaganda (The Dream that Was No More a Dream) and the editor of a book on mime (The Mime Book). Kleinman has a JD from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in English from the University of Connecticut.

Jo-Anne Green is Co-Director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (NRPA) and its world-renowned web sites Turbulence.org, Networked_Performance, and Networked_Music_Review. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Green graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1981 with a BFA Honours in Printmaking and a major in Art History. She emigrated to Boston in 1983 and obtained her MFA in Painting from UMASS Dartmouth in 1989. In 1985, Green co-founded Cultural Resistance to educate the American public about apartheid through the art and culture of South Africa. Prior to joining NRPA in March 2002, Green was instrumental in starting the artist-in-residence program at the University of New Mexico's (UNM) Albuquerque High Performance Computing Center; this initiative led to the creation of the Arts Technology Center (ATC). Green has exhibited her paintings, one-of-a-kind artist's books, and installations in South Africa, Boston, and New York. http://new-radio.org; http://turbulence.org

Chunky Move Founded in Melbourne, Australia, by artistic director Gideon Obarzanek in 1995, Chunky Move has earned an enviable reputation for producing a distinct yet unpredictable brand of genre-defying dance performance.

Dawn Stoppiello is a choreographer, dancer and media artist who has dedicated her career to computer mediated live performance, creating choreography for bodies interfaced to computers through sensory systems. She is recognized as a pioneer in the genre of dance & technology. With composer/media artist Mark Coniglio she is co-founder of Troika Ranch with whom she has performed, lectured and taught nationally and internationally. Troika Ranch's current project Loop Diver is commissioned by the Doris Duke Foundation and the Lied Center for Performing Arts in Lincoln, NE. A recent mark of distinction is the prestigious Statue Award from the Princess Grace Foundation-USA, which she received in 2004 for her sustained achievement in her field. Company honors include a 2003 "Bessie" Award (New York City) and an Honorable Mention from the 2004 Prix Ars Electronica Cyberarts Competition (Linz, Austria). She received her BFA in dance from California Institute of the Arts. www.troikaranch.org

Moe Angelos Moe Angelos has worked with The Builders Association since 1999, spanning two centuries, several productions and many a hotel room mini-bar. She has also created six plays with her collaborative theatre company The Five Lesbian Brothers, who have been published and won some awards. Moe has also appeared in the work of Brooke O'Harra, Carmelita Tropicana, Anne Bogart, Holly Hughes, Lois Weaver, Zack, Leigh Silverman and The Ridiculous Theatrical Company, to name a few in the cavalcade of luminaries.

Kathleen Forde Since 2005, Kathleen Forde has been the Curator of Time-Based Visual Arts at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, NY. Prior to EMPAC Kathleen held various positions in the field including Curatorial Director for Live Arts and New Media for the Goethe Forum in Berlin and Assistant Curator for Media Arts at SFMOMA (1999 - 2002). Kathleen has written and curated on a freelance basis for organizations including the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology; Independent Curators International; ATA Cultural, Peru; Kunstverein Dusseldorf and Cologne; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 2003-4 Kathleen was an Alexander von Humboldt German Chancellor Scholar based in Berlin. She graduated with an MA in Post-1945 Art and Theory from Goldsmiths College, University of London in 1996 and a BA in Journalism and Art History from the Loyola College of Maryland in 1994.