Joanna Rotté—Actor, Playwright, Artistic Director
A life-long member of Actors Equity, Joanna has performed leading roles on stage, most recently Mary Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, Mother Courage in Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage, and Claire Zaccanassian in Durrenmatt’s The Visit.
Joanna is also a playwright. Four of her works have been produced professionally, including a modernized adaptation of Chogyam Trungpa’s play entitled Prajna that she directed as a featured presentation of the 2001 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. She is the author of two books and more than twenty-five essays published nationally on art and performance.
Her book, Acting with Adler, is an esteemed critical analysis of the methodology of the great acting teacher, Stella Adler, with whom she studied at length and in depth. She herself is one of the teachers included in the recent publication, Acting Teachers of America.
In 1983 she earned a PhD in Theatre from the City University of New York Graduate Center. Dr. Rotté is Professor of Theatre and Resident Actor at Villanova University where she has also directed numerous productions of contemporary theatre.
Joanna is also a Co-Director of the Shambhala Meditation Center of Philadelphia. She has been practicing meditation in the tradition of Shambhala Buddhism since 1997. She serves as a Shambhala Meditation Guide and attended Vajrayana Seminary in August 2009 under the instruction of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. Since 2008, she has been the voice of Pema Chodron, recording four books written by the popular Shambhala Buddhist author Pema Chodron.
In 1995 Joanna obtained certification as a teacher of Hatha Yoga and has published sixteen articles on aspects of yoga training.
http://www.shambhala.com – type Joanna Rotte in the keyword box to hear sample recordings
www.phila.shambhala.org – for more information about the Shambhala Meditation Center of Philadelphia
www.homepage.villanova.edu/joanna.rotte – read sample essays
Daniel Perelstein – Music Director, Composer, Performer
Daniel is a freelance sound designer, composer, and musical director and sound technician in Philadelphia who has created work for several shows in the 2009 Philly Fringe Festival and other theater works in Philadelphia. In the past year he has created music for Grace, Or The Art Of Climbing (Nice People Theatre Company), Love, Jerry (Nice People), The :nv:s:ble Play (Philadelphia Theatre Workshop), they call him young lou (Columbia Stages, NY), Preparations For Departure (Matchbox Theater Company), and Julius Caesar (Green Chair Dance Company / Puppet Uprising), among others. Daniel holds a B.S. in Engineering and a B.A. in Music from Swarthmore College, where he is currently the resident sound designer for the Department of Theatre. His work combines my interests in music, sound design, and technology. His specialty is working with actors as musicians and working with content on the border between sound and music.
Ellie Byrom-Haley – Production Designer
As founder and chief creative officer at Gecko Group, and throughout more than 20 years in graphic and dimensional design, Ellie has built an outstanding reputation managing complex design, advertising, and exhibit projects for agencies and museums in San Francisco, New York, and Philadelphia. Specializing in corporate communications, marketing and exhibit planning, she directs the creative efforts of the firm as well as manages business process.
Byrom-Haley studied painting and photography at CSUS and continues to practice and show as a fine artist. Recent shows include the solo show “Botanix” at the Knauer Gallery at West Chester University and the group show “6×6” at The Art Trust in West Chester. In 2005 she helped co-found The Art Trust to enhance the cultural environment of the area by promoting regional artists. Byrom-Haley also helped to establish the Artists’ Open Studio in West Chester, which raises money for local charities while promoting local arts by holding open studio tours for the general public.
Heidi Barr – Costume Designer
Heidi Barr brings more than twenty years of experience as a dancer to her work in costume design. She received a BFA in dance from Cornish College of the Arts (Seattle) in 1987 and danced professionally for the following ten years. In 1997, Heidi moved east and began creating costumes for theater and dance. She has designed costumes for over countless choreographic works since beginning her own business in 2000; including works by Melanie Stewart Dance Theatre, Group Motion, Subcircle, Marianela Boan, Terrain Dance Company, Paule Turner/Court, Dance Theater X and many others. Heidi has designed main stage plays for both Drexel and Rowan Universities. She regularly designs for faculty and student dance works at Drexel, Rowan, Temple and Princeton Universities.
Heidi manages Drexel University’s Mandell Theaters’ costume shop and teaches costume design at Philadelphia University. She received the Leeway Foundations’ Window of Opportunity Grant in 2004 for her collaboration with Megan Bridge and Peter Price on The Fold. Heidi is a long time practitioner of Yoga and recently completed my 200 hour teacher training at Dhyana yoga.
Michael Carroll – Executive Producer
Michael Carroll is the author of Awake at Work (Shambhala Press 2004) and The Mindful Leader (Shambhala Press 2007), and is a regular contributor to the TRICYCLE REVIEW, the SHAMBHALA SUN and BUDDHADHARMA MAGAZINE. Michael has an active consulting and coaching business (www.awakeatwork.net) with client firms such as Procter & Gamble, Google, AstraZeneca, Starbucks, National Geographic Expeditions, Gilbane, Inc. and others.
Michael has been studying Tibetan Buddhism since 1976, graduated from Buddhist seminary in 1980 and is an authorized teacher in the Kagyu-Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. He has lectured and taught at Wharton Business School, Columbia University, Swarthmore College, Yale University, St. Mary’s University, Kripalu, Cape Cod Institute, Zen Mountain Monastery, Shambhala Mountain Center, Karme Choling, Omega Institute (assisting Pema Chodron) and many other practice centers throughout the US, Canada and Europe.
Susanna Lack – Producing Director
Susanna holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and is in private practice. She has been practicing and studying Shambhala Buddhism for the past 16 years and incorporates mindfulness-awareness meditation into her work with adolescents and adults.
Susanna specializes in applying mindfulness-awareness techniques in order to promote health and well-being among diverse populations and she has run applied mindfulness workshops at Swarthmore College, the University of Pennsylvania, yoga studios, and schools throughout the Philadelphia area.
Trained as an actor at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater in New York City, Susanna has appeared in two films and performed in numerous off-off Broadway productions.
Margie Strosser – Producer
Margie Strosser is an award winning producer, director and writer in television and film who started her professional movie career in Pittsburgh as an assistant film editor for George Romero, Pittsburgh’s cult horror movie king; where she also produced Pittsburgh’s first performance art festival.
Her autobiographical film essay “Rape Stories” premiered at the London Film Festival and continues to be screened in theaters and used in university classrooms around the world. A recipient of the prestigious Pew Fellowships in the Arts, she currently is an Associate of Real Arts Media, a boutique media production company in Philadelphia. The co-author of four feature movie scripts, Margie also teaches creative writing in the undergraduate Film Media Arts program at Temple University.
Margie holds an M.F.A. in film production from Columbia University School of the Arts in New York City. She has been a member of the Shambhala Meditation Center of Philadelphia since 2008.
Alison Smith Driscoll – Associate Producer
Alison recently retired as Director of Public Affairs for the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts. She began her career as public information director for the court-appointed entity which monitored desegregation in the Boston public schools. Alison is a graduate of Smith College and holds a master’s degree in mass communications from Boston University. Alison has been a student of Tibetan Buddhism since the early 1980s and attended seminary in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage in 1992 and became a meditation instructor and teacher within that tradition in the mid-1990s. She is also a student of Her Eminence Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche in the Mindrolling lineage of Tibetan Buddhism.
Christine Ripa – Associate Producer
Christine Ripa has worked in the field of business, education and private tutoring, therapeutic support for adolescents, case management and counseling adults for over twenty years. Christine became involved in Buddhism through The Tibetan Buddhist Center (TBC)in 1997 and as a student of Lobsang Samten. She travelled through India in 1999-2000, where she received private instruction from the Dalai Lama.
Caroline Elizabeth Savage – Media Strategist
Caroline currently lives in Philadelphia, makes independent films, photographic images, teaches media art and works with arts organizations and artists in realizing their projects through planning, grant writing and strategizing. She is coordinator of the Philadelphia Film and Video Association (PIFVA). She holds a BFA and MFA in Photography and Film from the San Francisco Art Institute and received a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship in Media Arts in 2006. She recently embarked on a meditation practice through the Shambhala Meditation Center of Philadelphia.
Sandra Knoblach – Communications Assistant
Sandra is a recent communications grad from Temple University who focused her studies on creative writing.
