Joanna Rotté – Yeshe Tsogyal
Joanna Rotté
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
Katari Brown
Katäri Brown – Disciple
Katäri Brown, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Coatesville. She has been a poet, musician and songwriter since her youth, and her album “Katäri: It Rhymes with Canary” was released in 1999. As an actress, she has performed professionally in comedies, dramas, mysteries and musicals, chiefly in Michigan, where she also was a co-producer of the entertainment company Mystery Visits. She has practiced meditation since the late 1980s and is a student of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche.
Russell Pagano – Chorus
Russell Pagano has a degree in music from Temple University and has been interested in meditation and yoga for years. Yeshe Tsogyal marks his actorial debut. He currently works for the Opera company and hopes to find time to sing for a choir in Philadelphia.
Kris Harvey-Stinson – Chorus
Kris Harvey-Stinson is thrilled to be involved with the Yeshe Tsogyal project. Many years ago (20 to be exact) which seems a lifetime ago, Kris was a stand-up comedian and an improvisational actress at Dudley Riggs Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis, MN. She also owned The Ha Ha Club, a comedy theater, in Minneapolis. She has been a Shambhala Buddhist practitioner for 17 years. She is filled with great joy to be mixing both of those practices together. In the rest of her world, she works in an MIS department and is happy to share her days with her husband and 8 year old son.
Tom Di Giulio
Tom Di Giulio, Chorus Member
Tom Di Giulio has been a yoga practitioner for four years and teacher for one. While living in Italy, he practiced Gregorian Chant with Benedictine Monks in Norcia, the home of Saint Benedict. As a youth and in college, he performed on stage. “All Victorious Ocean” has been the culmination of many of Tom’s loves: yoga, theater, chanting. He is currently a Latin teacher in the Cheltenham School District and has just finished his master’s degree in secondary education at Temple University, and he expects to finish his second master’s in Classics this Spring at Villanova University.
Dan Perelstein
Daniel Perelstein – Sound/Music Designer
Daniel Perelstein is a freelance sound designer, composer, performer, and musical director in Philadelphia. This fall: Matchbox Theater Company’s Preparations For Departure, Nice People Theatre Company’s Grace, Or The Art Of Climbing, Philadelphia Theatre Workshop’s The :nv:s:ble Play, and others. Education: B.S. Engineering, & B.A. Music, Swarthmore College.
Parlan McGaw – Guru Padmasmbhava
Parlan McGaw has acted with the New York Shakespeare Festival, San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, Virginia Stage Company, and other theatres in New York and regionally, and he made his film debut in Todd Haynes’s Poison. He has been an authorized meditation teacher in the Shambhala
Buddhist tradition since 1993 and teaches Meditation for Actors at the Michael Howard Studios in New York.
