Alley All New 2025
Mark Bedard is a Chicago based actor, writer, singer, and acting coach. As a writer, he co-wrote an original holiday comedy called It’s Christmas, Carol! which premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2021 as well as 2022. His adaptation of The Cocoanuts (a Marx Brothers musical) premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2014 with subsequent runs at The Guthrie and Utah Shakespeare Festival. Other writing projects: the 77th Anniversary Daedalus AIDS Benefit (2014); 75th Anniversary Daedalus AIDS Benefit (2012); BARDbershop Green Show (2009, 2008); six School Visit Programs: While Waiting for Godot (2012); Embrace your Fool (2012); The Superior Inferior (2009, 2008); These Foolish Things (2009); Brothers & Buddies (2007); Bottom’s Tale (2007). As an actor, he has worked on numerous theater productions as well as appearances on TV shows. markbedard.com
Lisa D’Amour is a playwright, educator and interdisciplinary collaborator from New Orleans, Louisiana. She grew up in a world of ritual, activism, group spectacle and care, all of which continue to thrive in her work. Lisa’s plays have produced by theaters across the country, including Manhattan Theater Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Broadway, Playwrights Horizons (NYC), Steppenwolf Theater (Chicago), Children’s Theater Company (Minneapolis), Woolly Mammoth Theater (Washington D.C.), Catastrophic Theater (Houston) and ArtSpot Productions (New Orleans). Lisa’s theater company PearlDamour makes interdisciplinary, often site-specific works which range from intimate to large scale. Recent work includes Ocean Filibuster, a genre-crashing human-ocean showdown (currently touring), MILTON, a performance and community engagement experiment rooted in 5 U.S. towns named Milton, and How to Build a Forest, an 8-hour performance installation created with visual artist Shawn Hall. Her play Detroit was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the 2011 Susan Smith Blackburn prize, and she’s been honored with two OBIE Awards for Detroit and Nita and Zita (the latter with PearlDamour and ArtSpot). Lisa has received the Alpert Award for the Arts in theater, the Steinberg Playwright Award and the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. She is currently the Distinguished Professor of Playwriting at the University of Houston. Lisa lives in New Orleans, where she’s on the leadership team for Trinity City Arts.
Chisa Hutchinson (B.A. Vassar; M.F.A. NYU) has presented her plays, which include Amerikin, Redeemed, She Like Girls, Somebody’s Daughter, and Whitelisted among others, at such venues as Alley Theater, the National Black Theatre, Primary Stages, Second Stage Theater and Arch 468 in London. She’s won a GLAAD Award as well as a Lanford Wilson, and been a member of New Dramatists, a NeoFuturist, and a staff writer for the Blue Man Group. Her radio play, Proof of Love, was commissioned and produced by Audible where it enjoys a boss rating, and her first indie feature, The Subject (starring Jason Biggs and Aunjanue Ellis) can be found on most major VOD platforms. Currently, Chisa is developing a screenplay about the guy who invented the silicone dildo. chisahutchinson.com
Marisela Treviño Orta has an MFA in Playwriting from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop and an MFA in Poetry from the University of San Francisco. She is a Playwrights’ Center Affiliated Writer and member of the Latino Theater Company’s Circle of Imaginistas. Marisela’s award-winning work has been produced at theatres across the country, including: American Players Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, Nashville Children’s Theatre, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and PCPA Pacific Conservatory Theatre. Marisela’s plays The River Bride and Wolf at the Door are available via the publisher Samuel French. And her Audible commission play Nightfall is available on their platform.
John is an internationally recognized actor/writer. For 15 years at The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, John has acted in 23 of Shakespeare’s 37 plays including Henry V in Henry V; Prince Hal in Henry IV, Parts One and Two; Philanax in the world premiere of Head Over Heels; Chico in The Cocoanuts; Robin Hood in The Heart of Robin Hood; Sharpe in Equivocation; Romeo in Romeo and Juliet; and Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Off-Broadway he has performed with Ensemble Studio Theater, The Mint Theatre, and Primary Stages where he received a Lucille Lortel Nomination for his roles in Kate Hamill’s celebrated adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Regionally John has acted at The Guthrie Theater, The Goodman Theater, Arena Stage, The Old Globe, Pioneer Theater, Syracuse Stage, Seattle Rep, MTC, Actors Theater of Louisville, McCarter Theater, Chicago Shakespeare, and many more. John is also a cook and author. His cookbook, Fat Rascals: Dining at Shakespeare’s Table explores the food of Shakespeare’s England. Television: Bad Teacher, Fashions for Men. Awards: Arthur Kennedy Award; Indy Award: I Am My Own Wife. @johnnymtufts
