Portland Center Stage

 

Cast

 

Jim Lichtscheidl*...............................................................Crumpet the Elf

 

 

Creative Team

 

David Sedaris......................................................................Creator

 

Joe Mantello........................................................................Adaptor

 

Wendy Knox........................................................................Director

 

Jessica Ford.........................................................................Costume/Scenic Designer

 

Don Crossley........................................................................Lighting Designer

 

Sarah Pickett......................................................................Sound Designer

 

Glenn D. Klapperich*..........................................................Stage Manager

 

Mark Tynan*.......................................................................Stage Manager

 

Lydia Comer........................................................................Production Assistant

 

 

*Member of the Actors' Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States

 

 

Cast Biography

 

 

 

Creative Team Biographies

 

David Sedaris (Creator)  David Raymond Sedaris was born in Binghamton, New York on December 26, 1956.  He was raised in Raleigh, North Carolina with his sister Amy, a comedic actress and writer.  According to his writings, a lisp led to a love of all “s-less” words and to parents worried about his orientation while he was young.  Sedaris has written that this led to him having an incredible vocabulary. In 1977 he left both Kent State University and Duke University without a degree but finally earned one in 1987 from the Art Institute of Chicago. He has often contributed his short works to The New Yorker and Esquire magazine as well as delivered them on a radio show entitled “This American Life,” a Public Radio International distribution. He has gained an international audience for his top-selling books and collections of stories such as Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Me Talk Pretty One Day and Naked.  He also gained mainstream attention in the US by appearing on shows such as “The David Letterman Show.”  Sedaris was also the editor for the book Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules: An Anthology of Outstanding Stories.  Sedaris has worked with his sister Amy on the plays The Book of Liz, Stump the Host and One Woman Shoe, an Obie Award-winner. He was nominated for Grammy Awards in the categories of “Best Spoken Word Album” (for Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim)and “Best Comedy Album” (for David Sedaris: Live at Carnegie Hall). He was the third writer to receive the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Time Magazine named Sedaris “Humorist of the Year” in 2001. Presently, Sedaris resides in France with his partner Hugh Hamrick.

 

Joe Mantello (Adaptor)  Joe’s directing credits include Other Desert Cities, The Pride, Pal Joey, 9 to 5, November, The Receptionist, The Ritz, Blackbird, Three Days of Rain, The Odd Couple, Glengarry Glen Ross (Tony nomination), Laugh Whore, Assassins (Tony Award), Wicked, Take Me Out (Tony Award), Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De Lune, A Man of No Importance, Design for Living and Love! Valour! Compassion! (Tony nomination). Acting credits include The Normal Heart (Tony nomination), Angels in America (Tony nomination) and The Baltimore Waltz. He is a recipient of Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Helen Hayes, Clarence Derwent, Obie and Joe A. Callaway Awards. He is a member of Naked Angels and an associate artist at Roundabout Theatre Company.

 

Wendy Knox (Director)  Wendy is the artistic director of Frank Theatre in Minneapolis, which she founded in 1989. Credits include Danai Gurira's Eclipsed, a company-developed adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis, an Ivey Award-winning production of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman and Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats (both presented by the Guthrie Theatre), Brecht’s Mother Courage, Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus, The Women of Troy (her own adaptation of Euripides’ texts, featuring a blues-based score by composer Marya Hart), Carson Kreitzer’s The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera and Arturo Ui, Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock, Ruth MacKenzie’s Kalevala, Caryl Churchill’s Vinegar Tom and Naomi Wallace’s The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek. For the Guthrie Theatre, she directed the sold-out production of Lysistrata. In addition to working at most Twin Cities theaters, her regional credits include productions at Syracuse Stage (Syracuse, NY), Berkshire Theatre Festival, Vermont Ensemble Theatre and Intiman Theatre. She has served as a guest director at Macalester College, the University of Minnesota, Grinnell College, Augsburg College and Hamline University. She works as a teaching artist for the Perpich Center for Arts Education and spent seven years teaching in the Children’s Theatre Company’s Neighborhood Bridges program, a partnership with the Minneapolis Public Schools. She was affiliated for ten years with Kulture Klub Collaborative, an arts-based organization that connects homeless teens with artists as role models. Knox was a Fulbright Fellow in Finland where she worked at Helsinki City Theatre, and she holds an MFA in Directing from the University of Washington (Seattle). She has received two McKnight Theatre Artist Fellowships recognizing outstanding work by professional theatre artists, two Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Fellowships, two Jerome Travel and Study Grants and two Diverse Visions grants from Intermedia Arts. She recently received an MRAC/McKnight Foundation "Next Step" grant to attend La Mama's International Directing Symposium in Italy next summer.

 

Jessica Ford (Scenic & Costume Designer)  Jessica is delighted to be returning to PCS for The Santaland Diaries. Other regional theatre credits include productions at The Long Wharf Theatre, Dallas Theatre Center, Baltimore Center Stage, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Two River Theatre, Syracuse Stage, People's Light and Theatre Company, Yale Rep, Barrington Stage, Hangar Theatre, Actor's Theatre of Louisville, and this season's production of Red at the Alley Theatre in Houston, TX. In New York she has worked with The Play Company, Second Stage, P73, Rattlestick Playwright's Theatre, Pearl Theatre and the Summer Play Festival, to name a few. Jessica received her MFA from the Yale School of Drama and is a recipient of the 2007-09 NEA/TCG fellowship for designers.

 

Don Crossley (Lighting Designer)  Don is excited to recreate his design for The Santaland Diaries yet again. Don served as the lighting designer for JAW: A Playwrights Festival from 1999-2010 and was PCS’ master electrician from 1996-2007. Previous PCS lighting designs include The Receptionist, Act a Lady, The Thugs, Fully Committed, Another Fine Mess, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Santaland Diaries/A Christmas Memory, which earned Don one of his six Drammy Awards for Lighting Design. Other recent design projects include The Pain and the Itch (Third Rail Repertory Theatre, where he is a Core Company Member), Jack Goes Boating (Artists Repertory Theatre), L’Heure Espangnole and L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (Portland Opera Association), and Alice and Wonderland: A Rock Opera (Oregon Children’s Theatre). Don has also designed lighting for CoHo Productions, Broadway Rose Theatre Company and The Miracle Theatre, among others.

 

Sarah Pickett (Sound Designer)  Sarah’s recent theatrical credits in sound design and/or composition include Macbeth and Othello at Theatre for a New Audience (NYC), A Delicate Balance at Yale Repertory Theater, Of Mice and Men and All’s Well That Ends Well at American Players Theater (WI), Much Ado About Nothing at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby at PlayMakers Repertory Company (NC), and The Winter’s Tale at Asolo Repertory Theatre (FL). Sarah holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama and a BFA from Syracuse University.

 

Glenn D. Klapperich (Stage Manager)  Glenn is very excited to be working with Portland Center Stage for the first time.  He has worked as a stage manager with Midwest-area theaters for the past 15 years, including Frank Theatre (Ajax in Iraq, Metamorphosis, Eclipsed and The Santaland Diaries), Theatre de la Jeune Lune (The Miser, Don Juan Giovanni, Figaro and The Little Prince), Park Square Theatre (Three Days of Rain, Love! Valour! Compassion! and Born Yesterday), Outward Spiral Theatre Company (Cloud Nine, The Big Hoover, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told) and several other area theaters.  Outside of the Midwest, he has worked with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Alley Theatre and the American Repertory Theatre.  Glenn is grateful to Portland Center Stage for the opportunity to work again with Wendy and Jim.

 

Mark Tynan (Stage Manager)  Imagine being in a room full of artists, watching the birth of an idea, a movement given purpose, a sentence, phrase, scene, act given life.  Then imagine that room translating to the stage with lighting, sound, costumes, scenery and props, then you can imagine what Mark’s job is like.  Special thanks to the phenomenal PCS production assistants, Kailyn McCord, Kelsey Daye and Lydia Comer, who help keep the vision attainable.  Prior to PCS, Mark toured nationally and internationally with musicals including Dreamgirls, The King and I with Rudolf Nureyev, How to Succeed…, Grand Hotel, The Phantom of the Opera and Rent. Other Portland credits include several summers with The Broadway Rose Theatre Company in Tigard. Regional credits include The Alley Theatre (Houston, TX) and La Jolla Playhouse (La Jolla, CA). Remember to take time to smell the roses.

 

Lydia Comer (Production Assistant)  The Santaland Diaries is Lydia’s fifth show as a production assistant at PCS. Previously, Lydia was a production assistant for An Iliad, Opus, The Imaginary Invalid and The Real Americans. Lydia started at PCS as the audience recruiter for The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. A recent graduate, Lydia received her BFA in Theatre, specializing in production and management, from the University of Victoria. University credits include stage managing La Ronde and Romeo & Juliet. For the last two years of university, she also served as the assistant technical director and master electrician for her program.   Lydia would like to thank all the amazing people she gets to work with every day.