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Cast

Bill Christ
Richard Nixon
Bill is thrilled to be making his debut at Portland Center Stage. Broadway credits include Inherit the Wind and Search and Destroy. Off-Broadway credits: The Seagull (Classic Stage Company). Bill was a member of the Denver Center Theatre Company. Other regional credits include Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey); Of Mice and Men (George Street Playhouse); Private Lives (Portland Stage Company); To Kill a Mockingbird (Capital Rep); Love and Anger (Wilma Theatre); Cymbeline (Hartford Stage and McCarter Theatre); Heartbreak House and Dinner with Friends (Alliance Theatre Company); and Coming of the Hurricane (Arena Stage). Film and television credits include Die Hard with a Vengeance, The Laramie Project, Law and Order and Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

Brian Monahan
Ollie (Photographer), John Birt
Brian has been seen previously in Cider House Rules Part I+II at Trinity Repertory Company, Noises Off at The Cape Playhouse, A Clockwork Orange at the Gamm Theatre, Love’s Labour’s Lost and King Lear with Will&Co., Inventing Van Gogh and Picasso at the Lapin Agile at PCPA/Theatrefest, and in more than 300 performances of A Christmas Carol at Geva Theatre Center and Trinity Rep. He is associate artistic director at the Veterans’ Center for the Performing Arts (govcpa.com), where he co-wrote Fit for Society. Brian is also a regular on the web series Eden’s Court. He holds an M.F.A. from the Trinity Rep Conservatory.

Allison Tigard
Caroline Cushing, Makeup Lady (Oval Office)
Allison is thrilled to be making her Portland Center Stage debut! Local credits include Cassie in Anonymous Theatre’s Rumors and most recently, collaborator and ensemble member of the Fertile Ground Festival’s Inviting Desire. Allison’s regional credits include Edna in Sweet Bird of Youth (Williamstown Theatre Festival) and the title role in Miss Julie (Williamstown Theatre Company Workshop). She holds her B.A. in theatre from Central Washington University and is a proud graduate of The Maggie Flanigan Studio and The Actor’s Movement Studio in New York City.

Darius Pierce
Technician, Swifty Lazar, Mike Wallace, Studio Manager (Monarch Bay)
Darius is a proud member of Theatre Vertigo and co-founder of The Anonymous Theatre Company. His past shows at PCS include How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found, The Beard of Avon, Twelfth Night, Misalliance and A Christmas Carol. He has also been seen at Second Stage, Brown/Trinity Repertory Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theater, Theatre Vertigo, Broadway Rose, Northwest Children’s Theater, Profile Theater, Stark Raving Theater and others. He is grateful to be a part of telling these great and important stories; humbled by the work of the artists who tell them; and thankful that you, the audience, are willing to come share them with us.

Scott Coopwood
Jack Brennan
Scott’s regional favorites include: MacBeth, Hamlet, Cyrano De Bergerac, Othello, King Lear, Measure for Measure, Lonely Planet, Take Me Out, The Merchant Of Venice, As You Like It, The Seagull, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, Lobby Hero, Bug, Born Yesterday, Dirty Story and The Scene. Regional theaters include: Arkansas Rep., Capital Rep., Capital Stage, A.R.T., The Utah, Orlando and Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festivals, The Arizona Theatre Co., The Marin Theatre Co., The Seattle and Marin Shakespeare Companies, Profile Theatre Project, Center REP. and Borderlands Theatre, as well as work with the Toronto, Windsor and Oregon Symphony orchestras.

Michael Fisher-Welsh
Studio Manager (Oval Office), Bob Zelnick
Michael last appeared at PCS in The Underpants. Other PCS productions include The Seagull, Antigone, A Christmas Carol, The Cripple of Inishmaan and Hamlet. Other regional work includes: Copenhagen, Dinner With Friends, The Crucible, A Question of Mercy, Indiscretions, Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Fortinbras (Artists Repertory Theatre); Hamlet (Firehouse Theatre); Dancing at Lughnasa, The Glass Menagerie (Laughing Horse Theatre); Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It (New Rose Theatre); West Side Story, Cyrano De Bergerac (The Musical Co.); The Importance of Being Earnest (Willamette Repertory Theatre). Michael attended The American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.

Adam Ludwig
Jim Reston
This is Adam’s first performance with Portland Center Stage. Off-Broadway, he has appeared in Jewtopia (West Side Arts); Crave and Somewhere in the Pacific (Atlantic Stage II). Regional credits include: Mary Stuart (Pittsburgh Public Theater); Much Ado About Nothing (Old Globe); The House of Blue Leaves (Berkeley Rep.); Alarms and Excursions (Aurora Theater); and Love’s Labour’s Lost and Cymbeline (Shakespeare Santa Cruz). Television and film credits include Fringe, Sex and the City, As the World Turns, Guiding Light, One Life to Live, Gossip Girl (webisodes) and Water Under the Bridge.

Laura Faye Smith
Evonne Goolagong, Air Stewardess, Waitress
Laura has previously appeared at PCS in How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found, Pride & Prejudice, The Thugs and at JAW 2008. She has performed in numerous productions in Portland, including The Receptionist, Spinning Into Butter and Boy Gets Girl at CoHo Theatre; Mr. Marmalade at Artists Rep; The Heiress at Triangle Productions; and Popcorn and Poona the F***dog at Theatre Vertigo. She performs improv with Super Project Lab and teaches classes at Oregon Children’s Theater and PCS’ Art of Business series. Her voiceover work includes character voices for the video game This Is Vegas and the voice of Pixie in the animated series Ruby Rocket.

Richard Anthony Gallegos
Manolo Sanchez
Earlier this season Richard was an ensemble member of the epic piece Apollo. Recent world premieres include: Apollo Part I: Lebensraum, The Heart’s Desire, Aura, Wastelandia, Grand Hope Flower, Carry the Tiger to the Mountain, Rita Goes to Hell and Lovesickness. Other productions include: Anna in the Tropics, Art, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Julius Caesar, The Pillowman, The Maids and Hay Fever. Richard is a member of the Critical Mass Performance Group as well as the Rosanna Gamson/World Wide Dance Theatre Troupe, with whom he has toured in Canada, Mexico and the U.S., including performances at the Time Based Art Festival. Richard is co-director of education for the Company of Angels, Los Angeles’ oldest not-for-profit theater.

David Townsend
David Frost
This is David’s PCS debut. His New York credits include Jewtopia (off-Broadway), Twelfth Night, Hamlet and The Constant Couple (Pearl Theatre); deathvariations (59E59); and The Golden Aurora (FringeNYC ’08). Regional credits include: Hamlet and Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare Theatre Company, DC); Skin of Our Teeth (Williamstown); Macbeth (Shakespeare on the Sound); and Shakespeare’s R&J (Vermont Stage Co.). He has participated in workshops with Classic Stage, New York Theatre Workshop, McCarter Theatre, Naked Angels and Theatre Mitu, and has appeared on Law & Order. He received his training from The Juilliard School.

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Creative Team

Rose Riordan
Director
Rose is in her 13th season at Portland Center Stage, where she serves as associate artistic director. Previously at PCS she has directed How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found, Doubt, The Underpants, The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh and The Thugs by Adam Bock, which won four Drammy Awards, including Best Ensemble and Best Director. Last fall, she directed The Receptionist at CoHo Productions. Born and raised in Alaska, Rose began her career in theater before she had acquired a lexicon for describing the work. Prior to the age of 10, she wrote, directed and produced plays, most of them backyard productions for family, friends and neighbors. Her first “professional” full-length play, an intense examination of six stewardesses and their “man troubles,” was presented at Eagle River Elementary School. A defining moment for her, it solidified Rose’s commitment to a pursuit of theater with the sole desire to illuminate and be illuminated. A theater gypsy, she has been an actress, writer, producer and director and has directed plays in Alaska, Seattle, Miami and New York, finally landing in Portland, which she officially calls home. Rose has an extensive background in writing, directing and new play development. For five years she worked at Geva Theatre (Rochester, NY), which produced Reflections, a summer festival premiering three new plays in rotating repertory under the artistic direction of Anthony Zerbe. In 1999 she founded Portland Center Stage’s annual JAW: A Playwrights Festival. JAW has been instrumental in developing new work for the PCS repertory: Outrage, Flesh and Blood, Another Fine Mess, O Lovely Glowworm, Celebrity Row, Act a Lady, The Thugs and A Feminine Ending. She directed staged readings for plays at three of the JAW festivals—The Thugs (2005), Telethon (2006) and A Story About a Girl (2007). She enjoys being part of a company committed to new work and having a beautiful building in which to work.

Peter Morgan
Playwright
Peter Morgan (born 10 April 1963) is an Academy Award-nominated English screenwriter and playwright, best known for writing the plays and films The Deal, The Queen, Frost/Nixon and The Last King of Scotland. Morgan was born in London, the son of refugees; his father Arthur Morgenthau was a German Jew who fled the Nazis, and his mother Inga a Catholic Pole who fled the Soviets. His father died when Morgan was aged 9. He attended boarding school at Downside School, Somerset. He gained a degree in fine art from the University of Leeds. He lived in Battersea, south London, with his Austrian wife Lila Schwarzenberg and their daughters and three sons, relocating to Vienna in the winter of 2006. Morgan wrote scripts for British television throughout the 1990s, finally breaking through with The Deal, a 2003 television drama about the power-sharing deal between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown that was struck in the Granita restaurant in London. He received an Oscar nomination for The Deal’s follow-up, The Queen, a 2006 feature film starring Helen Mirren that showed the impact of the death of Princess Diana on the royal family and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The Last King of Scotland, the screenplay of which Morgan adapted with Jeremy Brock, was released the same year, and subsequently won a BAFTA Film Award. Frost/Nixon, Morgan’s first stage play, was presented at the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London in 2006. The original production starred Michael Sheen as David Frost and Frank Langella as Richard Nixon and was directed by Michael Grandage. In May 2007, the 50th San Francisco International Film Festival honored Morgan with the year’s Kanbar Award for Excellence in Screenwriting. Variety announced in 2008 that Morgan will be directing his sequel to The Queen, The Special Relationship. The film will focus on Blair’s relationship with U.S. president Bill Clinton between 1997 and 2000. In 2008, Morgan adapted John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy into a screenplay for Working Title Films. In 2008 the film Frost/Nixon, with Sheen and Langella playing the parts they had on stage, opened in the United States and Great Britain, garnering five Oscar nominations for Best Director (Ron Howard), Best Picture, Best Actor (Frank Langella), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing.

Tony Cisek
Scenic Designer
Tony designed scenery for last season’s productions of A Feminine Ending and Sometimes a Great Notion. Other productions include Gem of the Ocean and The Night Is a Child (Milwaukee Repertory Theater), A Lesson Before Dying (Round House Theatre), Blue/Orange (Shakespeare & Co), Insurrection (Theatre Alliance), Intimate Apparel (Indiana Repertory Theatre), The Crucible (Syracuse Stage), Fences (Actors Theatre of Louisville and Arden Theatre Company), In the Blood (Guthrie Theater), A Raisin in the Sun (City Theatre), Blues for an Alabama Sky (Berkshire Theatre Festival) and The Last Orbit of Billy Mars (Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company). His work has also been seen at Roundabout Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Goodman Theatre, Arena Stage, Delaware Theatre Company, Folger Theatre, The Kennedy Center, Wolf Trap Opera and Signature Theatre, among others. Tony holds an M.F.A. in design from New York University and is a four-time recipient of the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Set Design.

Wade Laboissonniere
Costume Designer
Wade designed Disney’s High School Musical and HSM2, including companies in the U.S., Australia, Spain and London’s West End, as well as the Theatre of the Stars national tour of White Christmas. Off-Broadway credits include Zanna, Don’t! and Shakespeare’s R&J. His regional credits include productions at the Kennedy Center, Center Stage, Goodspeed, Cincinnati Playhouse, Ford’s, Dallas Theater Center, Portland Center Stage, Yale Rep and Berkshire Theatre Festival. He has published two volumes in the Blueprints of Fashion book series. Prior to designing, he performed on Broadway in Cats and On Your Toes and in tours of La Cage aux Folles and 42nd Street. He is a graduate of Yale School of Drama.

Daniel Ordower
Lighting Designer
Daniel’s designs for Portland Center Stage include How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found, Guys and Dolls, Doubt, A Christmas Carol (2001 Drammy Award), Outrage, The Merchant of Venice, Things of Dry Hours, Celebrity Row (2006 Drammy Award), The Pillowman, Bad Dates and Cabaret. Regionally he has worked with the Baltimore Opera, the Connecticut Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, San Jose Rep, Geva Theater Center, Coconut Grove Playhouse, American Stage Co., Actors’ Express and Writers’ Theater Chicago. Internationally he has worked with Teatro alla Scala, Opéra National de Lyon, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and Regent Seven Seas Cruises. National tours: I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, West Side Story and Beauty and the Beast (Baci Productions). Festival and installation designs include MAKOR II at Pace-Wildenstein Gallery for Michal Rovner, the Tribeca Film Festival, New York Musical Festival, the New York Fringe Festival and the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Gypsy of the Year and Nothing Like a Dame benefits. He received the 2006 and 2001 Drammy Awards for Best Lighting Design and the 2005 NY IT Award for Outstanding Lighting Design. Daniel is a graduate of Northwestern University and has been published in Social Policy magazine.

Sam Kusnetz
Sound Designer
Sam is a designer, composer and theatrical problem solver thrilled to be designing his first show at Portland Center Stage. Sam has designed sound off-Broadway at the Jean Cocteau Repertory and regionally at the Provincetown Repertory Theatre. Here in Portland, Sam has worked with Tears of Joy, Profile Theatre, Sojourn, Do Jump!, Imago Theatre and PICA, to name just a few. He was a company member and designer in residence with Insight Out Theatre Collective, and is the co-creator of both Anonymous Theatre and the Re-Theatre Instrument. Sam is also honored to serve as PCS’ production sound engineer. Originally from New York City, Sam now lives here in Portland, where he is cultivating his love of coffee.

Mead Hunter
Dramaturg
Mead began his theater career as playwright-in-residence for the legendary Storefront Actors’ Theatre of Portland. Since then he has written four original plays, translated four more, and served as production dramaturg on numerous productions. Mead earned an M.F.A. in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism from Yale University and a Ph.D. in critical studies from UCLA. He has taught performance history and text analysis at UCLA, UC San Diego and the California Institute of the Arts. He also guest lectures on contemporary theater at institutions around the United States, and frequently consults for various art service organizations. Mead was formerly the literary director for PCS and has served as production dramaturg on Outrage, Celebrity Row, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Another Fine Mess and O Lovely Glowworm, among other plays. At PCS he is also the festival literary manager for JAW: A Playwrights Festival, PCS’ annual celebration of original playwriting. He serves on the advisory boards of Portland Theater Works, Literary Arts and Imago Theatre.

Patrick Weishampel
Video Producer
Patrick has been working with video for the last seven years. He is the multimedia designer for Portland Center Stage and has been a video editor for OPB. Recently he edited the film Finding Face, which was an official selection of the Geneva International Film Festival and Human Rights Forum and will be screened in Bolivia and Warsaw. The short film he edited, The More Things Stay The Same, is currently showing at Mess Hall in Chicago, and his photo exhibit Brasil will be opening in July at Hash in Sellwood.

Erin Robson-Smith
Stage Manager
After graduating with her B.A. in theater arts from the University of North Carolina at Wilmingon, Erin moved to Portland and joined the stage management team at Artists Repertory Theatre. Working her way from production assistant to stage manager, she collected a fondness for unique director requests and for the cueing of various objects falling from the “sky.” Favorite productions from the last several years include The Beard of Avon, Sometimes a Great Notion, R. Buckminster Fuller: THE HISTORY (and Mystery) of the Universe and How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found (PCS); Metamorphoses, The Retreat from Moscow, Frozen, The Drawer Boy, Humble Boy (ART); Lonesome West, Number Three (Third Rail Repertory Theatre); and Under Milkwood (Ironclad Productions).

Stephanie Gaslin
Dialect Coach
Stephanie has worked as a dialect coach for Portland Center Stage’s How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found, Doubt, I Am My Own Wife, Misalliance, Cabaret and A Christmas Carol; Artists Repertory Theatre’s Vanya; Portland Actors Conservatory’s An Experiment with an Airpump; Oregon Repertory Theatre’s A Tuna Christmas; Coaster Theater’s See How They Run; Sojourn Theatre’s Throwing Bones; and Third Rail’s The Lonesome West, A Lesson from Aloes, Grace, Shining City and Nobody Here But Us Chickens. She is a founding company member of Third Rail Repertory Theatre.

Meghan McNeal
Production Assistant
Meghan is happy to be hiding behind the scenes again. She has spent the last three and a half years in Portland hiding in many different venues, from the catwalks to the basement. Portland Center Stage is one of her favorite nooks, and she has helped in many productions since its move to the Armory. Besides the theater, she is quite partial to the outdoors, arts and crafts and gummy worms. Meghan hopes you all enjoy this production as much as she does.