TO MASTER THE ART

WILLIAM BROWN has directed 20 productions at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin, including The Recruiting Officer, Three Sisters, King Lear, Travesties, The Importance of Being Earnest, All My Sons, Troilus and Cressida, The Critic, Hay Fever, The Comedy of Errors, Night of the Iguana, Antony and Cleopatra, All’s Well That Ends Well, You Never Can Tell and The Matchmaker. He directed and wrote (with Doug Frew) To Master the Art for TimeLine Theatre Company where he is an Associate Artist and most recently directed the world premiere of Susan Felder’s Wasteland. He has directed four plays at Northlight, including his own adaptation with music of She Stoops to Conquer. He directed Skylight at Court Theatre and at Indiana Rep, Around the World in Eighty Days and Fallen Angels. He is the Associate Artistic Director of Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, where he has directed and acted since 1980. He regularly teaches and directs at universities across the country, most recently Loyola University Chicago, University of Houston, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Northwestern. As an actor, Brown has appeared in over a hundred productions. He appeared as Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol at Goodman Theatre where he also appeared in Light up the Sky, Sunday in the Park with George, The Misanthrope, and Wings. At Court Theatre, he appeared as Falstaff in Henry IV, Jack in The Importance of Being Earnest, and Almady in The Play’s The Thing. He created the role of Jody in Steven Dietz’s Lonely Planet (Northlight Theatre). Brown received a Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Director for The Liar (Writers Theatre) and a Best Actor award for his portrayal of Henry Kissinger in Nixon’s Nixon (Writers Theatre).  He received a 2010 Spirit of Diversity Award from Actors’ Equity Association and was named Chicagoan of the Year for Theatre by the Chicago Tribune in 2003. williambrowndirector.com

DOUG FREW’s most important qualification for writing this particular play is his lifelong devotion to everything Julia Child represents, a passion he shares with co-author William Brown. With his late partner Patti McKenny, he co-wrote the lyrics for William Brown’s adaptation of She Stoops to CONQUER (composer Andrew Hansen) at Northlight. Together they also wrote the musicals BECOMING GEORGE (composer Linda Eisenstein); 90 NORTH (composer Daniel Sticco), winner of ASCAP’s Outstanding New Musical Award and inaugural production of ASCAP’s “In the Works” program at the Kennedy Center; and the satirical revue GET FUNNY OR YOU’RE FIRED at the Royal George. As a writer and creative director in corporate communications, he has created songs, sketches, videos, speeches, and entire musical comedies in praise of everything from tractors to hamburgers to all manner of pharmaceutical products. He was for several seasons a regular contributor to Garrison Keillor’s A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION.

Marilyn Langbehn (director) is in her tenth season at CCCT. Productions for the company include Anton in Show Business, Our Town, The Last Five Years, Broadway Inside Out, Bright Star, All the Way, Ragtime, All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914, Cabaret, The Sound of Music, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)[revised], and The Mountaintop and the world premiere of The Lost Years, both of which began their lives at CCCT as part of the Reading Stage series. Her critically-acclaimed production of August: Osage County received Best Production and Best Director nods at the inaugural TBA Awards in 2014. She founded the Theatre’s Reading Stage series in 2015 to showcase the work of women playwrights and playwrights of color. To date, the series has produced more than 20 works, including plays by Katori Hall, Theresa Rebeck, Cynthia Wands, kimber lee, Leah Nanako Winkler, Jiréh Breon Holder, and Inda Craig-Galván, and the widely-acclaimed world premiere of her play, Running For My Life.

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