Each Monday night the Playwright’s Lab at Hollins University and Mill Mountain Theatre present a talk by a prominent working professional theatre artist. This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing the Monday Night Guest Speaker Series will be presented live via Zoom.
June 22 Guest Speaker: John Bergman, 7:30 pm (Eastern)
Bergman – theatre artist, drama therapist – is core faculty for the Certificate in New Play Performance at Hollins and teaches courses for the M.F.A. playwriting program as part of the new concentration in applied theatre. He is the founder and director of Geese Theatre Company USA, founder/teacher of Geese Company UK, and a board member of Transcena in Romania. Bergman has worked in prisons in Brazil, Romania, New Zealand, Australia, Bulgaria, and Croatia and has presented internationally at over 500 professional conferences. He is the recipient of the NADTA 2005 Research Award.
June 29 Guest Speaker: Ginger Poole, 7:30 pm (Eastern)
Poole – producer, actor, director, choreographer – is the producing artistic director at Mill Mountain Theatre. She is a proud member of Actor’s Equity Association and an associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Union. Poole worked the State Theatre of North Carolina and with Flat Rock Playhouse, where she was a part of the Education program. She serves on the boards of several arts organizations, and has taught at numerous colleges and universities, including Hollins. Poole was the recipient of the DePaul’s Women of Achievement Award in the Arts in 2013 and was named the 2016 Kendig Award recipient for Individual Artist.
July 6 Guest Speaker: Neil McArthur, 7:30 pm (Eastern)
McArthur – musician, composer, musical director – has been working in theatre, TV, film, and recorded music since 1971. He collaborated with Clarke Peters on a show based around the music of Louis Jordan called Five Guys Named Moe, which ran in the West End in London for six years. A Broadway transfer followed and the show won many awards. McArthur also collaborated with Playwright’s Lab program director Todd Ristau to write the script for a stage show based on the life of Jerry Lee Lewis, Great Balls Of Fire, which played in regional theatres and in the West End. His folk band The Green House Band recently released a double CD anthology, and he continues to write songs with colleague Ben Brierley.
July 13 Guest Speaker: Brett Neveu, 7:30 pm (Eastern)
Neveu – playwright – will be writing for Overnight Sensations this summer. He is a resident-alum of Chicago Dramatists, a proud ensemble member of A Red Orchid Theatre, a founding member of the playwright collective MC-10, and an alumni member of TimeLine Theatre Company’s Writers Collective and Center Theatre Group’s Playwrights’ Workshop in Los Angeles. He has been commissioned by numerous theatre and has several of his plays published through Broadway Play Publishing, Dramatic Publishing and Nick Hern Publishing. Neveu has taught writing at DePaul University, Second City Training Center and currently teaches writing for the screen and stage at Northwestern University.
July 20 Guest Speaker: Heather Helinsky, 7:30 pm (Eastern)
Helinsky – dramaturg – has been the resident dramaturg at the Great Plains Theatre Conference since 2010. In 2016, Helinsky received a summer fellowship to the O’Neill National Critics Institute and received mentorship from Chris Jones. She was the production dramaturg for Tira Palmquist’s Two Degrees at the Denver Center and Andrea Hart’s premiere of dark is a different beast in San Francisco. For the Kennedy Center, Helinsky mentors student dramaturgs, regionally and nationally, and reads for the David Mark Cohen award. She received her M.F.A. in dramaturgy and theatre studies from the ART/MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard.
