Quick – name the only actor who worked with Nicholas Ray and Wim Wenders on Lightning Over Water and John Hughes on Home Alone (the first and the second). Add to this the fact that he was a founding member of Andre Gregory’s Manhattan Project, and is now often seen on television’s Law and Order.

Gerry Bamman is having that rare kind of acting career – success across theatre, film and television, and in wildly different kinds of projects in each medium.

Bamman has received the Obie and Drama League awards, as well as a Drama Desk Nomination for best featured actor for his performance as Richard Nixon in Nixon’s Nixon, a performance that will be seen again this fall in New York. As a founding member of the Manhattan Project, Gerry was in one of the foremost experimental theater companies of the 1970s. Led by Andre Gregory, their production of Alice In Wonderland was performed over 500 times in New York and at festivals around the world.

In this interview, recorded outside the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where Gerry is currently performing, he talks about his approach to different kinds of work, revisiting roles, and how an actor creates.

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Haresh Sharma is the Resident Playwright of The Necessary Stage, and Co-Artistic Director of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival. He has written more than 50 plays which have been staged in Singapore, Glasgow, Birmingham, London, Dublin, Cairo, Melbourne, Busan, Seoul and New Delhi. He has been awarded fellowships and grants by the British Council, the United States Information Service and Asia-Europe Foundation, and was conferred the Young Artist Award in 1997. Among his published collections of plays, Still Building was awarded the Singapore Literature Prize and the Singapore Book Prize. His play Off Centre has recently been selected by Singapore’s Ministry of education as one of the literature texts for both O and N levels, the first Singaporean play to earn this distinction.

In this, the second part of a two-part interview, Haresh talks about The Necessary Stage, his plays, and the evolution of their role in Singapore.

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Haresh Sharma is the Resident Playwright of The Necessary Stage, and Co-Artistic Director of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival. He has written more than 50 plays which have been staged in Singapore, Glasgow, Birmingham, London, Dublin, Cairo, Melbourne, Busan, Seoul and New Delhi. He has been awarded fellowships and grants by the British Council, the United States Information Service and Asia-Europe Foundation, and was conferred the Young Artist Award in 1997. Among his published collections of plays, Still Building was awarded the Singapore Literature Prize and the Singapore Book Prize. His play Off Centre has recently been selected by Singapore’s Ministry of education as one of the literature texts for both O and N levels, the first Singaporean play to earn this distinction.

In this, the first part of a two-part interview, Haresh talks about the M1 Festival, its goals, and its relationship to its audience.

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Sekou Sundiata is a poet and performance artist who has created several acclaimed theater works. His most recent recording, Long Story Short, was released by Righteous Babe Records. His performance works include: The Circle Unbroken is a Hard Bop, which toured throughout the U.S. and received three AUDELCO Awards and a BESSIE Award; The Mystery of Love, commissioned and produced by New Voices/New Visions at Aaron Davis Hall in New York and the American Music Festival in Philadelphia; and Udu, a music theatre work produced at 651 ARTS, the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, and the Walker Art Center amongst other venues. Most recently, he was part of the Vision Festival in New York, and this coming weekend he will perform The 51st Dream State at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In November he’ll be performing at the BAM Next Wave Festival.

In this interview, Sekou talks about his process for creating his multi-faceted works.

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Carlos Uriona is a core artist and a board member of Double Edge Theatre, led by Stacy Klein, artistic director. Carlos serves as actor, dramaturge, student leader, and Managing Director, as well as Director of the US/Argentina Spiral Mirror Project.

In this interview, Carlos reflects on acting training, his creations in Argentina, the working processes of Double Edge, and how these are incorporated into festival performances.

Carlos Uriona (rightmost in photo), Matthew Glassman and Jeremy Louise Eaton, in rehearsal for Double Edge’s Under the Sign of the Crocodile, based on the works of Bruno Schulz, conceived and directed by Stacy Klein.
Photos by Robert Tobey.

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