PAULA VOGEL (Playwright)
Paula Vogel’s play, How I Learned to Drive, received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Lortel, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics Awards for Best Play, as well as winning her second OBIE. It has been produced all over the world and her screenplay has been in development for HBO. Her other plays include The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Mineola Twins, The Baltimore Waltz, Hot'N'Throbbing, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven and The Oldest Profession. Theatre Communications Group has published two anthologies of her work, The Mammary Plays and The Baltimore Waltz and Other Plays. Ms. Vogel won the OBIE for Best Play in 1992, the Rhode Island Pell Award in the Arts, the Hull-Warriner Award, The Laura Pels Award, the Pew Charitable Trust Senior Award, a Guggenheim, an AT&T New Plays Award, the Fund for New American Plays, the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center Fellowship, several National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the McKnight Fellowship, the Bunting Fellowship, and the Governor's Award for the Arts. Paula is the Adele Kellenberg Seaver Professor of Creative Writing at Brown University, where she directs the MFA Playwriting program.

BASIL TWIST(Direction and Puppets)
Originally from San Francisco, Basil Twistis a third generation puppeteer, who lives and works in New York. He became the only American to graduate from the École Supérieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mezieres, France, one of the world's premiere puppetry training programs. Previous credits include The Araneidae Show (International Puppetry Festival at The Public Theater, Andy Warhol Museum and an international tour), Tell Tale (Theatre Couture), Symphonie Fantastique (HERE Arts Center, Lincoln Center, inaugural production for Dodger Stages and international tour), Petrushka (commissioned by Lincoln Center, The Irving J. Gilmore Keyboard Festival in Michigan, The International Festival of Arts and Ideas in Connecticut, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts and at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago) and Master Peter's Puppet Show (Eos Orchestra, presented in NYC, Chicago and Cleveland). He directed Raspighi's rarely performed La Bella Dormente Nel Bosco at Spoleto and at Lincoln Center Festival and collaborated with director Lee Breuer and composer Ushio Torikai on Red Beads, which premiered at the Skirball Center in NYC. Twist has created the puppetry for the three past productions of Paula Vogel's The Long Christmas Ride Home at Trinity Repertory Company, Vineyard Theatre and The Long Wharf. He was the underwater puppet consultant on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. His work has been recognized with an OBIE Award, two UNIMA Citations of Excellence, a Bessie Award and a Drama Desk Nomination. Twist is the director of The Dream Music Puppetry Program at HERE Arts Center in New York.

JOE GOODE (Choreography)
Joe Goode is a choreographer, writer, and director whose first concern as an artist is to provide a "deeply felt, profoundly human experience" in the theater. He is widely known as an innovator in the field of dance for his willingness to collide movement with spoken word, song, and visual imagery. His play, Body Familiar, commissioned by the Magic Theatre in 2003, received critical acclaim. Joe Goode's work has been recognized with numerous awards and prizes including a New York Dance and Performance Award ("Bessie"), and several Isadora Duncan Dance Awards ("Izzies"). Goode has also been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council and the James Irvine Foundation. He has been honored with awards for excellence by the American Council on the Arts, the Business Arts Council/San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and, the "Heritage" award from the California Dance Educators Association. Goode's work has been commissioned by dance companies across America. His performance/installation works have been commissioned by the Fowler Museum of Natural History, Krannert Art Museum, the Capp Street Project, the M.H. de Young Museum, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The Joe Goode Performance Group, formed in 1986, has toured throughout the U.S. as well as Canada, Europe, South America, the Middle East and Africa. Joe Goode is known as a master teacher; his summer workshops in "felt performance" attract participants from around the world. Goode has joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley in the department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies.

PHILIP FLAVIN (Shamisen Player)
After graduating from the University of the Pacific in 1982 with a degree in International Relations and Japanese, Philip Flavin entered the Seiha Conservatory of Japanese Music in Tokyo to pursue his interest in sôkyoku-jiuta, music for the koto and jiuta shamisen. He has studied with Nakashima Yasuko, Goto Sumiko, Miyake Michiko, Inoue Michiko, and Yuize Shin'ichi.  He holds a PhD in Music at the University of California at Berkeley and has studied with Tomiyama Kiyotaka in Japan through Fulbright-Hayes grant. Mr. Flavin was a visiting scholar at the Kyoto City University of Arts, conducting further research on sakumono with the assistance of the Social Science Research Council/Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Mr. Flavin currently teaches with the Music Department at UC, Berkeley. Mr. Flavin has performed in numerous venues, including the National Theatre in Tokyo, performances for National Television and Radio, as well as guest appearances throughout Japan and the US.

JESS CURTIS (dancer / Minister)
Jess Curtisis a director/choreographer and performer of interdisciplinary dance/performance. Working independently, and in the collective performance groups CAHIN-CAHA, Cirque Batard (France/USA‘98-2002) CORE (USA '94-98), and CONTRABAND (USA'85-'94) he has created and collaborated on numerous award-winning performance works known for their intense physicality, emotional honesty and athletic beauty. In 2000 he founded Jess Curtis/GRAVITY as a research and development vehicle for very live performance. With Gravity he has created two full-evening performance works, No Place Like Home (2000) and fallen (2001). He was a recipient of the prestigious 2001 California Dancemakers Fellowship, and was a Wattis Fellow at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2000. In August 2002 he received a Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for fallen, which in 2003 was also awarded San Francisco’s Isadora Duncan Dance award for best company performance.

LUNATIQUE FANTASTIQUE
Founded in 2000 by puppet artist and performer Liebe Wetzel, Lunatique Fantastique specializes in “ordinary object puppetry,” using every-day objects to create their shows. They have performed in several acclaimed productions, including Reframing the Hourglass, Snake in the Basement: The Prosecution of Rev. Bill Pruitt, The Wrapping Paper Caper, a holiday-themed show for children and adults, Brace Yourself! And My Dinner with Lunatique Fantastique."Liebe Wetzel’s innovative work has won many awards including the S.F. Bay Guardian Goldie Award for best new theater talent, as well as Best of Fringe and Top Box Office Hit in the 2001 S.F. Fringe Festival and 2004 S. F. Fringe Festival. The Company performed for the San Francisco Opera in 2005 in Pique Dame. The company toured the U.K. with 3 different shows to rave reviews. She has taught her unique puppetry style to teens in a residency program at Zeum, at The Clown Conservatory, and to teen acting students at Cal Shakes' summer program. In addition, she has taught devising theatre using object puppetry at Sonoma State University. The company has received numerous grants from The Henson Foundation, Zellerbach, and CA$H. The Exit Theatre with Liebe Wetzel were granted a Rockefeller Foundation M.A.P Grant for Beauty and the Breast which will debut at 2006 DIVAFest. Lunatique Fantastique is the object theatre company in residence at The Marsh.