Board of Directors

Officers

Donna Potterfield, Chair

Bethany Baxter, Vice Chair

Mimi Pickering, Secretary

Mark Kidd, Treasurer

Board of Directors (WORD Document)

Roadside Theater Advisory Board

An important part of Roadside Theater's structure is its National Advisory Board of leading theater practitioners and scholars. The board meets quarterly via the internet and in-person when opportunities present themselves. Theater is a collaborative art, and we are gratified by the generous support of these individuals.

•  Jan Cohen-Cruz is director of Imagining America and University Professor at Syracuse University. A scholar, practitioner, and teacher of grassroots, socially-grounded, and activist art, she wrote Local Acts: Community-Based Performance in the U S, edited Radical Street Performance, and, with Mady Schutzman, co-edited Playing Boal: Theatre, Therapy, Activism and A Boal Companion: Dialogues on Art and Cultural Politics. As a professor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts from 1988-2007, Cohen-Cruz produced community-based arts projects; co-directed Tisch's AmeriCorps project on violence reduction through the arts; coordinated the Drama Department's minor in applied theatre; directed Tisch's Office of Community Connections; and co-founded NYU's Department and Center of Art and Public Policy.
•  Michael Keck is a composer, playwright, and performer whose music has been featured at the Kennedy Center, Mark Taper Forum, Arena Stage, Cincinnati Playhouse, The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Alliance Theater, Milwaukee Repertory, Indiana Repertory, Portland Center Stage, and many other American theaters. International credits include the National Theater of Croatia, the Barbican Theatre Center, and Bristol Old Vic. As an actor, Keck has performed in productions at the McCarter Theater, Berkeley Rep, La MAMA, primary Stages in NYC, and others. He is co-author, composer, and host of the Holidays for Children video series, and frequently tours his solo performance of Voices in the Rain . A teaching artist, he designs and facilitates creative writing and performance workshops in universities, community centers, schools, and correctional facilities.
• Robert Leonard is professor of theater arts at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, where he heads MFA programs in Stage Management and in Directing and Public Dialogue. His programs focus specifically on ensemble processes, collaborative creation of new work, and community partnerships. He is the founding artistic director of The Road Company, a theater ensemble based in Johnson City, Tennessee. Under his direction from 1972-1998, The Road Company created more than two dozen original plays reflecting the history and issues of the Upper Tennessee Valley and Central Appalachia.  An arts organizer with a career-long commitment to the development of a strong southeastern network of community-based professional performing organizations, Mr. Leonard is a founding member of Alternate ROOTS (Regional Organization of Theaters - South) and the Network of Ensemble Theaters (NET), the national coalition of ensemble based theaters.
• Bill Rauch, artistic director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, has directed two world premieres, commissioned 37 new plays to dramatize moments of change in American history, and initiated the Black Swan Lab for New Work and a community-based format for the Green Show. Rauch cofounded Cornerstone Theater Company, where he directed more than 40 productions and served as its artistic director for 20 years. He directed the New York premiere of The Clean House at the Lincoln Center, and directed productions at South Coast Repertory, Guthrie Theater, Arena Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse, Great Lakes Theater Festival, and En Garde Arts. He was an associate artist at Yale Repertory Theatre and South Coast Repertory and the Claire Trevor Professor of Drama at University of California, Irvine. Rauch received TCG's Visionary Leadership Award, the Margo Jones Award, the Helen Hayes Award for direction, and the Leadership for a Changing World Award.
• Rosalba Rolón playwright, director, and performer, worked extensively with Latino theaters in New York City prior to founding Pregones Theater in 1979, where she now serves as the ensemble company's artistic director. Born and reared in Puerto Rico, her artistic leadership fostered the development of an original Pregones repertory grounded in Puerto Rican traditions and popular artistic expressions that challenge static perceptions of culture. As a dramaturg and director, Ms. Rolon favors the art of literary stage adaptation, working from short stories, novels, and periodicals by Latino, Spanish, Caribbean, and Latin American writers. Her credits include The Red Rose, for which she won the 2006 Best Director's ACE Award and Betsy, which she co-directed with Dudley Cocke in a Pregones-Roadside collaboration. Her commitment to the development of Puerto Rican/Latino theater has earned her national recognition and multiple awards.
• Edward Wemytewa of Zuni, New Mexico is the founding director of Idiwanan an Chawe (Children of the Middle Place), the first and only Zuni language theater. He is an elected member of the Zuni Tribal Council, a playwright, performer, and visual artist whose prize winning paintings and sculpture have been exhibited in museums in Arizona and New Mexico. When the Zuni Pueblo reclaimed its schools from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs in the late seventies, Mr. Wemytewa worked with the Zuni school district to develop a Zuni language and cultural enrichment curriculum that involved the development of a Zuni alphabet. He grew-up in a traditional Zuni household, learning stories and songs from Pueblo elders, studied fine art at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and at the Santa Fe Art Institute, and has taught grassroots theater at Arizona State University. He is co-editor of the award-winning book Journeys Home: Revealing a Zuni-Appalachia Collaboration.

WMMT Community Policy Advisory Board

• Nancy Adams - Director, Pine Mountain Settlement School - Bledsoe, KY
• Carl Banks - Retired - Whitesburg, KY
• Bethany Baxter - Attorney at Law - Lexington, KY
• Howard Blackburn - Community Trust Bank - Pikeville, KY
• Sue Ella Boatright-Wells - Mountain Empire Community College - Big Stone Gap, VA
• Robert Gipe - South East Community and Technical College - Cumberland, KY
• Phyllis L. Robinson - Attorney at Law - Manchester, KY
• Josephine Richardson - Courthouse Cafe - Whitesburg, KY
• Van Breeding, M.D. - Whitesburg Clinic - Whitesburg, KY