Just Deceits-Play
A few years back I attended the San Francisco Writers Conference, where I met a fellow from New York named Robert Moulthrop. Robert liked the pitch for Just Deceits, and asked that I send him a copy, with the idea that we might co-author a stage adaptation. Thus was born Just Deceits – the Play.
Just Deceits – the Play was read by a wonderful cast at ACT Theater on December 13, and I am grateful to Robert, Director Leslie Swackhamer, our Tony-award winning producer Richard Winkler, local producer Mike Levin, and all the folks at ACT. Keep your fingers crossed – and please check back for updates!
Here’s our amazing production team:
Producers
Richard Winkler, after a 35-year international career as a theatrical lighting designer, has been producing since ’05. Recently: Broadway: The Norman Conquests (Tony Award, Best Revival, ‘09), Memphis (Tony Award, Best Musical, ’10), La Cage Aux Folles (Tony Award, Best Revival, ’10) A Little Night Music, Lend Me a Tenor, All About Me. US tour and off-Broadway, The 39 Steps. West End: Prick Up Your Ears, Hair, Sweet Charity, Legally Blonde. Coming in the US: Ballroom, Catch Me If You Can, IDAHO! The Musical, Inventing Avi and Other Theatrical Maneuvers, Southern Rapture.
For over 30 years, Michael Levin has provided marketing communications and strategic planning services for clients such as Boeing, Microsoft, Nike, Starbucks, Arthur Andersen, Prudential Real Estate and Vulcan Northwest. Michael has also developed a specialty in the sponsorship development for several large scale sporting and entertainment events. Michael served as Seattle Arts Commissioner and as Board Member for The Empty Space Theater, On The Boards, The Bill Evans Dance Company and Bridges to Understanding with international photographer Phil Borges. In 1987, Michael was executive producer for Without Law, Without Heaven, an award-winning Binaural Opera with Norman Durkee and Ping Chong.
Director
Leslie Swackhamer directs in theatres across the nation and is currently based in Houston. She is known for creating strong acting ensembles with bravado performances and striking visual statements. Her first Houston production was the Bayou City Concert Musicals’ Fiorello, co–directed with Paul Hope. BCCM donates all of their proceeds to the Ronald McDonald House. She has just co–directed The Secret Garden, again in collaboration with Mr. Hope, for BCCM. Last season, she also directed a critically acclaimed and sold–out run of David Hare’s Amy’s View, for Houston’s Stages Repertory Theatre.
Prior to moving to Houston Leslie called Seattle home, and directed at many of the fine theatres there. As associate artistic director of Seattle’s ACT Theatre, she founded the Women Playwrights Festival (now in its 11th year at Seattle Repertory Theatre) as well as directed many productions of A Christmas Carol. Notable ACT productions include the world premiere of Lee Blessing’s Going to St. Ives, Steven Dietz’s The Nina Variations (co–directed with Mr. Dietz), Old Wicked Songs, Later Life, and the acapella do–wop musical AvenueX. Other Seattle productions include the critically acclaimed Psychic Life of Savages for the Empty Space Theatre (Bravura Performance Award), and Much Ado About Nothing for Seattle Shakespeare Festival (Seattle TIMES Award for Best Shakespeare). Regional productions include the world premiere of Jeffrey Hatcher’s What Corbin Knew, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Wit for the Madison Repertory Theatre, the U.S. premiere of Mrs. Klein, and many productions for the Cleveland Play House where she was artistic associate for five years. Leslie has been a TCG Observer in new play development and has directed and developed over 100 new plays for numerous theatres across the country, as well as serving on play selection panels for the NEA, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the O’Neill Festival. (over)
She also directs opera, most recently a highly acclaimed new production of Madama Butterfly (performing in opera companies throughout North America) in collaboration with noted contemporary artist Jun Kaneko. Her 2007 production of Don Giovanni for Opera in the Heights in Houston broke box office records. She is slated to direct her first Marriage of Figaro this Fall.
Leslie has taught directing and acting at the University of Washington, Emory University, Case Western Reserve University and USC. She is a founding board member and past President of Theatre Puget Sound, the regional alliance of theatres and theatre artists. Husband Ten Eyck Swackhamer is the general manager of the Alley Theatre. They and their virtuoso daughter, Sarah, are having a great time making Houston their new home!
Playwrights
Robert Moulthrop is an award-winning playwright and author. In 2005 he was awarded the New York International Fringe Festival Outstanding Playwriting award for Half Life, a New York Times Top 10 Pick of the Fringe dubbed “the best written and acted play at the Fringe” by New York Magazine. His play T.L.C. garnered the 2006 Fringe Outstanding Performance award for its tour de force 80-minute solo turn by its actress, and in the 2008 Fringe, nytheatre.com called his one-man play Lecture, With Cello, “a tantalizing puzzle of a play… a remarkable feast for the intellect.” His other plays include the Manhattan Children’s Theatre commission Jack, The Prince of Ireland, and the comedy Who Cares, performed as part of New York’s Urban Stages “First Look” series. Recipient of a grant for prose fiction from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, his short story “Four Stories From the Quiet” won first prize in the 2010 Literal Latte Fiction Contest. Other short stories have recently appeared in such journals as Berkeley Fiction Review, Confrontation, Eclipse, The Griffin, Harpur Palate, The MacGuffin, Old Hickory Review, Portland Review, San Jose Studies, Sou’Wester, Rio Grande Review, River Oak Review, and Willard & Maple. He has also written two novels.
Michael Schein is a Seattle novelist, poet & teacher. He is the author of 3 novels, the 3rd a literary crime novel seeking a publisher, the 2nd Bones Beneath Our Feet (historical, due out 2011), and the 1st Just Deceits: A Historical Courtroom Mystery (Bennett & Hastings 2008) from which this play is adapted. Michael also draws on his experience as a former trial attorney and former adjunct Professor of American Legal History. Michael has taught poetry and fiction at Port Townsend Writers Conference and elsewhere, and is Director of LiTFUSE Poets’ Workshop. His poems and stories are widely published in such euphonious journals as Slow Trains, Chrysanthemum, The Ledge, Pontoon, American Drivel Review, Elysian Fields, RockSaltPlum, Runes, Lilies & Cannonballs, Drash, The November 3rd Club, Floating Bridge Review, Chest, and an anthology, The Art of Bicycling (Breakaway Books 2005). His work has received two Pushcart Nominations, as well as awards in the 2010 Auburn Parade of Poets (first prize), the 2010 Shoreline Arts Festival, 2007 San Francisco Writers Conference, 2006 Washington Poets Association poetry contest, finalist in the 2005 Ledge Chapbook Contest and the 2006 Elixir Press Poetry Book Award, and two Honorable Mentions from Writers’ Journal Poetry Contest in 2005. Michael served as a board member of the Washington Poets Association, as Executive Director of Tieton Arts & Humanities, and was on the founding board of First Night, Burlington (VT).