Who's Who . . . Backstage

JOSEPH ADLER (Director/Producing Artistic Director) is in his seventh season as Artistic Director of GableStage. He previously directed on many local stages, including Coconut Grove Playhouse, New Theatre, Area Stage, Hollywood Boulevard Theatre, Players Theatre, Ruth Foreman Theatre, Florida Shakespeare Theatre, City Theatre (Summer Shorts), Hollywood Playhouse and Shores Performing Arts. At GableStage, Adler has directed Skylight, Of Mice and Men, Full Gallop, Psychopathia Sexualis, Closer, Killer Joe, This Is Our Youth, Arms and The Man, Side Man, Popcorn, Tape, The Real Thing, Adam Baum and the Jew Movie, Citizen Tom Paine, The Blue Room, Mindgame, Boy Gets Girl, James Joyce's The Dead, Edward Albee's The Play About the Baby, A Lesson Before Dying, Nixon's Nixon, Chinese Coffee, The Guys, The Shape of Things, Dirty Blonde, Tabletop, The Diary of Anne Frank, Frankie and Johnny at the Clair de Lune, The Goat, What The Butler Saw, Ten Unknowns, 'Master Harold'...and the boys, QED, Trumbo (in which he also performed), Frozen, BUG, Retreat From Moscow and The Syringa Tree. Active in South Florida's film and theatre community for many years, Adler has directed hundreds of television commercials and industrial films, winning many awards, including the Clio. Other directorial credits include several independent feature films, a video version of the Broadway hit comedy Doubles and a cable TV series. He has received sixteen nominations (nine at GableStage) and five times won the Carbonell Award for Best Director: The Shadow Box (Coconut Grove Playhouse); The Killing of Sister George (Players Theatre); A Lesson Before Dying, James Joyce's The Dead and Edward Albee's The Goat (GableStage). He also received a Remy Award from the Theatre League of S. Florida, and was awarded the prestigious George Abbott Award by the members of South Florida's Arts, Entertainment and Media Professions for "significant contributions to the artistic life and cultural development of greater Miami, Fort Lauderdale and the Palm Beaches." Adler studied drama at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and graduated from the Film Department at NYU.

JULES FEIFFER (Playwright), the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and writer, is the author of the plays Little Murders (Obie Award); Knock, Knock (Tony nomination); and Elliot Loves. His plays Grown-Ups (nominated for a Pulitzer Prize) and Hold Me! were both adapted for television. Mr. Feiffer's Pulitzer Prize-winning comic strip ran in the Village Voice for 42 years and was the first cartoon to appear as a regular feature of The New York Times' Op-Ed page. Presently his work appears in The New Yorker, The Nation and Fortune. His screenplays include Carnal Knowledge, Little Murders, Popeye, I Want to Go Home (winner of the best screenplay award at the Venice Film Festival), and the Oscar-winning short subject animation, Munro. His first children's book (1993), The Man in the Ceiling, was selected by Publisher's Weekly and the New York Public Library, as one of the year's best. He also illustrated Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth and Florence Parry Heide's Some Things Are Scary. Honors and awards for his children's books include an ALA Notable Children's Book, a The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Books of the Year Award, a 1999 Pennsylvania Keystone to Reading Book Award and a Best Book of the Year from both Publisher's Weekly and Booklist. Mr. Feiffer has been honored by exhibitions at the Library of Congress, to which he has donated many of his works, and by the New York Historical Society's recent retrospective, Julz Rulz. He is a member of The Dramatists Guild Council and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in New York with his wife, Jenny, a writer and stand-up comic, and his two daughters, Halley and Julie. Another daughter, Kate, lives in Mass. with her husband, Chris, and daughter, Maddy, just turning five.

ALEXANDER OKUN (Set Design) began his career in 1965 at the Moscow Art Theater where for many years he designed productions by Chekhov and Dostoevsky. He has designed sets and costumes for more than 80 productions, including Puccini's opera, Turandot, at the Royal Albert Hall in London, and Last Summer in Chulimsk at the Moscow Ermolova Theater, where he was awarded he USSR's prestigious Ministry of Culture Award. He also won First Place for Best Production at the International Copernicus Drama Festival for Finale of Book Number Six. Mr. Okun immigrated to the US in 1981 and has since designed over 40 productions nationwide, among which are Three Sisters at Arena Stage in Washington, DC (directed by Zelda Fichandler), Transported Heads at both the Philadelphia Music Festival and NYC's Lincoln Center (directed by Julie Taymor). Roza in Baltimore, LA and NYC (directed by Harold Prince), Cyrano de Bergerac in Houston, Tales of Hoffman (opera) in Wilmington, Six Degrees of Separation in Seattle, A Doll's House at the Giva in Rochester, NY and the ASOLO in Sarasota, Shakespeare's The Tempest at Center Stage and The Idiot at Dallas Theater's Center and Trinity Repertory Company, for which he received the Dallas Critics Award. Mr. Okun is also a consultant for the Patrick McBride Company and Walt Disney Imaging.

DAVID GOODMAN (Lighting Design) is a graduate of the University of Miami, and was a faculty member there from 1999-2004. He has been working in professional theater as a designer, consultant production manager and business agent for over 25 years. David has worked on Broadway and in major Regional theaters and Opera companies. He is thrilled to be working at GableStage with Joseph Adler for the first time. Design credits include Sunshine Boys - National Tour, The Glass Menagerie (Carbonell Award), Groucho: A Life in Review (Carbonell nomination) and Anne and Debbie at Coconut Grove Playhouse. David would like to thank his wife Sarah for showing him that anything is possible.

MICHAEL J. HOFFMANN (Sound/Music) is an award-winning composer, arranger and producer with over 30 years experience in South Florida. His score for the documentary film, Heroes Hispanos, garnered an Emmy nod. He has also won numerous Clios, Addies and other industry awards. Originally from Philadelphia and New York, Hoffmann's composing talent ranges from classical orchestration to jazz fusion to whatever you can think of. He has designed and written music for GableStage productions among which are The Diary of Anne Frank, Dirty Blonde, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, The Goat, What the Butler Saw, Ten Unknowns, 'Master Harold'...and the boys, QED, Trumbo, Frozen, BUG, Retreat from Moscow and The Syringa Tree. Michael owns MH Productions, Inc., a post-production recording studio in Fort Lauderdale.

WALTER J. COLLINS (Video), an Emmy award winning editor, has been in the television and film industry for 30 years. Walter's television screen credits range from National Geographic, Miami Vice, CBS Sportspectacular, PBS, ABC's 20/20, Playboy TV and The Nature Conservancy, to hundreds of commercials for which he has garnered numerous Addy Awards. His love of storytelling has resulted in screen credits for several locally produced independent films. Coincidentally, Walter was the editor for cable television versions of the hit Broadway plays Too Jewish? for producer/performer Avi Hoffman and Doubles for producer/director, Joseph Adler! He would like to thank Joseph for this and every opportunity in the past 20 years to work with and learn from him. His relationship with Joseph goes beyond mentorship; it has become an enduring and true friendship. Owner of Hollywood (FL) based production company, Bold Creations; Walter dedicates everything that is beautiful in thought, nature, and art to his new wife and love of his life, Maritza.

ERIN AMICO (Costumes) is thrilled to be returning to work as a costume designer and is especially honored to be joining the creative team at GableStage. Her previous work in the region includes Jacques Brel and Seascape at Palm Beach Dramaworks; Beguiled Again, Puttin' on the Ritz, Below the Belt and Cabaret Verboten at Florida Stage. She also designed the premier production of Sophie Tucker, Last of the Red Hot Mamas at the Kravis Center. Erin is a lifelong resident of South Florida, currently living in Deerfield Beach with her husband, Michael and raising her two children Dante, 6 and Bridget, 4.

MICHAEL JOHN CARROLL (Stage Manager) is thrilled to be continuing his second season with GableStage after recently completing successful runs of The Syringa Tree, The Retreat From Moscow, Bug, Frozen, Trumbo, QED and 'Master Harold'...and the boys. Michael graduated from Barry University in 2001, and though he received his BFA in Acting, he also stage managed their productions of Little Shop of Horrors and Hello Dolly. He subsequently contributed to a dozen productions at Actors' Playhouse and the Coconut Grove Playhouse, and then went from backstage to the booth again as Stage Manager for the Hollywood Playhouse and the Broward Stage Door Theatre. Michael also stage managed the Miami premiere of Hedwig and the Angry Inch at Level Nightclub on Miami Beach. He is a proud member of Actors Equity Association and the Theatre League of South Florida. Michael's short list of inspirations include Jeff Buckley, Michel Gondry, and Mom.

CLAIRE SAVITT (Props) loves "the hunt". As prop mistress for GableStage, she has worked on a number of plays, including A Lesson Before Dying, James Joyce's The Dead, Dirty Blonde, The Shape of Things, Nixon's Nixon, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Goat, What the Butler Saw, Ten Unknowns, 'Master Harold'...and the boys, QED, Frozen, Bug and Retreat from Moscow. A former folk art gallery owner, Claire resides in Coconut Grove with her husband.