Naomi Wallace, playwright
An esteemed American playwright, screenwriter, and poet, Wallace is considered, “the most politically engaged playwright of her generation.” (Variety)
Her work has been produced all over the world and has been recognized twice as the winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and has been honored with Joseph Kesselring Prize, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, and an Obie Award. She is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the “Genius Award” and a National Endowment for the Arts development grant for her work, “theatre of scope, imagination and bloody-minded ambition.” (The Guardian)
Her play One Flea Spare was incorporated into the permanent répertoire of the French National Theatre, the Comédie-Française, where it was produced in 2012. Only two American playwrights have ever been added to La Comédie’s repertoire in 300 years.
Additional accolades include the Horton Foote Prize for most promising new American play, the inaugural Windham–Campbell Literature Prize established at Yale University, and the Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Wallace has been called “a dedicated advocate for justice and human rights in the U.S. and abroad, and Palestinian rights in the Middle East,” and her writing is described as “muscular, devastating, and unwavering.” She is a playwright of deep humanity.
Marcus Rediker, historian and playwright
Marcus Rediker is a distinguished American historian, writer, and social activist currently sharing his exceptional talents as a Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History of the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. Rediker is a two-time winner of the Merle Curti Award and was honored with the George Washington Book Prize, one of the largest book awards in the United States. During his substantial career, he was also recognized with the John Hope Franklin Publication Prize, International Labor History Book Prize from the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
In addition to his book, The Fearless Benjamin Lay, Rediker’s The Slave Ship: A Human History shines a light into the darkest corners of human history. In May 2013, Rediker and filmmaker Tony Buba traveled to the villages of slaves who revolted on the Spanish vessel La Amistad, and a documentary chronicling the journey, Ghosts of Amistad: In the Footsteps of Rebels premiered in November 2014 at the Three Rivers Film Festival in Pittsburgh winning the John E. O’Connor Film Prize for Best Historical Documentary in 2015.
Rediker’s works are historical narratives designed to humanize his source material and offer a detailed point of view beyond traditional narratives, an approach he calls his “histories from below” and regards as ‘the most democratic and inclusive kind of history.’
Ron Daniels, director
A renowned theater and opera director, Ron Daniels is a pillar of British theatre. A native of Brazil, he began his career as an actor and a founding member of the Teatro Oficina in Sao Paulo before moving to the United Kingdom to join the Royal Shakespeare Company.
In 1991, Daniels moved stateside and served as Associate Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theatre (ART) in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Head of Acting and Directing Programs of the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University. During the course of his estimable career, Daniels directed more than 30 productions across the United States, and in New York at the Theatre for a New Audience and The Public Theatre, in San Diego at The Old Globe, and in Washington D.C. at The Shakespeare Theatre.
He has worked on more than a dozen operas including Madama Butterfly, La Bohème, Carmen, and Don Giovanni, and on the silver screen as director of The War Boys and executive producer of Lawn Dogs. Daniels and Wallace first joined forces on One Flea Spare and continued with The War Boys and Lawn Dog. The Return of Benjamin Lay is the fourth collaboration between these two artists.
Mark Povinelli, actor and social activist
American stage, television, and film actor Mark Povinelli’s career demonstrates his remarkable versatility. Noted as a brilliant artist of superb acting, from slapstick comedy to heartfelt drama, from broad caricature to quiet realism, Povenelli’s performances are full of subtlety, intelligence, charisma, and humanity.
For most of the 2000s, Povinelli toured the world as the critically praised Torvald Helmer in the Obie-award winning production of Mabou Mines Dollhouse, an inspired adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic “A Doll’s House.” During the same time, his career on the small screen flourished with The Hughleys, Charmed to Cold Case, Boardwalk Empire and Criminal Minds. Povinelli made his film debut alongside Tom Hanks in The Polar Express and can be seen alongside Robert Pattison, Reese Witherspoon, and Christoph Waltz in the film Water for Elephants. In 2012, he appeared in Mirror Mirror, starring Julia Roberts and was cast as a series regular on the television series Are You There, Chelsea? making him the first little person to be cast as a series regular on a network sitcom.
Also a noted social activist, Povinelli is a former President of the American Association of Little People who has fought discrimination with a Ben Lay-like intensity…as well as a celebrated actor with Benjamin Lay-like charisma.
