Lynn Blackwell Denton is an award winning screenwriter, filmmaker and visual artist. In 2015 her screenplay The Milliner was named Second Finalist in the Bentonville Film Festival Screenwriting Competition juried by actor Bruce Dern. In 2016, Lynn published a novelized version of The Milliner now available on Amazon.com.

Lynn began her career as a visual artist and her films evolved from art installations that referred increasingly to women’s stories. TIME FRAME ZIGGURAT, at Nexus Gallery, included a soundtrack and photos of women in her family and their houses; POLLY’S DREAM featured a mixed media, two part installation at Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art; and for SOPHIA’S HOUSE, at the PAFA’s Morris Gallery, Lynn built a room-sized installation that celebrated woman as the original creator, inviting female sculptors to refer to early myths in making works emblematic of the first creations.
Christina Brandon-Gómez is a bilingual screenwriter and aspiring novelist. She graduated with honors from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia (UARTS), where she received her B.F.A in Writing for Film and Television. She has studied creative writing at the University College of London, the College of Santa Fe, and Arcadia University, where she received her M.F.A .
Shortly after graduating from UArts, Christina was a contributing writer for Keith Chamberlain's web series, Herrings. Following the death of her father, Christina tackled mental health in Black culture in her script, Small and Mighty, 2019 5Shorts Project finalist, 2020 Black Screenplays Matter semi-finalist, and 2020 Hip Hop Film Festival Official Selection.
In 2019, after connecting at a Philadelphia Women in Film and Television (PWIFT) event, Christina began collaborating with artist, writer, and director Lynn B. Denton on the adaptation of Lynn's screenplay and novel, The Milliner. A period drama set in Jim Crow Georgia at the turn of the twentieth century, The Milliners traces the journey of two artisans: Dayo, a black seamstress, and Keziah, a white milliner, as their paths converge while searching for work and being swept up in the mobilization of the women's vote.
Christina's teen post-apocalyptic drama, Hoodz, is currently making the rounds on the festival circuit, both at the local and national level. She intends to adapt her short film Small and Mighty into a feature length project.

On this week's Into the Absurd, all the world's a stage when we speak with the Rev. Josh Blakesley, Founder and Executive Director of The Welcome Project PA, a community-based non-profit serving marginalized communities, including LGBT+ people, recent immigrants and vulnerable faith communities. Josh is passionate about interfaith immersion projects and movements that bring people together across lines of difference.

Join us as we celebrate coming together, understanding and accepting differences in turbulent times, and how theater can provide a bridge over troubled waters.

Rev. Josh Blakesely grew up in the Midwest before completing a B.A. in Theatre at Northwestern College [IA] and a Masters of Divinity [M.Div.] at Princeton Theological Seminary [NJ]. An ordained minister in the United Church of Christ [UCC], Josh has lived and worked in Iowa, Philadelphia, Hawaii, Mexico, and Michigan.

In 2019, Josh founded The Welcome Project PA [WPPA], a community-based non-profit that serves marginalized communities, such as LGBT+ people, recent immigrants, and vulnerable faith communities.

Currently, Josh is Pastor of Love In Action UCC, featured in a Vox Media episode of Divided States of Women with Liz Plank and in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Josh has 20+ years of experience working with children, youth, and adults in various intra and interfaith settings. Josh is a fellow of Interfaith Philadelphia, designing and coordinating HS and University student groups for immersion service-learning weeks called “Alternative Break Interfaith Encounters.” He also co-facilitates “How to be an Interfaith Ally” trainings for Philly Peace Day and recently, in Toronto, at the Parliament of the World’s Religions.

Josh is committed to promoting religious pluralism and partnering with people of all faiths and those who identify as atheist or agnostic to build bridges of shared values and cooperation.

On this week's Into the Absurd, we talk about collaboration and connectedness through the study of Avant-Garde art and practice in Philadelphia, with John Heon andDavid McKnight, who shepherd the conversation and programming at PASC, The Philadelphia Avant-Garde Studies Consortium.

The avant-garde is flexibility of mind. And it follows like day, the night from not falling prey to government and education. Without the avant-garde nothing would get invented.” — John Cage
It’s been a banner year for absurdity, and the contemplation of the absurd has been one of the most salient features of avant-garde art and thought from the nineteenth century to the present. From Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, to Camus, Sartre, and Baudrillard; from Jarry, Stein, and Kafka to Ionesco, Beckett, Artaud, and Kathy Acker; from Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Baroness Elsa, and Dali to Bruce Nauman, Carolee Schneemann, and Jenny Holzer; from Schoenberg, Cage, and Glass, to Frank Zappa, The Talking Heads, and Père Ubu (the band), the modern mind has grappled with life in an increasingly entropic and violent world that seems to crush meaning, justice, and individual agency.

John Heon, a founding co-director of the Philadelphia Avant-Garde Studies Consortium, is an independent scholar specializing in the psychology, politics, and aesthetics of humor in modern/postmodern literature and visual art. His essay, “Twisted Witz: Experiments in Psychopathology and Humor by Dr. Faustroll and His Pataphysical Progeny,” will appear in the forthcoming book, Pataphysics Unrolled, published by the Refiguring Modernism series of Penn State University Press.

His book in progress, Articulate Art: Language, Literature, and Humor in the Works of Bruce Nauman, examines Nauman’s oeuvre in the context of avant-garde black humor and the comic theories of Nietzsche, Freud, Bergson, and Wittgenstein.

John holds a doctorate in English with a concentration in psychology and the history of science from the University of Pennsylvania, where he received the Arts and Sciences Distinguished Teaching Award. He has also taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Marquette University, and in the Education Department of the Phillips Collection, America’s first museum of modern art.

David McKnight is Director of the Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. Prior to accepting the position at the University of Pennsylvania in 2006, he was Director of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library and Head of the Digital Collections Program at McGill University Libraries where he worked in various roles for fifteen years. A past president of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, McKnight is currently founding Co-Director of the Philadelphia Avant-Garde Studies Consortium and a member of both the Grolier Club (New York) and the Philobiblon Club (Philadelphia).
In 2014, David in collaboration with John Heon, Katie Price and several others founded the Philadelphia Avant-Garde Studies Consortium, a non-profit arts and advocacy group devoted to exploring the past, present and future of the avant-garde’s place in Philadelphia cultural history.
In 2018, David curated an exhibition focused on Modernist Literary Publishing at the University of Alberta and in 2019 he curated an exhibition on the legendary Gotham Book Mart entitled “Wise Men Fished Here.” At the present time, he is working on an exhibition related to Andy Warhol.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5ohS4uPLJQ

Lane Savadove is the Founding Artistic Director of EgoPo Classic Theater, now in its 27th season.

Lane has directed over 40 shows for EgoPo, Off-Broadway, regionally in San Francisco, Chicago, New Orleans, Provincetown, Philadelphia and on National Public Radio. He was the resident director of the National Cultural Center of Indonesia (1996-7), Artistic Director of Jean Cocteau Repertory (2004-5), and Associate Artistic Director of the Living Theater (1989-90).

An Independence Foundation Fellow, Drama League Directing Fellow, Shubert Fellow, Henry Luce Fellow, TCG Leadership recipient. His works include: Beckett’s Company (NPR and 6 cities); world premiere of Tennessee Williams’ House Not Meant to Stand (Southern Repertory); Wedekind’s Spring Awakening (Phila, New Orleans), Maeterlinck’s Bluebird (Phila.), the world premiere of John Guare’s 10-hour Lydie Breeze Trilogy.

Savadove's staging of Chekhov’s Seagull won the company the 2017 Barrymore award for Best Production. Lane holds an MFA in Directing from Columbia University and BA from Haverford College. Lane was a Professor of Acting and Directing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, The National University of Indonesia, and Head of Directing at Loyola-New Orleans. He is currently Head of Acting and Directing and Full Professor of Theater at Rowan University in New Jersey.

Dr. William Crow, Director of the Lehigh University Art Galleries

"Academic​ ​museums​ ​and​ ​galleries​ ​cannot​ ​be​ ​static,​ ​silent​ ​storage​ ​houses​ ​of​ ​the​ ​past.​ ​​​ They​ ​hold​ ​the​ ​potential​ ​to​ ​be​ ​catalysts for​ ​conversation,​ ​contributors​ ​to​ ​healthy​ ​and​ ​engaged​ ​communities,​ ​and​ ​platforms​ ​for​ ​the​ ​productive​ ​exploration​ ​of​ ​ideas.​ ​​​ In addition​ ​to​ ​producing​ ​dynamic​ ​exhibitions,​ ​they​ ​can,​ ​and​ ​must,​ ​stimulate​ ​community​ ​involvement,​ ​spark​ ​cross-disciplinary collaboration,​ ​and​ ​inspire​ ​new​ ​understandings​ ​of​ ​ourselves,​ ​one​ ​another,​ ​and​ ​our​ ​world." - Dr. William Crow

How are academic museums and galleries catalysts for conversation in communities and beyond? Maximizing the public value of art is the discussion at the virtual dinner table this week with William B. Crow, PhD, Director of the Lehigh University Art Galleries and Professor of Practice in the Department of Art, Architecture, and Design.

Prior to his appointment at Lehigh, William Crow was the inaugural Educator in Charge of Teaching and Learning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, New York, where he oversaw programs serving over 500,000 visitors annually, including programs and resources for schools, educators, families, teens, college and universities, as well as pedagogy and training for all teaching that occurred in the Museum’s three sites. Dr. Crow has held academic appointments at New York University, Johns Hopkins University, and The New School for Social Research.
He received the 2015 University Excellence in Teaching Award at Johns Hopkins, and in 2017 he was awarded a Fulbright Global Specialist Award to conduct professional development for museum staff in South America.
Dr. Crow holds a B.A. in Romance Languages and Art from Wake Forest University, an M.F.A. in Painting from Hunter College of The City University of New York, an M.S.Ed. in Museum Education Leadership from Bank Street, and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from Columbia University. He is also an alumnus of the Getty Leadership Institute, Museum Leaders: The Next Generation Program (2006), the Columbia University School of Business Executive Leadership Program (2016) and the National Guild for Community Art Education Leadership Institute (2016).
Dr. Crow’s current research interests include decision-making and evaluative judgments in the arts, epistemological development, and the cognitive benefits of sketching.

Idiopathic Trick or Treat Storytelling Mayhem ensues when John Zak, Sonja Robson, Jane Moore, Jenna Kuerzi, Tomas Dura, John Rosenberg and Sharon Geller stop by for a visit and a chat. Tina Brock hosts, with questions and inquiries into their tall tales. True or false?

Our guest at the table tonight was author Nicole Taylor, author of A Joyful Pause: 52 Ways to Love Your Life.

Nicole facilitates transformative offerings on self care and well being. She is a certified yoga and meditation teacher and a Conscious Living Coach.

A Joyful Pause is about coming home to yourself. In this unusual time when it seems like everything is changing -- work has shifting demands, the home life landscape has been altered, the world around us is spinning at an unparalleled speed. Now is the time to find the place in each of us that is steady in the midst of change.

"Learning how to pause is a helpful practice. We can build the habit of taking a few moments out of each day to turn our awareness inward. The practices that restore body, mind, and connection to spirit take time, and they ask us to create a bit of quiet and some internalization." -- Nicole Taylor

A Joyful Pause is structured to make this easy for you to do. The connection we seek is in the pause, and through that connection, we come to know that we are home.

https://www.ajoyfulpause.com/

Dr. Beverly Shin received her medical degree from Jefferson Medical College and is currently a resident physician in the Department of Psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. She is currently an American Psychiatric Association Fellow in Public Psychiatry and will be an addiction psychiatry fellowship at the University of Washington next year. She is alos in her first year of psychoanalytic training at the Columbia University Center For Psychoanalytic Training and Research.

Prior to her medical training, Dr. Shin enjoyed a 12-year career as a classical violinist and performed as a solo, chamber music, and orchestral musician throughout the U.S., as well as in Canada, Asia, Europe, and South America. She holds a doctorate in violin performance from New England Conservatory and has held teaching positions at several universities.

Combining both her love of music and psychiatry, she has developed a series of workshops using musical improvisation to explore making mistakes, imposter syndrome, and group collaboration. She has presented this workshop to medical students at Jefferson Medical College, as well as to psychiatric patients at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

Priyanka Shetty is an actor, director, and playwright on a mission.
She graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from the University of Virginia and currently serves as a Faculty member at the University of Virginia, Department of Drama. Priyanka is the author of two original plays – her one-woman show The Elephant in the Room, and #Charlottesville constructed verbatim from interviews with residents of Charlottesville, VA who speak about the city in light of the white supremacist rallies and events of August 11-12, 2017. Priyanka is currently working on her third play, The Wall which deals with immigration issues in America.
The Elephant in the Room premiered at CATCO/Evolution Theatre in Columbus OH in March 2019 and Priyanka kicked off The Elephant on the Road Tour at Yale University in April 2019. Since then she has performed at venues across the country and her most recent performance was on the Millennium Stage at The John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington DC.

Priyanka is inspired by the description of The Fool card in the Tarot: “It is an excellent example of following your bliss; trust and take a chance, live on the edge, be bold and confident, take things one day at a time and enjoy the ride."

Join us as we talk to Priyanka about the challenges in following your bliss, writing and performing your own story, and how turns in the road provide the strength to discover purpose and passion.

In 2014, Peter founded Theatrical Trainer, a non-profit research collective dedicated to social service, mental health, and wellness for artists across the country. They have taught body science, movement and theater arts at Drexel University, Moore College of Art and University of the Arts.
Peter’s research and opinion papers have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Gay News, The Mighty, and others. Their practice includes teaching as a motivational speaker, panelist, and conference workshop coach, where their passion in industrial psychology and organizational dynamics helps organizations engage in dialogues around diversity, inclusion, and emotional well-being.

Peter has also researched the effects of rejection and trauma on artists, ego functioning and their sense of confidence. They are presently teaching trauma informed practices at arts universities in Philadelphia as well as creating a theoretical model of practice for artists.