“I try to preserve the Chinese music flavor. So, you imagine in Chinese band, the country music that people usually reserve for weddings or for big moments or for funerals. That kind of a feeling. Drums and music playing. I try to preserve it from my memory because what we have now is just a tune. You can probably recognize the tune, but the execution of translating that for a Western orchestra and make it sound like it’s a Chinese band playing Chinese instruments.”

Bright Sheng is a composer, conductor, and pianist. His work has been commissioned and performed by many prestigious institutions throughout the world, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and special commissions from the White House and for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Sheng has collaborated with many distinguished artists, including Leonard Bernstein, Yo-Yo Ma, David Henry Hwang, Christoph Eschenbach, and many others.

· www.brightsheng.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

Photo: Santa Fe performance of Madame Mao

Bright Sheng is a composer, conductor, and pianist. His work has been commissioned and performed by many prestigious institutions throughout the world, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and special commissions from the White House and for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Sheng has collaborated with many distinguished artists, including Leonard Bernstein, Yo-Yo Ma, David Henry Hwang, Christoph Eschenbach, and many others.

· www.brightsheng.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

Photo by Peter Shin

“To not honor that we are all creative, beautiful, interesting deep, rich individuals. We’re not zeros and ones on a spreadsheet. We’re not scientifically explained. We are not mathematically judged. We are imperfect blobs of emotion and bone and spirit and life and when we come together there is nothing greater than the chemistry and the alchemy of musical theater… There’s a joy, there’s a bounce, there’s an effervescence that’s part of that music. I had a great teacher in college, the head of our program Brent Wagner said, 'With lyrics, I can tell you to open the door, but with music I can tell you how.’ Lyrics are information and music is emotion.”

Most highly noted for his stunning work in musical theater, Gavin James Creel is a Tony & Olivier Award-winning actor, singer and songwriter. On Broadway, he’s performed in shows including Throughly Modern Millie, Hair, The Book of Mormon, Waitress and Hello, Dolly!, his performance in which won him his first Tony Award. Creel is also a LGBTQ+ activist, having done much to raise awareness and fight for marriage equality.

· www.imdb.com/name/nm1342128

· www.creativeprocess.info

Most highly noted for his stunning work in musical theater, Gavin James Creel is a Tony & Olivier Award-winning actor, singer and songwriter. On Broadway, he’s performed in shows including Throughly Modern Millie, Hair, The Book of Mormon, Waitress and Hello, Dolly!, his performance in which won him his first Tony Award. Creel is also a LGBTQ+ activist, having done much to raise awareness and fight for marriage equality.

· www.gavincreel.com

· www.creativeprocess.info

HELLO, DOLLY! Photo by Julieta Cervantes

Dr. François Clemmons is perhaps best known as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’s Officer Clemmons. He made history as the first African American actor to have a recurring role on a children’s television program. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin College, a MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and an honorary degree from Middlebury College. In 1973, he won a Grammy Award for a recording of Porgy and Bess; in 1986, he founded and directed the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble; and from 1997 until his retirement in 2013, Clemmons was the Alexander Twilight Artist in Residence and director of the Martin Luther King Spiritual Choir at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he currently resides.

· https://francoisclemmons.net
· www.creativeprocess.info

“I always find it an ironic thing to think about the fact that Fred Rogers was colour-blind. He could barely tell a blue from a grey. I was young and to him I was a child and I certainly played the role of a child and he played the role of parent… He was profoundly patient.”

Dr. François Clemmons is perhaps best known as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’s Officer Clemmons. He made history as the first African American actor to have a recurring role on a children’s television program. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin College, a MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and an honorary degree from Middlebury College. In 1973, he won a Grammy Award for a recording of Porgy and Bess; in 1986, he founded and directed the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble; and from 1997 until his retirement in 2013, Clemmons was the Alexander Twilight Artist in Residence and director of the Martin Luther King Spiritual Choir at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he currently resides.

· https://francoisclemmons.net
· www.creativeprocess.info

“A lot of people in my family and among my friends when they heard that I study Yiddish and that later made it my livelihood, they are very surprised. Yiddish? How come Yiddish? Why Yiddish? They even laugh sometimes, they are very surprised. And what I answer to them is that there is nothing surprising about the fact that I study or speak Yiddish. The real surprise, the real question that has to be asked is how come my parents, this last generation, didn’t speak Yiddish? Because, if you consider my family, for hundreds of years on all sides they spoke Yiddish.”

Tal Hever-Chybowski is the Director of the Paris Yiddish Center (Maison de la Culture Yiddish) & Medem Library. He is the Founder and Editor of the diasporic-Hebrew journal Mikan Ve’eylakh in Berlin, and Ph.D. candidate at the History Department of Humboldt University, Berlin. He holds a B.A. in History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an M.A. in History from the Humboldt University. He translated into Hebrew Edward Said’s Representations of the Intellectual (1993), Mikhal Dekel’s The Universal Jew: Masculinity, Modernity, and the Zionist Moment (2014), and is currently translating a forthcoming book on diaspora by Daniel Boyarin.

· www.yiddishweb.com

· www.creativeprocess.info

Tal Hever-Chybowski is the Director of the Paris Yiddish Center (Maison de la Culture Yiddish) & Medem Library. He is the Founder and Editor of the diasporic-Hebrew journal Mikan Ve’eylakh in Berlin, and Ph.D. candidate at the History Department of Humboldt University, Berlin. He holds a B.A. in History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an M.A. in History from the Humboldt University. He translated into Hebrew Edward Said’s Representations of the Intellectual (1993), Mikhal Dekel’s The Universal Jew: Masculinity, Modernity, and the Zionist Moment (2014), and is currently translating a forthcoming book on diaspora by Daniel Boyarin.

· www.yiddishweb.com

· www.creativeprocess.info

Avra Sidiropoulou is the author of two monographs Directions for Directing: Theatre and Method, published by Routledge, and Authoring Performance: The Director in Contemporary Theatre. She is an assistant professor at the MA Program in Theatre Studies at the Open University of Cyprus. She holds a PhD in Directing Theory, an MFA in Directing, MPhil in American Literature, and MA in Text & Performance. She is the Artistic Director of Athens-based Persona Theatre Company, for which she has directed work from a Classical and Contemporary repertory and lectured and conducted directing workshops in Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, the United States, UK, Japan, Israel, Bulgaria, Estonia, and Iran.


· https://ouc.academia.edu/AvraSidiropoulou


· http://persona.gr


· www.creativeprocess.info

Avra Sidiropoulou is the author of two monographs Directions for Directing: Theatre and Method, published by Routledge, and Authoring Performance: The Director in Contemporary Theatre. She is an assistant professor at the MA Program in Theatre Studies at the Open University of Cyprus. She holds a PhD in Directing Theory, an MFA in Directing, MPhil in American Literature, and MA in Text & Performance. She is the Artistic Director of Athens-based Persona Theatre Company, for which she has directed work from a Classical and Contemporary repertory and lectured and conducted directing workshops in Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, the United States, UK, Japan, Israel, Bulgaria, Estonia, and Iran.
· https://ouc.academia.edu/AvraSidiropoulou
· http://persona.gr
· www.creativeprocess.info