Creative Team
Craig Alan Edwards, Actor/Writer/Producer
Craig is a New York actor, writer and producer. He is a native of Philadelphia, PA. and a graduate of Boston University. He is playwright and performer of The Man in Room 306, a fictional account of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s last night in Memphis, April 3, 1968. (Playhouse On The Square; Adirondack Theatre Festival; Watermark Theatre; Emerson Stage: Majestic Theatre; Luna Stage Company; university theatres.) THEATRE: Regional- Merchant Of Venice; King Lear; (with Earl Hyman) Taming Of The Shrew; Dinner With Friends; Fences; Les Blanc; Taste Of Honey; Much Ado About Nothing; Twelfth Night; Hamlet; Romeo & Juliet; Tracers; My Three Angels; The Arch Bishop’s Ceiling; and others. NEW YORK: Waiting For My Man; Box; A Last Dance for Sybil; (Ruby Dee; Ossie Davis) Love’s Labor’s Lost; Oroonoko; workshop projects with The New York Theatre Workshop. TELEVISION: FRINGE (Fox); Law & Order; Law & Order- Special Victims Unit; Law & Order- Criminal Intent; Law & Order: Trial By Jury; All My Children; As The World Turns; Luther’s Choice; (TV Movie). FILM: Sweet & Lowdown; (Sean Penn; Director- Woody Allen) Lip Service; (Director- William H. Macy) The Opposite Sex; (Courtney Cox; Kevin Pollack); Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop; (Danny Hoch); Recent: Under New Management. SHORTS: Don’t Nobody Love the Game; The Workout. TRAINING: Kristin Linklater (Voice); Maggie Flannigan (William Esper Studios); Lloyd Richards (The Actors Center) and Vernon F. Blackmon. (Teacher/Director: Boston, MA.) Craig’s performance company is KING ALIVE! The Dream Lives! (www.kingalive.com) and he’s Managing Member of Man in 306, LLC.
Cheryl Katz, Director/Dramaturg
Cheryl has been the director of play development for Luna Stage in Montclair New Jersey for the past six seasons. She has developed and directed over thirty new plays in the New York area and has collaborated with Craig Alan Edwards as director and dramaturg of The Man in Room 306 since its inception. She has worked as a producer, administrator and special projects manager for LaMama E.T.C., Under One Roof, Electronic Arts Intermix, Arts International and The School of Hard Knocks, and has worked in script development for The Young Playwrights Festival, The O’Neill Theatre Conference and The Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey. She served for two years on the panel for The New Festival at Kean University and is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Paul Whelihan, Production Stage Manager
Paul stage managed the most recent production of The Man in Room 306 at Luna Stage. He was also the Stage Manager at Luna for The Whipping Man and Honor and the River.
He directed Luna’s production of A Beautiful Home for the Incurables and, as an actor, performed the role of John in The Normals, the Mayor in Dragons, (Best Supporting Actor in a Musical: Star Ledger) and Gruber in The Flame Keeper (Off-Broadway; 47th Street Theatre) As an actor, he has performed extensively Off-Broadway, regionally and in locally produced TV and Film projects. Paul stage managed The Last Night of Ballyhoo at Forum Theatre and numerous productions at the Ironbound Theatre, which he co-founded in Newark. He is also the co-founder of Running Rabbit Family Theatre, a company for young audiences in residence at Luna Stage and the Pollak Theatre at Monmouth University, where he works as a director, actor, playwright and producer.
Charlie Corcoran, Set Designer
Designs include: The Man In Room 306, (Luna Stage- 2008), Sophistry, The Black Monk, The Bully Pulpit (Theatre Row, Beckett Theatre), The Emperor Jones, The Yeats Project, Sive, Prisoner of the Crown, Defender Of The Faith, The Field, (Irish Repertory Theatre), The Metal Children (Vineyard Theatre), Without Walls (Mark Taper forum), The Molly Maguire’s (Kirby Center), The Night Watcher, Exits and Entrances (Primary Stages), Rock Doves, (Irish Arts Center), The Last Smoker In America, Bernice Bobs Her Mullet (NYMF festival), , Shogun Macbeth, Tea, Yohen (Pan Asian Rep). RECENT DESIGNS: The Dishwashers (59 east 59th street Theatre) Mercy of a Storm, Gravity Of Honey, Dear Liar, Mr. Dooley’s America (Chester Theatre Company) Associate Designs include: Edward Albee’s Me, Myself & I (Upcoming), Raisin In the Sun, The Boys From Syracuse (Broadway), Happiness, Third (Lincoln Center), Iphigenie En Tauride, Rodelinda (Metropolitan Opera), The Ring Cycle, Amelia, (Seattle Opera) Other venues include: Arena Stage, The McCarter Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, The Goodman Theatre, The Seattle Rep, The Guthrie, Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage, New York Stage and Film, NY Theatre Workshop, The Play company, Playwrights Horizons, The Public Theatre, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. www.charlescorcorandesign.com
Jill Nagle, Lighting Designer
Jill recently designed Dov & Ali and Love Song at the Chester Theatre in the Berkshires and The Dishwashers at 59e59th Street, The Bully Pulpit at The Samuel Beckett Theatre, and Count Down at The Bank Street Theatre in NYC. Jill has been the Resident Lighting Designer at NJ Repertory Company for four years. She has also designed shows for The Westbank Theatre, La Mama Theatre, The Pulse Theatre, Luna Stage, Dreamcatcher Repertory, The Theater Project, Montclair State University, and New Jersey City University. You can view her work at www.jillnagle.net.
Andy Cohen, Sound Designer
Andy has written music or designed sound for many theatrical and musical performances in and around NYC. Including shows at Lincoln Center, Fordham University, HERE, LaMama, the Ohio Theatre, and the NYC International Fringe Festival, where he was a 2000 “Excellence” Award Winner. Recent sound design and composing projects have included the musicals Ripcords (FringeNYC, 2008), Charlie Chang and the Mysterious Salami, the plays Kabbalah and Mountain Jews with the Jewish Theater of New York at the Triad Theatre, The Man in the Newspaper Hat at the 45th St. Theatre, Jane Ho at Theatre Row, several productions at Luna Stages in Montclair, NJ (including The Man in Room 306 in 2008), compositions for the Drama League’s Directors Fest, the Chekhov Now! Festival, and the dance score Taro for the Mariana Bekerman Dance Company at the Joyce Theatre in SOHO. Upcoming projects include the song cycle Love Stinks (which recently premiered at the Public Theatre as part of the 2009 Summer Play Festival) and the musical The Green Manifesto (premiering this August as part of the New York International Fringe Festival). He currently resides in Brooklyn (Cobble Hill) and is working on several original projects, including musicals about the science of herpetology and the Principality of Monaco. Andy holds degrees in music composition from Oberlin and the Manhattan School of Music. www.andycomusic.com.
Jennifer Snowdon, Make Up Designer
Prompted by her mentor, Dr. Kenneth G. Mills, Jennifer sought out, and found her life’s passion in Make Up Design. She attended the Berger Institute of Production Technology in Florida, and has 15 years of experience as a Make Up Artist. She’s done make up design for 20 films and varied commercial, corporate and theater projects. As a result of her early exposure to the HD camera in 1993, she understood the importance of extreme attention to detail and simplicity to capture the essence of a character. Jennifer was the Make Up Designer for the 2008 Luna Stage production of The Man in Room 306, and has worked with Mr. Edwards to develop the “King” character make up for many years. She is proud to be a part of this project and to help bring this American icon “to life” again for the Off-Broadway production. www.jennifersnowdon.com.
Arthur Oliver, Costume Designer
Arthur Oliver has been designing costumes professionally since 1991. Opera, Theatre, Film, Television and Academia have employed his talent at such notable institutions as The Atlanta Opera, The Connecticut Opera, Berkshire Theatre Festival, The Charles Playhouse, The Colonial Theatre, Shakespeare & Company, Mixed Company, The Stratford Shakespearean Festival (Ontario), The Yard, NYU/Tisch, LSU, Swine Palace, Trinity College, Gordon College, Simon's Rock College of Bard and The Boston Conservatory
Mr. Oliver has worked with popular entertainers such as Raquel Welch, Liza Minnelli, Alicia Silverstone, Keanau Reeves, Maureen Stapleton, Marge Champion, Harvey Fierstein, David Hyde-Pierce, Bebe Neuwirth, Carly Simon and Olympia Dukakis. In 2005 he collaborated with Grammy Award recipient Carly Simon and Artistic Director Wendy Taucher (The Yard) on "Created by Carly Simon: Dances at the Yard". His Broadway debut was in 2007: "Broadway Bares XVII-Myth Behavior”.
Jessica Parks, Props Master
Jessica Parks (Properties) has been the resident prop master for the New Jersey Repertory Company since 2003. Credits there include: The Housewives on Mannheim, Sick, The Little Hours, Engaging Shaw, Minstrel Show, Women of Lockerbie, Tilt Angel, Whores, Old Clown Wanted, Lemonade, The Adjustment, Spain, Emil, and The Good Daughter as well as scenic design for Dead Ringer, The Rant, Poetic License, Apple and Evie’s Waltz among others. Other properties credits include: Macbeth, All My Sons and You Can’t Take It With You at Two River Theater, Pentecost at the Barrow Group and Foreign Exchange at Playwright’s Theater of NJ
