MEMBERS
Sarah Lowry
is a graduate of Haverford College and an alumna of the National Theater Institute
in Waterford, Connecticut. While in college, she spent time directing, dancing
and acting in various student production and collaborations. At the end of
her time at Haverford, she received a grant from the Center for Peace and
Global Citizenship to fund her thesis research which took her to Salvador,
Bahia, Brazil to study modern dance with Rosangela Silvestre, founder and
master teacher of the Silvestre Technique. Upon graduation, Sarah began collaborating
with Donna Sellinger as director of By2, a storytelling show that toured for
three months performing nationally during the fall of ’05. She has spent
the last two summers at the Colorado College Summer Dance Festival as an international
student mentor/coordinator on full scholarship from the college. Sarah has
spent most of the last year in Denver, Colorado where she studied the Silvestre
Technique and Tribal Fusion under her teacher and mentor, Donna Mejia. She
began collaborating with The Missoula Oblongata one year ago to direct Wonders
of the World : Recite, the company’s first mainstage touring production.
Sarah currently lives a dual life between Philadelphia, Pa where she studies
dance, and Northampton, Ma where they continue their collaboration. Current
company projects include a touring dinner theater show: The Ghost Wedding
of Arle Redfern; an experimental version of The Tempest to be performed in
Philadelphia spring 2007; and The Most Mysterious Day of the Year, a mainstage
show to be toured nationally this summer. Currently, her only complaint in
life is too much time spent in a car.
Madeline ffitch grew up in beautiful Portland, Oregon. She
held jobs as a ship's cook, a trail crew leader, and an artist's model, and
then moved to Missoula, Montana to open up the Milquetoast Detective Agency,
famous for solving the Sad Case of the Lonely Neighbors, the Case of Fang,
and the Case of the Yuppie who Stole My Bike. Madeline helped to organize
the Missoula Free School, a community effort in popular education, and she
was a founding member of the Slumgullion Small Press Collaborative. Madeline
writes fiction and draws comics, and is the author of numerous chapbooks.
Her work was distributed by Seattle’s Left Shoe Distro, and can now
be found at numerous zine libraries around the country. Madeline has performed
her pieces, The Lake of the Ozarks and The National Champion Jump Roper (created
with experimental drummer John Niecratz) throughout the Northwestern U.S.
Madeline was the recipient of a fellowship from the Program for Poets and
Writers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she is an MFA candidate
in fiction writing. With her dear friend Carson Cistulli, she designed and
taught an experimental writing workshop there called Let‘s Misbehave:
Writing the Smart Aleck, incorporating performative writing, clown history,
and Jane Austen. Next year, Madeline will pursue her MA at the University
of East Anglia in Norwich, England. Madeline is listed on the Reference List
as an expert in etiquette and cooking, and is proud to be a primary consultant
for the Shuttlecoque Think Tank, famous for problem-solving.
Donna Sellinger has spent the last few years creating and
touring original experimental theatre around the country and in Canada. Her
first piece was The Superbowl & Other Stories which won a Fotis Award
for “Best Written” at the 2004 Minnesota Fringe Festival, and
was invited to be part of the Cincinnati Playhouse's AlterActive performance
series in early 2005. That project mutated and changed names, and toured nationally
as By2 for a few months. After that, the promise of a lasting pun brought
Donna to Montana, where she co-founded The Missoula Oblongata and co-wrote,
built, hot-glued, and played Eugene in The Wonders of the World: Recite—the
company’s first production. Donna also founded the Missoula Oblongata
Shakespeare Repertory Theatre, mostly so that she could play Lady Macbeth,
which she did excellently and with much fake blood. Donna’s first recorded
album, My Contribution to the World was released a year or two ago by Standard
Oil Records as part of their “Books on Tape” series. Donna is
an alumna of The National Theatre Institute, has studied clown with Sue Morrison,
and graduated with very good grades from SUNY Purchase, earning a BFA in Playwriting.
Her mother would be happy to tell you that Donna plans to attend Towson University
in the fall as an MFA candidate in their experimental theatre program.
