MICHELLE KRUSIEC (Performer/Playwright) first found national and international critical acclaim in her starring role opposite Joan Chen in the romantic comedy Saving Face, directed by Alice Wu. Her award winning performance as an awkward, closeted lesbian garnered her a Best Actress nomination in the 2005 Golden Horse Ceremony, Asia's equivalent to the Academy Award. Currently, Krusiec is featured as Emily on the ABC Family comedy series. The Secret Life of The American Teenager. Other notable feature and TV credits include Far North opposite Michelle Yeoh, What Happens in Vegas opposite Cameron Diaz, her own TV series "One World" (NBC) as well as other ensemble shows such as "Mind of the Married Man" (HBO) and "Dirty Sexy Money" (ABC). A long time student of acclaimed acting teacher Larry Moss, Michelle has trained at Virginia Tech University and Oxford. After Krusiec accosted Oliver Stone on stage while lecturing at Virginia Tech, the director cast her in her first feature film, Nixon. Her critically acclaimed solo show, Made in Taiwan, premiered at the Aspen Comedy festival in 2002 and was later workshopped at the 2007 first annual Asian American Theater Festival in NY. For more information please go to www.michellekrusiec.com or www.madeintaiwanshow.com.
Andrew Belser is Artistic Director of The Gravity Project (TGP), a professional theatre company, and Head of Theatre at Juniata College. Belser's career as a director and teacher has centered on movement forms, voice/breath work, and interdisciplinary approaches to theatre. He partnered with over 15 other professionals in the founding of The Gravity Project, a professional theatre company, center for performance research, and incubator for new work by innovative international artists. His most recent work with The Gravity Project was writing and directing TGP's newest work Return, an homage to a rural American childhood fusing film and live performance with shadow puppets of large fish, Walt Whitman, and Frank Sinatra. Belser directed the premiere of Russell Davis' Crispin, an adaptation of Avi's Newbury Award-winning novel, in a co-production between TGP and People's Light and Theatre in Philadelphia. Other recent directing work includes: Nine Gates (TGP creation), a movement meditation of contemporary poetry based on poet Jane Hirshfield's book of essays Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry; enrico4 (TGP creation) , a jazz-infused, fashion/runway event inspired by Pirandello's Henry IV; Standing Stone, a puppet/movement piece about a sense of place; HE, a clown-filled, multi-language tango tragedy; The Body of Mystery, a movement landscape of Judeo-Christian myth; Songs and Lives, a music/performance piece featuring the live playing by The Audubon Quartet; and The Sympathetic Weight of Bones, a meditation on love co-conceived with Whit MacLaughlin. His directing career has included premieres of Russell Davis's The Second Death of Priscilla and The Wild Goose Circus, Leslie Lee's The Ninth Wave, and John Mighton's The Little Years. A few of the scripts Belser has directed include: Wedekind's Spring's Awakening, Ionesco's Exit the King and The Bald Soprano, Frisch's The Firebugs, and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. He frequently works with Catherine Fitzmaurice as a lead teacher/evaluator in the two-year certification program for Fitzmaurice Voicework. Andrew Belser is the 2003 recipient of the Carnegie Pennsylvania Professor of the Year Award.
C.J. received his BA in Theatre Arts from Virginia Tech in 2010, with a concentration in Design. Recent productions at Virginia Tech include The Skin Of Our Teeth (Sound), Living Darwin (Lights), Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf (Lights/Sound), The Increased Difficulty Of Concentration (Sound), and That Midnight Rodeo/The Levee (Lighting/ Scenic).
Professionally, he has designed the lighting for the American Opera Theatre Company's productions of Venus and Adonis & Dido and Aeneas, and was Assistant Lighting Designer for the recent Trinity Repertory Company's production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. He most recently Stage Managed and Designed Lights for the World Premiere of Fig. 1, starring Sue Ott Rowlands at the Prague Fringe Festival.