The Company

Bio forthcoming.

Deanna Reed has a BA in Performance from the University of South Florida. Post-grad, she studied the Meisner Technique under the master instruction of Eileen Vorbach and Victor D'Altorio, in Chicago. Her directing credits include 6 seasons with the Actor's Factory, a youth company based in Stoughton, Wisconsin. Has received rave reviews for her direction of Caryl Churchill's "A Number" for Mercury Players Theater and the San Fransisco tour of Catherine Capillaro and Andrew Rohn's political theater hit, Temp Slave: The Musical. As an actor, she has performed with Mercury Players Theatre, Broom Street Theater and Madison Savoyards. She sings with the Stoughton Chamber Choir. She is married to Dane County playwright, Doug Reed, and has two children. She resides in Stoughton, Wisconsin.

Heather Renken has been active in theater for more than twenty years. She was awarded a talent grant to Illinois State University in 1988, but earned her bachelors degree in Theater from Butler University, where she graduated with High Honors in Theater. She also received the award for the Most Significant Contribution to the Theater Department for 1993. Heather has been nominated for two Portfolio Awards. One for her portrayal of Agnes in the musical I Do, I Do, the other for costume design for Oscar Wilde's Present Laughter. She has lived and worked in Chicago, Indianapolis, Denver, and Norfolk, Virginia. She was invited to be on the Steering Committees of The Temporary Theater in Chicago and South Suburban Theater Company in Denver. She served for three years on the Board of Directors of the Little Theater of Norfolk; the nation's oldest continuously running little theater.

While in Virginia, Heather volunteered as a class manager for Jazzercise and worked as a Kindermusik instructor for 4 years. She was also the Financial Chair for the Western Branch Chapter of Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) for three years.

She moved to Madison in the summer of 2000. She has volunteered in the Madison School District as a drama instructor and general classroom aide. She served as the fundraising chair for two years and the volunteer coordinator for the Orchard Ridge Elementary P.T.O. She teaches Sunday school at Bethany United Methodist Church, and has done so for the last 8 years.

Heather teaches theater classes for youth at the NorthEast YMCA in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She also volunteers as an acting specialist and Stage Manager for Proud Theater, a youth theater program that promotes and supports LGBT and allied youth.

In Madison community theater, Heather has worked with StageQ, Madison Theatre Guild, Children's Theater of Madison, Positive Aging Theatre, and Broom Street Theater as a performer, costumer, sound board operator, stage manager, and properties manager.

Heather served as the President of the Board of Directors of Broom Street Theater in 2006. She made her writing and directing debut there with Oh God, There's Baptists at the Door in August of 2006 and in the fall of 2008 wrote and directed her second play, Shiny Things.

It was in Oh God There's Baptists at the Door where Heather was privileged to meet Kathie Rasmussen and become acquainted with her work through her portrayal of Mae. She is honored to be a part of the founding of a theater named after such a talented and giving person.

Andrew has traveled extensively in Europe and the US and performed in such diverse venues as the Southwest Playhouse in Clinton, OK, the University of Oklahoma's Medieval Faire, Iowa City, IA's No Shame Theatre, and Madison, WI's Madison Opera, The Totally Terrific Traveling Theatre Troupe, Broom St Theatre and StageQ. Andrew's passions for progressive politics and theatre have led him to his current work on the board of directors of the Kathie Rasmussen Women's Theatre. Andrew studied English literature at the University of Iowa and is an award-winning poet and aspiring playwright.

Jan Levine Thal has acted, directed, crewed, and written for the stage off and on since she was cast in Hansel and Gretel at the American School in Japan as a child. Cast as neither Gretel nor the witch, she bemoaned the dearth of decent roles for women even then. Degrees from Harvard University, Northwestern University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison led to a position as managing editor of an academic journal. In addition she has always been involved with the arts. After working in the Peoples Republic of China for two years, Jan spent more than a decade as a radio personality on WORT-FM where she also served on the station's board of directors, including two terms as board president. She re-entered the world of theater thanks to the encouragement of playwright Catherine Capellaro. Over the years Jan served on the board of directors of Madison Theatre Guild, Mercury Players Theatre, and Broom Street Theater, as well as on the artistic committee of StageQ. She acted and directed for those companies as well as Positive Aging Theatre and Dead Write Productions. With Wendy Fern Hutton, she cofounded The Fabulous Crone Show (croneshow.com). Raised in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s, she is an anti-war activist and a feminist. She was a member of the National Organization for Women in suburban Chicago, /Feminist Voices/ in Madison, Wisconsin, and has worked on campaigns for reproductive choice, unionization, fair labor practices, anti-discrimination, and social justice. As a mother and sister of musicians, she has seen direct evidence that art can change the world for the better. Her good friend Kathie Rasmussen, who planned to co-founded this company before her untimely death at age 58, once wrote in an email that she liked songs "that touch your guts." Kathie wrote plays that touched everyone who saw them. Dorothy Parker once wrote, "I was following in the exquisite footsteps of Miss Edna St. Vincent Millay, unhappily in my own horrible sneakers." Jan follows Kathie in her own sneakers.

Diamond has a doctorate in Modern British and American Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was a professor at the UW-Whitewater until she retired earlier this year. With nearly a dozen published plays and articles about theater, she has received numerous awards and honors and has taught playwriting for many years. Thirty of her plays had productions and/or staged readings in numerous venues from Texas to Wisconsin. In addition she has directed about 20 full productions and staged readings in Madison and Chicago.