Ted Pappas was Pittsburgh Public Theater’s leader for 18 years and was closely associated with the company as a director for 25 years. Ted has returned to The Public as a guest artist to direct A Doll’s House, Part 2 by Lucas Hnath. Acknowledged for his tremendous versatility, Ted has worked On and Off-Broadway, directed a hip-hop concert that galvanized the Cannes Film Festival, produced and directed a Las Vegas extravaganza, choreographed a musical for famed director Harold Prince, directed at New York City Opera under the leadership of Beverly Sills, and served as choreographer of NBC’s Saturday Night Live.

Ted has traveled from coast to coast and Canada staging productions for major regional theaters and opera companies, establishing a reputation as a uniquely gifted man of the theater. In 1998 he was elected President of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, the national labor union.

For Pittsburgh Public Theater he has produced more than 100 productions, including staging an astonishing 59 shows, including 10 world and American premieres, encompassing an extraordinary range of periods and styles. His acclaimed production of The Chief played to standing-room only houses for nine seasons and was filmed. His productions of Oedipus the King, The Importance of Being Earnest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Amadeus, and My Fair Lady broke Pittsburgh Public Theater box office records.

Maia Danziger has been acting professionally since she was 16. She made her stage debut in the Broadway production of “The Waltz of the Toreadors,” with Ann Jackson and Eli Wallach. Since then she’s appeared extensively in theatre, on television and in film, including long running roles on the daytime series Another World, The Doctors, and All My Children.

Maia starred opposite Beatrice Straight in “The Garden Party,” for PBS, and played Vanessa Redgrave’s eldest daughter in “My Body, My Child” (Sarah Jessica Parker and Cynthia Nixon were her sisters). And she won a Daytime Emmy Award for her portrayal of a teenage alcoholic in the Afterschool Special “The Late Great Me.”

Maia is a founder and former Artistic Director of The Actors Company Theatre in New York and a founding member of Rogue Machine Theatre in Los Angeles.

Maia authored “Relax and Write: Tapping Your Unconscious for Life and Art.” She teaches ongoing Relax and Write classes in Los Angeles, online and at retreats all over the world. For more information please go to relaxandwrite.com.

For nearly 40 years, David Silverman has been a writer, producer, and executive producer on dozens of legendary TV shows. Along with his longtime writing partner, the late Stephen Sustarsic, David contributed scripts to such landmark shows as Mork & Mindy, One Day at a Time, ALF, Newhart, Dilbert, Duckman and South Park. Together David and Steve also wrote for Tom Arnold, Drew Carey, Pee Wee Herman, Roseanne, and Bob Newhart.

David and Steve also did rewrites on features for Steven Spielberg at Amblin’, including The Flintstones movie. They co-created four TV shows, including two half hour comedies, Cleghorne!, Secret Service Guy, and the popular, long-running animated show The Wild Thornberrys, which spawned two animated features, The Wild Thornberry’s Movie and Rugrats Go Wild.

David currently offers script analysis services. If you’re interested, please contact David at Hollywoodscriptwriting.com.

David is also a Licensed psychotherapist. He currently treats industry professionals, especially writers, in private practice in LA. For more information, please contact David at DavidSilvermanLMFT.com.

Mark Clayton Southers is an award-winning playwright, photographer, scenic designer, theatrical producer and stage director. He is the founder and producing artistic director of the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company where he’s produced over 140 full-length and one-act plays, including August Wilson’s complete ten-play Pittsburgh Century Cycle.

Not long after Mark attended a master class in playwriting conducted by August Wilson at the Grahamstown Arts Festival in South Africa, he attended the Edward Albee Theatre Festival in Valdez, Alaska, where he did seated readings with August Wilson of all of his plays. These encounters encouraged Mark to take up playwriting and devote more time to theatre arts. In 2003, Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company was born, producing August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” which received critical acclaim and high praise from the playwright himself.

Mark’s play, Ma Noah, was the recipient of the 2004 Theodore Ward prize at Columbia College, Chicago. His poem play, Angry Black Man Poetry, had a successful run at Teatr Śląski in Katowice, Poland in 2009.

A few of his directing credits include: Paul Robeson for the Griot Ensemble Theatre Company; Dutchman for Bricolage Production Company; Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, and Radio Golf for American Stage Theatre in St. Petersburg, Florida; Gem of the Ocean for Human Race Theatre in Dayton, Ohio, receiving a Best Director nod by the Dayton Metro News; Passing Strange for North Short Stage in Columbus, Ohio. And for the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company Mark has directed Dorothy Six, The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Running, which was named one of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's top ten plays of the decade, Seven Guitars, VALU-MART, Jitney (which was voted one of the Post-Gazette's top ten best plays of 2010), and Gem of the Ocean.

Mark is a four-time recipient of the AACTA Onyx award for Best Director.

You can discover much more about Mark at markclaytonsouthers.com.