SUSAN CHARLOTTE (Writer, Founding Artistic Director and Producer) – Susan’s multi-faceted career started with Prism Blues. Based on her work as a prison counselor, the play earned her a place in Columbia’s MFA program and won the prestigious Joseph Kesselring Award. Her 60 full-length & one-act plays have enjoyed productions throughout the country. They include: The Shoemaker starring Danny Aiello, directed by Antony Marsellis; Sublet; Twenty Litres Of Petrol; She’s Of A Certain Age, The Round Table (with Peter Stone) and The Hairdresser. Her play, Love Divided By, originally produced by the Actors Studio, was made into a film with an original score by Philip Glass. The film reopened MoMA’s Titus II theatre. Susan also collaborated with Emmy-Award winning composer, Billy Goldenberg. TV credits: CBS– the “Comedy Zone” with Patty Duke & Paul Reiser, “Guiding Light” and shows for Lifetime. Films include: Something Like That, A Broken Sole, Come On (Hamptons Film Fes.) & Out Of Your Hands. Articles: “NY” & “Playbill”. Books: “Creativity” & “Creativity in Film”. Teaching: Columbia University & NYU. She served as a judge–Cable Ace Awards & the Albee Festival. She is the Founding Artistic Director of FFTP & Cause Celebre Productions. Her play, When Truth Is Not Enough, dir. by Antony Marsellis, toured the country. She’s working on a new series for PBS. In addition, Susan is working on several plays and screenplays, including: The N Word, Wake-Up Call and Too Fragile For Life.
MARY J. DAVIS (Producer) – Broadway: Tina Fey’s Mean Girls; Angels in America; M Butterfly starring Clive Owen; Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812; Disaster! by Seth Rudetsky and Jack Plotnick (on and off Broadway). Off Broadway: Pressing Matters by Jennifer Jasper; Jackob Hoffman’s A Persistent Memory; C.O.A.L. by David Brian Colbert; James Wesley’s Unbroken Circle; Susan Charlotte’s When Truth is Not Enough (also in Philadelphia); She’s of a Certain Age by Susan Charlotte; New York premiere of Tennessee William’s The Pretty Trap; The Shoemaker starring Danny Aiello; James Wesley’s Art and Science (Uptown Theater, Dallas). Doubt by John Patrick Shanley (London’s Southwark Playhouse). Upcoming: Unraveled by Jennifer Blackmer (Theatre Row, September, 2018); Will Holtzman’s Smart Blonde (59E59, February 2019); The Cher Show (Broadway). Pro bono lawyer for the ACLU. MBLProductions.net
DONALD MONROE (Co-Producer) divides his time between his home in High Point, North Carolina and New York. Following twenty-five years in corporate management positions in N.C., N.Y., and Europe, he taught developmental math for thirteen years at his local community college. He enthusiastically supports the theatre program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), where he served on the executive board of Theatre Angels. He assisted in the productions of staged readings of Gerald Locklin and George Carroll’s The Toad Poems in NYC, The Broach Theatre in Greensboro and at UNCG, and the staged reading of George Carroll’s Dragon and Koo also at UNCG. Don is extremely proud to be a part of Food For Thought Productions. Many thanks to Susan Charlotte for the opportunity.
JOHN GOING (Resident Director) – Regional Theatre: Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Seattle Repertory, Indiana Repertory, Hartford Stage, Syracuse Stage, Houston’s Alley Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, Tennessee Repertory, as well as Holiday (Olney Theatre Centre), Major Barbara (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis), The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Cincinnati Playhouse), My Fair Lady (St. Louis MUNY), Love! Valour! Compassion! (DC’s Studio Theatre), Sweeney Todd (Northshore Music Theatre). On Broadway he directed Tony LoBianco in HIZZONER!. Off-Broadway credits include Mart Crowley’s A Breeze from the Gulf. He has worked in Moscow, Johannesburg, Toronto and Winnipeg. For the Opera Theatre of St. Louis he has staged The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein and Don Pasquale. A four-time Helen Hayes Award nominee, he won the Outstanding Director Award for his production of The Miser at the Shakespeare Theatre in D.C. His production of Inherit the Wind, starring Robert Vaughan and E. G. Marshall, at the Paper Mill Playhouse won Showtime’s Excellence in the American Theatre Citation. He was the associate artistic director of the Alaska Repertory Theatre, resident director for the Cleveland Play House, and is currently associate artistic director of the Olney Theatre Centre in Maryland. He also assisted the late Sir Tyrone Guthrie during the inaugural season of the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis.
CHRISTOPHER HART (Resident Director) His directing work includes his father, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s You Can’t Take It With You, at the Geffen Playhouse, as well as an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award winning play for NBC Television with Harry Morgan as Grandpa. He was artistic director for the Malibu Stage Company in Los Angeles for several years, and directed regionally both in LA and Chicago. He has directed for NPR and LA Theatreworks on the radio, and he also directed for HBO and Fox Television on “TALES FROM THE CRYPT”. As a producer on Broadway he was recently represented by Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, which starred Audra McDonald, Norm Lewis, and David Alan Greer. He also was part of the Tony Award winning team that produced HAIR on Broadway, as well as the successful road company, and the London production of HAIR.
ANTONY MARSELLIS (Resident Director) is a Film, Theatre and TV director. In a long career in theatre (over 50 plays) Antony has directed most of the popular works of all the major playwrights. He has also directed: Amira Baraka’s Dutchman; Harold Pinter’s Ashes to Ashes & Night School; Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days & Krapp’s Last Tape; Arthur Miller’s A Memory of Two Mondays & The Last Yankee; Athol Fugard’s Statements After an Arrest…; Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano; Luigi Pirandello’s The Man with the Flower in his Mouth; Thorton Wilder’s Bernice & The Wreck on the 5:25; and Tennessee Williams’ In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel & Something Unspoken. He’s directed the stage versions of two of his films, Men of Manhattan & A Broken Sole. He has also brought to stage his PBS film Did you Know My Husband? written by Susan Charlotte. He has had the privilege of working with Tony and Academy award winners including: Danny Aiello, Peter Bogdonovich, Zoe Caldwell, Len Cariou, Tyne Daly, Christine Ebersole, Richard Easton, Judd Hirsch, Judith Light, Tony Roberts, Marian Seldes, Carole Shelley, Frances Sternhagen, Elaine Stritch, Marlo Thomas and Kathleen Turner. Premieres: Susan Charlotte’s The Shoemaker, When Truth Is Not Enough and The Hairdresser with Louise Lasser; Tom Fontana’s This Is On Me; A.R. Gurney’s The Love Course; and Tennessee Williams’ The Pretty Trap. He is currently collaborating on a new version of “The Twilight Zone” and directing a new TV series for PBS that is written by Susan Charlotte.
KENNETH MARTIN (Founding Member) is President of Black Diamond Enterprises. He recently produced a new play by Clive Barker entitled History of the Devil and is working on an improvisational dinner theatre piece entitled Commensality. Mr. Martin is one of the original producers of Food For Thought Productions.
EDWARD POMERANTZ (Founding Member) has written a movie, Caught; a novel, Into It; a play, Brisburial, A Feast; a screenplay, The Gold Bug (an Emmy-winner); and over 30 commercial screenplays for movies and televison. He is a Professor of Screenwriting at Columbia University, City College of New York, and the WGA. As one of the founding members and writers of Food For Thought Productions, Mr. Pomerantz’s one-act plays, Nothing Personal and A Change of Pace, (originally published by Ms. Magazine), were performed in the inaugural series by Betty Buckley, Marlo Thomas, Barbara Feldon, Judith Light, Daniel McDonald and Jason Culp.