JOSEPH GALLO (playwright/performer)  His play My Italy Story, which had its New York debut Off-Broadway at the 47th Street Theatre, and was nominated for the Gay Talese Literary Prize, was recently revived at Mile Square Theatre. His full-length plays include Two-Man Kidnapping Rule (New Ohio Theatre), Warning: Adult Content (Theatre 54) and Staten Island (Circle Rep Lab), while his solo shows include Whizzy and The Jealousy Piece, both of which premiered in the American Living Room festival at HERE. He co-created, and wrote the text for two dance/theater pieces Tannhauser: A Dance Play and 80% of Love, both of which debuted in New York at the Obie award-winning Ice Factory Festival at the Ohio Theatre; the latter done in collaboration with company Rindfleisch, and subsequently transferred to the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. His work has additionally been seen on the stages of the Barrow Street Theatre, the Lark, Pearl Theater, Samuel Beckett Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Penguin Rep, TheaterWorks, 12 Miles West, 78th Street Theatre, Waterfront Ensemble, Atlantic Theatre Company, Cincinnati Playhouse, Delaware Stage Company, Seven Angels Theatre, Orlando Fringe Festival, Manhattan Class Company, the Kennedy Center, Bridge Theatre Company, and at both the Hudson Guild Theatre and Hayworth Theatre in Los Angeles. He holds an MFA in playwriting from Ohio University.

​

JEAN-MICHELE GREGORY (director) works as a director, editor, and dramaturg, focusing on extemporaneous theatrical works that live in the moment they are told. Working primarily with solo artists, for sixteen years she has been Mike Daisey’s chief co-conspirator, staging his monologues at venues across the globe including the Public Theater, the Sydney Opera House, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, the Spoleto Festival, T:BA Festival, Under the Radar Festival, and many more. Other notable collaborators include New York storyteller Martin Dockery (Wanderlust, The Surprise), and author and performer Suzanne Morrison (Yoga Bitch, Optimism). She has taught the art of first person narrative at Colby College and told her own stories onstage with The Moth, The Liar Show, Women of Letters, and Speakeasy. Her writing has appeared in Brevity and The New York Sun and she is currently at work on a memoir about her family’s exodus from Poland and what it means to forgive.