Who was Who in the 2003 Christmas Revels

Performers:

Geoff Hoyle (Will Kemp) -- Geoff Hoyle clowned with Cirque du Soleil, The Pickle Family Circus, and Circus Flora. He performed his solos "Feast of Fools" and "The Convict's Return" (commissioned by Berkeley Repertory Theatre) in New York, San Francisco, Paris, London, and the former Soviet Union, and at various regional theatres in the U.S. and England. He has appeared in comic roles at the Berkeley Rep, ACT, Eureka Theatre, American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Arena Stage, and La Jolla Playhouse. Geoff Hoyle clowned with Cirque du Soleil, The Pickle Family Circus, and Circus Flora. He received five NEA grants and an ArtsLink grant to visit circuses in Latvia and Russia. He created the role of Zazu (Drama Desk nomination: Best Featured Actor in a Musical) in the original Broadway cast of "The Lion King," and this year wrote and performed "The First Hundred Years" for the Berkeley Rep and the Arizona Theatre Company, performed the role of Vladimir in "Waiting for Godot" for Stanford Summer Theatre, and appeared in "The Green Bird" with Theatre de La Jeune Lune at Berkeley Rep.

Robert Wineapple (George Sprat / Master of Revels / St. George) -- has been acting, directing and teaching in the Bay Area since 1988.  Theatre credits include San Francisco Shakespeare Festival's King Lear, Merry Wives of Windsor, and Comedy of Errors; Berkeley Reperatory Theatre's Pentecost, Charlie Varon's long running political satire Ralph Nader Is Missing! at The Marsh; Sacco & Vanzetti, Bom Yesterday and Inspecting Carol with Marin Theatre Company, Heart of The World with A Traveling Jewish Theatre, Lady Be Good with 42nd Street Moon, (Drama-logue Award for Principal Performance); Mascara with the Shotgun Players; Rocket To The Moon with Aurora Theatre Company, The Tempest and Midsummer Night's Dream with Marin Shakespeare Company, As You Like It with TheatreWorks, and most recently, Richard I in Lionheart with Central Works. Film/TV credits include Tragos, Never Night, Klee-Vies Peterbelt, Heart of the Possible, and a guest appearance on Nash Bridges.  Robert also teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Seydways Acting Studio, and directs at various theaters throughout the Bay Area.

Wendell H. Brooks (Baritone Soloist) -- has performed extensively throughout Europe and the United States. He studied voice at the Conservatorie der Stadt Wien and sociology at Uppsala University in Sweden. Locally, he has appeared as a much-beloved soloist with the Lamplighters, Oakland Opera, Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra, Contra Costa Chorale, San Francisco Swedish Choir, Sonos Handbell Ensemble, Oakland Symphony Chorus, and the California Revels. Among his musical projects, Mr. Brooks has recorded excerpts from Solomon Northrup’s slave narrative, Twelve Years a Slave. He has lectured extensively on the importance of studying slave documents as a way of understanding the essence of African American culture. Mr. Brooks also teaches vocal music and history at Berkeley High, and Ethnic Studies at California State University, Hayward.

Deborah Doyle (Queen Elizabeth the First) -- studied drama and dramatic criticism at the University of Virginia. Having played Elizabeth the First at several Renaissance Faires during the past few seasons, she has discovered that it is, indeed, good to be the Queen. She is thrilled to be joining the Revels in the role this holiday season. As a member of the Ladies Oratorical and Recreational Society, she sings songs of Old California and the British music hall. She is also a member of a female a cappella trio, Blame It On Eve. Doyle, also a writer, lives in San Francisco with her husband and currently chairs the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.

Dick Bagwell has played the pipe and tabor for the Renaissance Pleasure Faires and as a featured performer at the International Pipe and Tabor Festival in Gloucester, England. He plays for and is Squire of the Deer Creek Morris Men of Palo Alto.  He has also performed for the Old Souls/New Shoes Dance Company and the Collegium Musicum at University of California, Berkeley.  A regular performer at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, he has also appeared at Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri, the Los Angeles County Fair, the Sebastopol Celtic Fair and at local English country and ceilidh dances.  As a theatre artist, he has appeared with The Mountain Play, Valley Shakespeare Company, Pasadena Shakespeare Company and as "Shakespeare's Clown" for the Huntington and Folger Shakespeare Library and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  Mr. Bagwell is the author of  "The Pipe and Tabor Tutor" and is composer and arranger for his Piper HQ Studio in Berkeley.

Shira Kammen has spent over half her life performing and teaching music. She received a degree in music from UC Berkeley and studied early strings with Margriet Tindemans. A member of ensemble Alcatraz, Ensemble Project Ars Nova and Medieval Strings, she has also worked with many other ensembles including Sequentia, Hesperion XX, The Boston Camerata, the King’s Noyse, Khadra international folk ballet, Magnificat Baroque Orchestra, and is a founder of Class V music, a group created to perform on rafting trips. Shira has performed and taught music in the United States, Europe, Canada and Marocco, as well as on the Colorado and Rogue rivers. She has served on the faculties of the Longy School of Music in Boston, the Amherst Early Music Institute, and the San Francisco Early Music Society medieval workshop. Shira happily collaborated with singer/storyteller John Fleagle for fifteen years, and performs now with several new groups: a medieval ensemble, Fortune’s Wheel; a new music group, Ephemeros; an eclectic ethnic band, Panacea; and Trouz Bras, a band devoted to the dance music of Celtic Brittany. Her diverse interests include early, contemporary, classical and traditional music styles. She has recorded for Nonesuch, New Albion, Erato, Gourd, and Harmonia Mundi.

Frederick Goff has degrees in music theory and liturgy from the University of the Pacific and Pacific School of Religion. He has performed on choir tours of the Soviet Union and Great Britain, in the Los Angeles Master Chorale and in madrigal quartets. His teaching duties have included public and private schools in Alameda, San Francisco, and Conta Costa counties, San Francisco State University, San Francisco City College, and Laney College. He is the resident music director for the California Revels and music director of St. James Episcopal Church.

Artistic Staff:

David Parr (Director) -- has been acting and directing with many theatres in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past twenty four years. Trained at the University of Illinois (M.A. in Theatre) he has also worked as a professional photographer, danced with the Minnesota Ballet Company, represented Actors’ Equity Association for ten years, and owns a video production company. He is resident director for the California Revels and former Artistic Director of the Eureka Theatre Company. Recent productions include stagings of Caryl Churchill’s Fen; Kismet; A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival; and Cavalleria Rusticana, The Emperor Norton, and Gounod’s Faust at West Bay Opera. He also directs for the Theatre Arts Department of San Francisco City College, where he is a fulltime instructor, and for City Summer Opera, which he founded. He won an East Bay Media Festival award with his own script, Tarbrush, a contemporary video adaptation of Moliere’s Tartuffe, and he has shot documentaries in Tanzania and Nepal. David has now directed nine Revels in Oakland, as well as the Revels in Tacoma and Noye’s Fludde, featuring Revels founder Jack Langstaff.

Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer (California Revels Artistic Director) -- California Revels Artistic Director, interest in Revels dates from childhood when she attended a performances of Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde by Revels founder John Langstaff, an experience that she still vividly recalls. An accomplished contralto with a long-standing interest in traditional music, Mayer received her musical education at the Mannes College of Music and Harvard University. In 1985 Mayer and Langstaff decided to collaborate in bringing Revels to the San Francisco Bay Area. Less than a year later, the partnership had resulted in the first series of Revels performances on the West Coast. Mayer acted as producer and president of the board of directors during that first year and took over from Langstaff as artistic director in 1988. She also performs on stage as a member of the Revels chorus. Outside her Revels responsibilities, Mayer is in private practice as a psychologist and psychoanalyst. She holds appointments as associate professor in the psychology department at UC Berkeley and in the UC San Francisco department of psychiatry. She is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University, where she is coteaching a seminar on human connectedness with bestselling author and fellow Revels enthusiast, Carol Gilligan. Mayer’s particular interest is the psychology of myth and the healing role of ritual celebration in our culture.

John Langstaff (Founder of Revels) -- studied voice at the Curtis Institute of Music and at The Juilliard School. As a concert baritone, he had a successful concert career in the U.S. and abroad. In addition to his classical training and performances, he developed a deep fondness and appreciation for traditional music through his friendship with Douglas Kennedy (director of the English Folk Dance and Song Society), and with composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

As head of the Music Department at the Potomac School in Virginia for thirteen years, and the Shady Hill School in Cambridge, MA for six years, he enriched the lives of thousands of children. During that time he continued to record in Europe on HMV with producer George Martin. For five years, he hosted the popular Making Music program on BBC TV in London and was the moderator of an NBC TV Saturday morning children’s program, Children Explore Books.Mr. Langstaff is also an award-winning children’s author whose twenty-four books include his version of the traditional children’s tale, Frog Went a-Courtin’, winner of the Caldecott Medal, St. George and the Dragon, and most recently I Have a Song to Sing-O, a Gilbert and Sullivan primer for children.

In 1956, Langstaff presented the first theatrical production of The Christmas Revels in New York’s Town Hall. Ten years later, in 1966, Langstaff wrote and hosted an NBC TV Christmas Eve special called A Christmas Masque.Both productions had the beginning elements of what was to become The Christmas Revels, which he began in Cambridge, MA in 1971.

Robert Wineapple (Assistant Director)

Frederick Goff (Music Director)

Shira Kammen

John Karl Hirten (Children’s Music Director) -- is well known to audiences throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, having performed regularly at such series as Noontime Concerts, Music at St. Mary's Cathedral, First Saturdays at St. John the Evangelist, Second Sundays at St. Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley, and special concerts at First Presbyterian Church in Oakland. In connection with the San Francisco Opera's recent production of Messiaen's Saint Françoise d'Assise, he performed a recital of the composer's music at the National Shrine of St. Francis in San Francisco. He performs monthly recitals at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, and has also appeared as organist with the Oakland Ballet, the Berkeley Symphony, American Bach Soloists, and others. Mr. Hirten is currently Director of Music at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Belvedere. He is also a published composer of vocal and instrumental works.

Design Staff:

Callie Floor (Costume Designer) -- earned her BFA from the University of Utah and her Higher Diploma in Theatre Design from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Since coming to the Bay Area in 1987, she has designed for many Bay Area Theatres including ACT, ACT Masters Program, Common Cultural Practice, The San Francisco Mime Troupe, The Gary Palmer Dancers, Magnificat, Beach Blanket Babylon, Theatre Rhinoceros, Aurora Theatre. She has been honored with 6 Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle nominations, receiving one for The Magic Theatre’s Man of the Flesh. Recent projects include A Midsummer's Night's Dream for the ACT Masters Program and Yohen for ACT.

Patrick Toebe (Lighting Designer) -- has an extensive background in lighting and scenic design including plays, musicals, operetta, ballet, modern dance, Flamenco, and film.  This is Patrick's fifth year as Lighting Designer for the Revels. He has been awarded two Dean Goodman Choice Awards, one in 2002 for his lighting for Jesus Christ Superstar and one in 2000 for Guys and Dolls both with the Pacific Alliance Stage Company.  In 2001, Patrick received a Shellie Award for his lighting design for Proposals at Center Repertory Theatre in Walnut Creek.    His designs this past year include sets for the world premiere of Mad Bros. and Rose, sets for Barefoot in the Park, Promises, Promises, and the set and lighting designs for Fiddler on the Roof all at the Pacific Alliance Stage Company.  Over the Summer he designed lighting for The Music Man, The Solid Gold Cadillac, Moon Over Buffalo and The Rocky Horror Show all for Summer Repertory Theatre.   Patrick teaches technical theatre at City College of San Francisco, and has also taught at U.C. Berkeley, S.F.S.U, and  A.C.T.'s Young Conservatory.   Before moving to San Francisco, Patrick lived in New Orleans where he was Technical Director and Lighting Designer for the Jefferson Performing Arts Society.

Peter Crompton (Set Designer) -- started as a fine artist. In 1990, on a dare, he designed and painted his first stage set and hasn’t looked back since. He has worked for many Bay area companies and is known for the lushness and detail of his settings. This is his seventh year designing for the Revels. He has designed for Santa Barbara Grand Opera, Marin Theater Company, Summer Repertory Theater in Santa Rosa, Opera San Jose, the Willows Theater, West Bay Opera, Western Ballet, the Jarvis Conservatory, the University of Santa Clara, Berkeley Opera, and Sonoma City Opera, among others. Local productions include Much Ado about Nothing for the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival La Traviata for West Bay Opera and Corpus Evita for San Francisco Camerata.

Andy Heller (Sound Designer/ Lead Operator) -- enters his third year with the California Revels, having designed for the Irish Celtic Revels (2001) and Spanish Galician Revels (2002). He is the owner of Location Digital Recording and > Sound in Redwood City, CA, a full service audio production company. Andrew > is also the sound designer for Foothill Musical Theatre in Los Altos, CA. He has consulted on sound design for Oklahoma!, and has designed and operated sound for West Side Story, On The Town, Showboat and Guys and Dolls.

Pegeen McGahn (Props Designer) -- Pegeen has degrees in Fine Arts and Drama from the University of Michigan. Pegeen has designed sets for Crowded Fire Theater, Word For Word School Tour, Shotgun Players, Exit Absurdist Festival, Saint Mark’s School, The Angst Ensemble, New Conservatory Theater, and Il Teatro 450. She has designed properties for Berkeley Repertory Theater, California Revels, American Conservatory Theater, California Shakespeare Festival, and Marin Theater Company. Pegeen has taught set, costume, and props design and led art projects at Carlmont High School, Jewish Community Center, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, and YBG Studio for Technology & the Arts.