Collaborators
Donna Marie Nudd
Donna Marie Nudd’s day job is that of a professor. Weekend and evenings and vacations, she moonlights as a theatre practitioner.
In the academic world, she is Professor in the Department of Communication at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida where she teaches courses in Performance Studies, Gender Studies, and Pedagogy. She’s won four university teaching awards. Her essays have appeared in numerous academic journals and books. She serves on the editorial boards for Liminalities, Text and Performance Quarterly and the National Review Board. She is an active member of the National Communication Association where she has served as the Chair of the Performance Studies Division.
As a practitioner in performance, she has served as director and dramaturge for three of Terry Galloway’s one-woman shows (Out All Night and Lost My Shoes, Lardo Weeping, and You Are My Sunshine) that have been produced in Edinburgh, London, New York, Toronto, Mexico City and numerous alternative venues throughout the U.S. In 1987, Donna Marie Nudd also co-founded an alternative theatre/media company, the Mickee Faust Club with Terry Galloway in Tallahassee, Florida. As Executive Director for Mickee Faust, Nudd wears many hats, including grant-writer, producer, director, and performer. Since its inception Mickee Faust company has produced 51 local cabarets and toured to Orlando, Washington DC, Miami and Baton Rouge. The Mickee Faust company, most often in collaboration with Diane Wilkins has also produced 17 video-shorts that collectively have been shown in 168 national or international festivals. Many of the Club’s comic disability-themed video shorts are available in a DVD Mickee Faust’s Gimp Parade (www.gimpparade.com).
In 2000, Nudd and Galloway jointly received a lifetime achievement award, the “Leslie Irene Coger Award” from the National Communication Association for their distinguished record of work in performance.
Donna Marie Nudd’s day job is that of a professor. Weekend and evenings and vacations, she moonlights as a theatre practitioner.
In the academic world, she is Professor in the Department of Communication at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida where she teaches courses in Performance Studies, Gender Studies, and Pedagogy. She’s won four university teaching awards. Her essays have appeared in numerous academic journals and books. She serves on the editorial boards for Liminalities, Text and Performance Quarterly and the National Review Board. She is an active member of the National Communication Association where she has served as the Chair of the Performance Studies Division.
As a practitioner in performance, she has served as director and dramaturge for three of Terry Galloway’s one-woman shows (Out All Night and Lost My Shoes, Lardo Weeping, and You Are My Sunshine) that have been produced in Edinburgh, London, New York, Toronto, Mexico City and numerous alternative venues throughout the U.S. In 1987, Donna Marie Nudd also co-founded an alternative theatre/media company, the Mickee Faust Club with Terry Galloway in Tallahassee, Florida. As Executive Director for Mickee Faust, Nudd wears many hats, including grant-writer, producer, director, and performer. Since its inception Mickee Faust company has produced 51 local cabarets and toured to Orlando, Washington DC, Miami and Baton Rouge. The Mickee Faust company, most often in collaboration with Diane Wilkins has also produced 17 video-shorts that collectively have been shown in 168 national or international festivals. Many of the Club’s comic disability-themed video shorts are available in a DVD Mickee Faust’s Gimp Parade (www.gimpparade.com).
In 2000, Nudd and Galloway jointly received a lifetime achievement award, the “Leslie Irene Coger Award” from the National Communication Association for their distinguished record of work in performance.
Ben Gunter
Ben Gunter serves Ugly Girl as composer, music dramaturg, music director, and accompanist. What does that list of titles mean? Ben explains, “My role is creating the musical score, in close collaboration with playwright Terry Galloway and dramaturg Donna Marie Nudd. Our collaboration starts with analysis, to identify places where music can contribute clarity, texture, and impact. That’s where I serve as music dramaturg. Then I write songs designed to link characters, explore ideas, and connect layers within the world of the play. That’s where my composer hat moves to the top of the stack. Next, we test the music with actors who have disabilities and with audiences who talk back to us. As music director, I coach the actors through their songs and make sure musical keys and accompaniments help bring dramatic high points to life; as accompanist, I play the keyboard when the actors perform. Performances generate feedback from actors, audiences, and expert readers – and that starts the cycle all over again, with targeted revisions to make the music better.”
Dr. Gunter’s preparation for this demanding process includes a PhD in dramaturgy from Florida State University; ten years of experience composing for university melodramas and church cantatas; twenty years of experience directing musicals in locations as far flung as Denali Park, Alaska, and Liverpool, England; thirty years of experience performing music in venues as diverse as Toronto’s Tafelmusik and Tallahassee’s Mickee Faust Club Cabaret; and a lifetime of listening to musical theater like someone with a professional stake in its effectiveness (starting with his first appearance onstage as Prince Chulalongkorn in The King and I). As Ben puts it, “My aim as a musical theater artist is to write songs that lure people into exploring differences that seem unbridgeable, especially differences in ability, sexuality, ethnicity, and education. In Ugly Girl, I’ve found a perfect project – a script that needs music to clarify its intricate play-within-a-play structure, music to enrich its complex texture (Punch & Judy meet same-sex Hamlet & Ophelia), and music to communicate its powerful call to reimagine the future for people who are queer and/or disabled.”
Ben Gunter serves Ugly Girl as composer, music dramaturg, music director, and accompanist. What does that list of titles mean? Ben explains, “My role is creating the musical score, in close collaboration with playwright Terry Galloway and dramaturg Donna Marie Nudd. Our collaboration starts with analysis, to identify places where music can contribute clarity, texture, and impact. That’s where I serve as music dramaturg. Then I write songs designed to link characters, explore ideas, and connect layers within the world of the play. That’s where my composer hat moves to the top of the stack. Next, we test the music with actors who have disabilities and with audiences who talk back to us. As music director, I coach the actors through their songs and make sure musical keys and accompaniments help bring dramatic high points to life; as accompanist, I play the keyboard when the actors perform. Performances generate feedback from actors, audiences, and expert readers – and that starts the cycle all over again, with targeted revisions to make the music better.”
Dr. Gunter’s preparation for this demanding process includes a PhD in dramaturgy from Florida State University; ten years of experience composing for university melodramas and church cantatas; twenty years of experience directing musicals in locations as far flung as Denali Park, Alaska, and Liverpool, England; thirty years of experience performing music in venues as diverse as Toronto’s Tafelmusik and Tallahassee’s Mickee Faust Club Cabaret; and a lifetime of listening to musical theater like someone with a professional stake in its effectiveness (starting with his first appearance onstage as Prince Chulalongkorn in The King and I). As Ben puts it, “My aim as a musical theater artist is to write songs that lure people into exploring differences that seem unbridgeable, especially differences in ability, sexuality, ethnicity, and education. In Ugly Girl, I’ve found a perfect project – a script that needs music to clarify its intricate play-within-a-play structure, music to enrich its complex texture (Punch & Judy meet same-sex Hamlet & Ophelia), and music to communicate its powerful call to reimagine the future for people who are queer and/or disabled.”
Diane Wilkins
In 1989, Diane created Diane Wilkins Productions to continue her work in high-quality documentary-style video and commercial television production. A number of programs created by DWP have aired on public television, including “Double Visions," a documentary on ceramic artists Curtis and Yvonne Tucker; “Florida’s Geology Unearthed,” used in middle school science classrooms throughout the state; and “In Her Hands…A Career in Dance,” a documentary on Nancy Smith Fichter. “Double Visions” won the Communicator Crystal Award of Excellence in the documentary category.
Documentary subjects include survivors of domestic violence, people with disabilities, artists, victims of Florida’s hurricanes, the community mental health movement and the women’s business movement, to name a few. Her productions have earned multiple Addy, Telly, Pegasus, Videographer, New York Festival and Communicator Awards, as well as The Best of Florida Award, John Muir Medical Film Festival Award, Governor’s Environmental Education Award, Aurora Best of the Fest and the REMI WorldFest International Film and Video Festival. Diane has also produced and directed short comedic and disability-related films that have been screened in film festivals from Tampa to Finland. Diane has donated production services to Big Bend Cares for five years. She is a member of the Suncoast Chapter of the National Television Academy of Arts & Sciences, and is an associate member of Tallahassee Society of Associations Executives. Diane has also served as an Emmy judge and an adjunct professor at FSU, teaching documentary.
http://www.dianewilkinsproductions.com/
In 1989, Diane created Diane Wilkins Productions to continue her work in high-quality documentary-style video and commercial television production. A number of programs created by DWP have aired on public television, including “Double Visions," a documentary on ceramic artists Curtis and Yvonne Tucker; “Florida’s Geology Unearthed,” used in middle school science classrooms throughout the state; and “In Her Hands…A Career in Dance,” a documentary on Nancy Smith Fichter. “Double Visions” won the Communicator Crystal Award of Excellence in the documentary category.
Documentary subjects include survivors of domestic violence, people with disabilities, artists, victims of Florida’s hurricanes, the community mental health movement and the women’s business movement, to name a few. Her productions have earned multiple Addy, Telly, Pegasus, Videographer, New York Festival and Communicator Awards, as well as The Best of Florida Award, John Muir Medical Film Festival Award, Governor’s Environmental Education Award, Aurora Best of the Fest and the REMI WorldFest International Film and Video Festival. Diane has also produced and directed short comedic and disability-related films that have been screened in film festivals from Tampa to Finland. Diane has donated production services to Big Bend Cares for five years. She is a member of the Suncoast Chapter of the National Television Academy of Arts & Sciences, and is an associate member of Tallahassee Society of Associations Executives. Diane has also served as an Emmy judge and an adjunct professor at FSU, teaching documentary.
http://www.dianewilkinsproductions.com/
