BIOGRAPHIES

Actors

	Terry Lynn Carlson, returns to JHT, having appeared in On Golden Pond and Old Man Brunner Country. Most recently, he was Maugrim in The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe for the Minneapolis Children's Theatre. He has toured nationally with Gary Burghoff in Last of the Red Hot Lovers and with Gavin Macleod in Moon Over Buffalo, and has appeared in numerous productions for the Ordway Music Theatre, Chanhassen Dinner Theatres and The Great American History Theatre. Terry has directed for The Minnesota Fringe Festival, The O'Shaughnessy, Alexandria Area Arts, Purple Sand Productions, Robbinsdale and Edina public schools, and he was just named as the new Artistic Director for The Minnesota Festival Theatre in Albert Lea. He studied music theatre and dance at the University of Minnesota and The Bernstein School in Los Angeles, CA. Terry is based in Minneapolis with partner Elizabeth, daughters Jessica, Krista and son Kenneth.
	Jeremy Poetker (Music Director) last appeared at the John Hassler Theater as pianist for Gifts of the Magi. He also directs music and plays keyboard frequently for the Illusion Theatre in Minneapolis, and is music director at Epiphany Lutheran Church and Todos Los Santos Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. He is completing two Master's degrees in music from the University of Minnesota.
	J P Fitzgibbons (Young Man) resides in Minneapolis where he has been very active in theater and music throughout the Twin Cities Metro area, perfon-ning at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, Minneapolis Children's Theatre, North Star Opera, Minnesota Opera and now traveling to the Jon Hassler Theater, where he recently played in Old Man Brunner Country. J.P.appear in Once in a Lifetime at the Gutherie Theatre. When not on stage, he sometimes works behind the scenes, choreographing and music directing shows as well as developing and implementing theater arts programs for children and young adults.
	Kevin Griffin's study of history and government led him into acting. His broad background of movies, TV and commercial work also includes his creation of one-man shows based on such well- known figures as Ben Franklin and Stephen A. Douglas--and some not so well-known such as Father Peter Cooney, a priest during the Civil War, and Irish saloon keeper and philosopher, Martin Dooley, adapted from the works of Finley Peter Dunne. He is a shameless "professional Irishman" and refers to himself a barroom tenor.
	Monica Heuser has appeared at the Guthrie in Twelfth Night and has toured for Troupe America in A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline and for Prather Productions in Pump Boys and Dinettes. She has performed in musicals all over the country, including Christmas in the Smokies at the Dolly Parton Celebrity Theatre in Dollywood, With a Song in my Heart at the off-Broadway Palm Theatre, and West Side Story at the Galveston Outdoor Musicals among others. Directing and Choreography credits include the USA World Cup Opening Ceremonies, Missoula Children's Theatre, Musicana Theatres, Wilderness Dance Camp, and City Scape Dance Studios. Monica trained at Northern Kentucky University in Theatre Performance & Directing. This summer, she will appear in Always, Patsy Cline at the MN Festival Theatre in Albert Lea. She has performed in productions all over the country, including Christmas in the Smokies at the Dolly Parton Celebrity Theatre in Dollywood, numerous shows for Dutch Apple Theatre (in PA) and Broadway Palm Theatre (in FL) and Lucky Stiff at the Old Schoolhouse Theatre among others.
	Colleen Neussmeier: (Wrong Number Caller and Aunt Piggy) Colleen received her BS in Theatre from the U of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, and worked toward an MFA in Scene Design at MSU Mankato. She first "met" Aunt Piggy in the fall of 1991 when they paired up in a production at Gustavus Adolphus. Since that time she and Piggy have been inseparable, appearing together in both Chin Music and Dirty Sermons and Aunt Piggy's Plan to Save the World.
	John Calvin Rezmerski's most recent book is "What Do I Know? New and Selected Poems" (Holy Cow! Press, 2000). A Pennsylvania native, he has taught at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, since 1967; he now serves as the college's Writer-in-Residence. Besides, publication in literary magazines and anthologies, his poetry has appeared in periodicals as varied as The Wall Street Journal, Mennonite Life, and Tales of the Unanticipated. He has long been committed to bringing poetry to non-academic audiences, both in publication and performance. In the 1970s he led Minnesota Poetry Outloud, taking groups of poets to perform in parks, bars, nursing homes, and small-town festivals. A storyteller, and occasionally an actor, in 1993 he collaborated with a troupe of performers on "Chin Music and Dirty Sermons, " a live-to-tape program of his poems, sketches and stories, with music by Michael Croswell. He has received the Devin's Award for Poetry, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and the Rhysling Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. His other books of poems include "Held for Questioning," "An American Gallery," and "Growing Down." His articles, stories, and reviews have appeared in over a hundred magazines. He lives in Eagle Lake, Minnesota.
	Suzanna Winter made her stage debut at Theatre in the Round Players in Minneapolis in 1984 in Thieves' Carnival. Other TRP credits include Eva in Kindertransport, Mary Warren in The Crucible, Amahl in Amahl and the Night Visitors, and Julie in Neil Simon's Jake's Women, among others. Also in the Twin Cities, Suzanna has performed with the Great American History Theatre, Metropolitan Players, and Lakeshore Players where her favorite roles include Maria in West Side Story and Lili in Carnival!. She recently spent a summer as Darlene Humde in Howard Mohr's hit musical, How to Talk Minnesotan at the Plymouth Playhouse. Her experience outside the Twin Cities stretches from the Paul Bunyan Playhouse in Northern Minnesota to the Royal Swedish Opera. She most recently traveled to Springboro, OH. to perform in A Christmas Carol at La Comedia Dinner Theatre. Suzanna studied music and drama at Saint Olaf College in Northfield and continued her training at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City. She is currently studying voice with renowned baritone David Harris.
	Garrit Zayic (Myron) hails from the small town of Ogema located in northwestern MN. He is a student of Philosophy and English and will be graduating this spring from Gustavus Adolphus College. He is an accomplished teller of stories, and occasional amateur actor.

Production Staff

Director's Note: Boxelder Bug Variations
In 1987 1 adapted and staged Boxelder Bug Variations with the help of choreographer Lewis Whitlock, composer Bob Hindel, six actors and Bill Holm who appeared in the piece himself. The piece was formal, elegant, presentational, and highly experimental. Now, as Artistic Director of the Jon Hassler Theater, I am collaborating with a team of three other artists-Choreographers Elizabeth (Beth) M. Desotelle, Billy Kimmel and Musician Jeremy Poetker to create something less formal, elegant, and presentational but still highly experimental-"A Meditation on an Idea in Language and Music." Describing the result of our collaboration is as difficult as Holm says it is in his book:

"The material of any work of art-a chair, an afghan, an equestrian statue, a waltz-is so amorphous and mysterious that probably only a psychologist, an executioner, or a full professor would be fool enough to try to name it, or even describe it in its own language. An artist, on the other hand, gives it a body, and a body, since is exists, is true. A boxelder bug is as satisfactory a body as purple, or a saxophone, or French, or obsidian."

None of us are psychologists, executioners or full professors and so we have barged ahead, taken the body provided by Holm and transformed it into a stage work for six actor/dancer/singers, one keyboard artist, and 225 audience members (and some leftover bugs still hanging out from last summer). Our aim is to entertain, using Holm's surprising off-beat images to spur our imaginations.

We start with a simple statement, "consider the boxelder bug." Then we look at how "we, too, dislike them" (not many of us love bugs), and finally bring it together with "a man and a woman and a boxelder bug are one." Using a range of dance styles to create the "Shaker Bug", the "Boxelder Bug Gavotte", the "Boxelder Bug Tango," the "Boxelder Bug Blues" and a Manhattan Transfer style Do- wop in "The Boxelder Bug Prays", six
actor/dancers bring Bill Holm's ideas alive. Embedded in all the music is the boxelder bug motif which is built from the musical pitches in the name: Boxelder.Bug. Holm plays with this idea musically much like Bach is thought to have done with his name in The Art of Fugue.

If this sounds complicated, it really isn't, and it all comes clear on stage (and matters not at all) once the action starts. The complicated part took place offstage when four artists got into a dialogue about how to do this, with four voices interrupting and bumping into each other. Billy Kimmel says, "This is the most challenging project of my career." These artistic challenges have resulted in a cleverly staged entertainment, wherein humans, who have "too many of them plug-in things," learn to live more peacefully with the bug. The bug has only one fault and asks that we "forgive him only for being so many."

—Sally Childs

Director's Note-Chin Music

Theatrically staging material designed for another medium provides a unique challenge. When I directed the original production of Old Man Brunner Country, Leo Dangel's poetry, I decided to mount it against the deserted Wolf Creek Country Store because it created for me a meeting place for the memories of the characters who presented the narrative. In working with John Calvin Rezmerski's Chin Music the challenge was different. The concept of setting it in a present time setting seemed more fitting. It was determined that John would be the presenter, Rezmerski doing Rezmerski, but he would perform the material through a fictional character, Calvin, both for a remote radio listening audience and for a "studio" theatre audience. The style seemed not only expediently appropriate, but provided both the interesting dimensions of a here and there, and a then and now. Concurrently, it also gave the work a dramatic backdrop for the poetic narrative— things were about to change, all that would be heard would not be heard again, and the radio Calvin, after tonight, would be seen no more.

—Ron Duffy