Joanne is a playwright, director and filmmaker whose plays have been commissioned, developed and produced by Huntington Theatre Co., Boston Playwrights Theatre, HERE Arts Center, The Tank, The Marsh, Thrown Stone, East River Commedia, SIPA (School of International Public Affairs at Columbia University), Keeler Tavern Museum, Iceland Fulbright, Vestmannaeyjar Iceland Library and others. As a Fulbright Scholar in creative writing, she traveled to Iceland to write a play about a scientist who loses her ethics and finds her humanity, “unbidden,” now included in the literature of the Westmann Islands. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University School of the Arts. Joanne founded RIFF in 2015 in order to be around filmmakers and learn the craft of filmmaking, to share the beautiful town of Ridgefield CT and its many arts venues with them, and in the hopes of making the world a more compassionate place through the sharing of stories through cinema.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: https://www.riffct.org/
FB: joannehudson3
IG: joannehudsonplays; @mollusksmovie; book.sandtravel

MORE ABOUT ME
My most gratifying moment in theatre remains the first time I directed my own work. A friend told me, “Cast the best actors,” (as opposed to type) they will make you believe anything.” And it was true. My actors didn’t know I had never directed before (I read On Directing by Harold Clurman) and we rehearsed for 8 weeks for a 25 minute play for a one act festival. I was caretaking a loft space in Vinegar Hill and each day my actors and I would trek out to Brooklyn to rehearse in this giant artists loft where I would have them do mirror exercises to get in sync (they were playing doppelgängers). I knew it worked when I watched from behind as they walked down the street their heads cocked to one side and subconsciously mimicking one another’s movements. The two lead actors fell in love and didn’t tell me until after opening night. We were a smash hit and everyone filled the audience to see our show the second night. It remains one of the two most delightful theatre experience of my career, the other being the production of my play Pop Art at Boston Theatre Marathon, directed by Stephanie LeBolt, where all I had to do was show up and enjoy the show.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
Currently, I produce and direct Ridgefield Independent Film Festival (RIFF) now in its seventh year. I also make short films, and am working on a feature length screenplay.

KEYWORDS
​Film, theatre, micro budget

Julia Pascal PhD is a London playwright-theatre director and scholar. Her new play 12-37 premieres at The Finborough Theatre, London in autumn 2022. She is currently writing and presenting a BBC World Service radio documentary on The Sin Only Women Commit-Ageing. Julia trained as an actor and worked professionally as a performer before becoming a stage director and playwright. She was the first woman director at the National Theatre on the South Bank with Men Seldom Make Passes her adaptation of Dorothy Parker’s writings. As a journalist she has worked for the London Times, The Guardian, City Limits magazine and The Observer as well as for BBC radio. Her plays have been published and produced in the UK, Europe and the USA. In New York, scenes from her St Joan, about a Black Jewish Londoner, were part of the Lincoln Centre’s Director’s Lab and her Dybbuk was seen at Theatre For the New City. Crossing Jerusalem, her contemporary drama set in the 2002 intifada, has had two London productions and a German adaptation at the Karlsruhe Staatstheater. Prizes include an award from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. Produced and published texts include The Holocaust Trilogy, Crossing Jerusalem, Woman In The Moon, The Dybbuk, The Golem, Nineveh, L’Année Zéro, Honeypot, The Shylock Play and The Yiddish Queen Lear. They mainly focus on women’s histories and reveal stories of exile and trauma which are part of drama’s reluctant and hidden narratives. She is a director of Pascal Theatre Company. In 2021 she produced Dancing, Talking, Taboo! and was dramaturg and director of this community theatre project as a collaboration with students from London Contemporary Dance School. She is a Research Fellow at King’s College, London University and has taught at NYU in New York and London. Represented by United Agents 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: www.juliapascal.org
TW: Ajuliapascal
FB: https://www.facebook.com/julia.pascal

MORE ABOUT ME
I tell stories through theater as this is the language that I know best. Live performance is exciting to me and I feel the dearth of women's stories is something I have a mission to correct. If I could bring one change to theatre it would be parity for women on all levels. I have worked politically to try to change the marginalisation of women as a writer and as a poltiical activist. It is crucial to me and to all women.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
A new play about Hannah Arendt, Charlotte Salomon and Eva Daube when they were imprisoned in Gurs 1940. A new play for a community project on Eleanor Marx. A television adaptation of the Oedipus story from Jocasta's point of view set in London today.

KEYWORDS
Political, Equality, Satire, Jewish, Myth, site-specific, biography.