COMPOSER
Ruth Chan
London, United Kingdom
Ruth is an accomplished composer for film, television, multimedia and concert works. She was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and started her career as a pianist, making her first TV appearance when she was nine years old and becoming accompanist for Redditch Choral Society from the age of eleven. Ruth read music at Oxford University and continued her education at the Royal College of Music, obtaining a Masters in Composition for Screen, where she studied with leading film composers.
Ruth’s concert commissions include ensemble piece ‘Moon’s Magmatism’, two suites of Children’s Songs, and choral work ‘Lament for Ying of the Nine Declarations’. Her recent composition of ‘Piccadilly Revisited’ is a contemporary multimedia piece with silent film that was performed at the Royal Opera House, the Thames Festival, the Hong Kong Arts Festival and UK Now Festival in Beijing 2012. Although she is classically trained, Ruth has a great interest in contemporary fusion music. She recently had a residency at Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, and her orchestral work, ‘As in a Dream’ was written for both Western and Chinese instruments, which was performed at West Road Hall in Cambridge. She was also the composer-in-residence for Endelienta Trust at St Endellion in 2016.
Ruth also composes for theatre, which includes ‘Shangri-La’ (Finborough Theatre), ‘The Last Days of Limehouse’ (Yellow Earth Theatre), ‘Pilgrimage of the Heart’ (Corax Productions), the double bill ‘Magical Chairs’ and ‘There’s Only One Wayne Lee’ at Southwark Playhouse and at the Beijing International Fringe Festival 2011, and ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ for the Shanghai Repertory Theater. Ruth is currently working on the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of ‘Snow in Midsummer’.
Ruth's work in film and television is also highly regarded. Her soundtrack to silent film ‘Around China with a Movie Camera’, commissioned by the BFI was recently performed at Southbank in July 2016. Recent TV documentaries have been aired on the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, BBC 2, BBC 4 and BBC world.
LIBRETTIST
Sandra Logan
Department of English
Michigan State University
Dr. Sandra Logan is Associate Professor of English Literature and Culture at Michigan State University; she is also the founding Director of the Citizen-Scholars undergraduate enrichment program in the MSU College of Arts and Letters. Her research and teaching are interdisciplinary, focusing on early modern English literature and culture; the genres of drama, poetry and poetics, prose fiction, and historiography; Shakespeare; early modern and contemporary political theory and political culture; silent Shakespeare film; early east/west dynamics; global studies; and early and contemporary gender studies. Her research includes articles on Shakespearean drama and other early modern literature; a book on Elizabethan representational practices, Text/Events in Early Modern England: Poetics of History (Ashgate, 2007); and an in-progress book on Shakespeare’s Foreign Queen’s: Politics, Drama, and the Alien Within (under contract with Palgrave).
She is on the Board of Directors of three non-profit organizations: The American Shakespeare Collective, which is committed to expanding the audiences of Shakespeare’s plays through cross-cultural adaptation and accessible performance; Aspiring Games Foundation, which is dedicated to researching and developing educational games to increase diversity, access, and academic success; and The Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference, which supports scholarly research, presentation, discussion, and teaching of Shakespeare’s works and those of his contemporaries, through a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches. Additionally, she has been lead PI and/or adviser on several grant proposals related to her academic positions, research, and community service. She is committed to working across fields and communities to enrich creative, intellectual, and social diversity, and to foster innovative approaches to positive social change.
ACTOR
Tommy Gomez
Actor/Artistic Director – The American Shakespeare Collective (TASC)
Mr. Gomez has worked extensively as a regional theatre actor for the past twenty-five years with an emphasis in the classics. Some theatres where he has performed include: nine consecutive seasons with the American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) where he worked with the likes of Diane Venora, Kathleen Widdoes, Tom Waits, Robert Wilson, William S. Burroughs, and Peter Riegert. A.C.T. world premieres include Richard Nelson’s adaptation of Luigi Pirandello’s Enrico IV and Michael Feingold’s adaptation of Friedrick Schiller’s Mary Stuart which was later remounted and taken to Boston’s Huntington Theatre
He was part of four seasons with Shakespeare Santa Cruz, and four seasons equaling sixteen Shakespeare productions with the California Shakespeare Festival, touring two of these productions along the west coast.
Other regional theatre credits include: The Old Globe Theatre playing opposite Dana Delany and Billy Campbell in a production of Much Ado About Nothing directed by Collective member Brendon Fox, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, TheatreWorks L.A. in a national tour with Eric Stoltz, Theatre Works (Palo Alto), Wisconsin Shakespeare Festival, Georgia Shakespeare Festival, Marin Theatre Company, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, The Aurora Theatre Company, The Purple Rose Theatre Company and Lansing’s own BoarsHead Theatre.
A few teaching credits include: Core Instructor - Lansing Community College, Guest Lecturer -Michigan State University, Guest Lecturer – Hillsdale College, Core Drama Instructor – American Conservatory Theatre: Summer Training Congress, and Shakespeare Instructor – Shakespeare Santa Cruz/UCSC.