Firesign Theatre

creators

Firesign Theatre material was conceived, written, and performed by its members Phil Austin, Peter Bergman, David Ossman, and Philip Proctor. The group’s name stems from astrology, because all four were born under the three “fire signs”: Aries (Austin), Leo (Proctor), and Sagittarius (Bergman and Ossman). Their popularity peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and ebbed in the Reagan Era. They experienced a revival and second wave of popularity in the 1990s during the presidency of Bill Clinton and continued to write, record and perform until Bergman’s death in 2012.

In 1997, Entertainment Weekly ranked the Firesign Theatre among the “Thirty Greatest Comedy Acts of All Time”. The group received Grammy Award nominations for Best Comedy Album for three of their albums: The Three Faces of Al (1984), Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death (1998), and Bride of Firesign (2001). In 2005, the US Library of Congress added one of the group’s most popular early albums, the 1970 Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers, to the National Recording Registry and called the group “the Beatles of comedy.”

Sandi Carroll

director

Sandi Carroll is an actor, educator, director, and producer. As an actor, she has appeared on Broadway in Irena’s Vow, and in major motion pictures and independent films. Sandi is co-founder of and performer in the comedy group Logic Limited, LTD., where she has created and performed Famous!, Schaden, Freude, & You, TiVo La Resistance!, Philip & Karen’s Wedding Party, and most recently, Mission: Implausible!  As the Artistic Director of the Mud/Bone Collective she created, performed and produced many productions including Impossible Country, a multi-media exploration of life as a refugee in NYC based on interviews with refugees from Iraq, Rwanda, Pakistan, Egypt and Russia. As an educator she has taught Acting for the Stage and Camera, Improvisation, Audition Techniques, Clown, Movement, Devising, Shakespeare, Playwriting, Storytelling, and Dialects at NYU, American University, Penn State, Emerson College, University of Virginia, Brown University, The Shakespeare Lab at The Public Theater, The Moth, Theatre for A New Audience, Theatre Development Fund, and Theatre Lab in DC. Boston University (BFA), University of Virginia (MFA).

Jillian Blevins

playwright

Jillian Blevins (she/her) is a New England-based playwright whose work engages with literature, myth, and history, exploring how the stories we think we know resonate in our present. 

Select plays include Mere Waters (Winner ‘Best Script’ SheNYC Festival 2024, Golden Prize Winner Clauder Competition 2024, Finalist Seattle Public Theatre Distillery New Works Festival 2024, Honorable Mention American Playwriting Foundation Relentless Award 2024, Semi-finalist O’Neill Playwrights Conference 2024), Romeo & Her Sister (Semi-finalist SheNYC Festival 2022), The Polycule: A Comedy of Manners (Finalist Boston New Works Festival 2024, Semifinalist The Road Summer Playwrights Festival 2024, Frank Moffett Mosier Longlist Prize for Works in Heightened Language from Synecdoche Works 2023), Space Laser, In Space! (Semi-finalist Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway New Play Festival 2023, Jewish Plays Project Festival of New Jewish Plays 2024), The Bed Trick (Valdez Theatre Conference 2023), Izzy at Zoom Therapy (Third Coast Magazine 2025), and Pilloried (Winner, Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway New Play Festival 2024, Concord Theatricals 2025).

Featured podcasts: Gather By The Ghostlight and The Ugly Radio. She is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild. Learn more at jillianblevinsplaywright.com

Megan Monaghan Rivas

director

Megan Monaghan Rivas joined the University of Connecticut as Artistic Director of Connecticut Repertory Theatre and Department Head of Dramatic Arts in 2021 after serving as Interim Head of the School of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University, where she served on the faculty starting in 2013. In prior years she served as literary manager of South Coast Repertory Theatre, and as literary director of the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta and Frontera @ Hyde Park Theatre in Austin, TX. She oversaw the artistic programming for playwrights at the Lark Play Development Center in New York City and The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. She has freelanced with the New Harmony Project, the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, the Geffen Playhouse, Quantum Theatre, Aurora Theatre, the Salt Lake Acting Company, TheatreSquared, Actors Express Theatre, and Horizon Theatre. She is the author of an original gender-bending adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers, and a separate original play riffing on Dumas’ characters set among women workers in the French Resistance, entitled Three Musketeers: 1941. Megan has been honored with the Elliott Hayes Prize in Dramaturgy.