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.”

Sandy 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

“Curiosity is my most valued tool as a playwright; it guides me towards stories that haven’t been told and perspectives which I long to understand. My work engages with literature, myth, and history, exploring how the stories we think we know resonate in our present, and how our beliefs about ourselves and each other are influenced by the narratives we’ve received.

To this end, my plays are driven by character and dialogue, which allows multiple perspectives and experiences to coexist with equal weight and honesty. Because I’m influenced by Talmudic thought, my writing reflects the beliefs that learning is communal act, and that thoughtful interrogation and debate between a multitude of voices provides insight and understanding that’s deeper than any individual could find on their own. A play is like a Talmudic question to me; a bid for understanding, a desire to make meaning. It’s a request. It’s a way of reaching out and seeking.”

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.