The 15th Annual
Out On the Edge Queer Theater Festival

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Thank you for your interest in the
2006 Out On the Edge Festival

For all press please contact:

Joanne Barett
Joanne Barett Public Relations
617.547.2265
jbpr@comcast.net

Please check out the biographies of some of our artists (in alphabetical order):

Thomas DeFrantz

Writer and director of Queer Theory! A Musical Travesty.
SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1Thomas DeFrantz holds degrees from Yale, the City University of New York, and he earned his PhD from the Department of Performance Studies at NYU. He has taught theater at Stanford, NYU, and at MIT, where he is Associate Professor and holds the Class of 1948 Career Development Professorship. A director and choreographer, he staged Pure PolyEsther for the Theater Offensive, choreographed Tom Stoppard's Rough Crossing for the Geva Theater in Rochester, NY, and directed for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf for the MIT Dramashop. He is an active member of the Drama League of New York. He provided movement to Daniel Alexander Jones’ Bel Canto at the TTO, and directed and choreographed Of Thee I Sing for Emerson Stage. He recently founded the MIT Dance Theater Ensemble, and SlippagePerformance Interventions in Culture and Technology, both in residence at MIT.

Musical Bio: Melissa Li, born in Hong Kong in 1983 and raised in Boston, started classical piano training at age 5 under the instruction of Winnie Ip at the Ip Piano School in Chinatown. At age 8, she attended the Longy School of Music in Cambridge to study violin under the instruction of Boston Pops member Clayton Hoener. In 1993, Melissa received a certificate from the Associated Board of the Royal School of Music, based in London, for passing all five grades in the Music Theory Exam. In 1994, at age 11, she was admitted to the New England Conservatory of Music to perform in its String Training Orchestra, Preparatory String Orchestra, and Youth Repertory Orchestra. In the summers of 1994 and 1995, Melissa attended the Bay State String Camp in Hanson, MA, as a violinist. In the summer of 1996, she attended the Point Counterpoint Chamber Music Camp in Dunsbury Lake, VT, as both a violist and a violinist. From 1995-2001, Melissa joined the Boston Latin School String Ensemble and served as Concertmaster in 1998. During these years she arranged many popular pieces for the ensemble to perform, including James Horner's "Somewhere Out There", Alan Menken's "A Whole New World" and "Beauty and the Beast", and composed many other original works. At the Ip Piano School, she started taking Jazz Piano lessons and Music Composition under Jeremy Tunis, as well as Conducting under Mei-Ann Chen. From 1994-1998, Melissa has performed in the Piano School's annual Concerto Concert held at Pine Manor College and Boston University's Tsai Performance Center. All four times, she has performed as a soloist on the piano or violin, backed by a full orchestra. Finally, to show for over eight years of training, she received the certificate from the Associated Board for completing the piano practical examination for Grade 8, the highest level offered. Melissa took a turn away from classical music when she taught herself the guitar in 1998. In the summers of 1997 and 1998, she attended the Young Writer's Workshop in Charlottesville, VA for songwriting. Since then, she mainly wrote acoustic songs in the singer-songwriter genre on the guitar and established herself in the local folk scene as an up and coming folksinger. In 2001, at the age of 18, she self-produced her debut album "MOOP!" and has sold over a hundred copies through self-distribution. Some venues include: The Brattle Theater in a benefit for the Astraea Foundation, Boston Youth Pride March, Milky Way Lounge, the Middle East Corner, Herrell's Renaissance Cafe, Emily's, Hampshire College, Boston University, Starbucks, Stuart Street Theater, WERS 88.9 Emerson College Radio Station, and more. As a performer (2000-2001) and Assistant Director (2002) in The Theater Offesnive’s True Colors Out Youth Theater, Melissa wrote, directed and/or performed several original musical theater segments of the troupe’s shows. Currently, she is working on her next album "Motion Picture," featuring songs written from 2001-2003.

www.margagomez.com
Marga has appeared on VH-1, HBO, Comedy Central, PBS and Showtime. Marga received the 2004 GLAAD Award for Off Broadway Theater and was nominated for NY’s Drama Desk Award in 2006. Her life and comedy career is profiled in the 2003 award winning documentary Laughing Matters. Marga was one of the original Members of the acclaimed Latino ensemble Culture Clash. She is also the author/performer of numerous solo plays: Los Big Names; A Line Around The Block; Memory Tricks; Marga Gomez is Pretty, Witty & Gay; jaywalker; The Twelve Days of Cochina, Marga Gomez’s Intimate Details. She has been presented nationally and internationally. Her seventh and most recent solo performance, Los Big Names, was presented Off Broadway in April 2006. Marga’s acting credits include Off Broadway and San Francisco productions of The Vagina Monologues with Rita Moreno. Marga has been featured in HBO's Tracy Takes on, and the movies Sphere, and Batman Forever Check out her website www.margagomez.com.

Regional Theatre: Bill Jameson in Wine in the Wilderness during Our Place Theatre's 2nd Annual African American Theatre Festival directed by Jacqui Parker; Bob Daniels in Ed Bullin's new play City Preacher, an east coast premiere; Protean in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum at The American Stage Festival in Nashua, New Hampshire. Darius also directed Frank Shefton's You for The African American Theatre Festival and The Boston Playwright's Marathon. A former Professor of Theatre and Speech at Tougaloo College, he directed four productions while teaching: The Wiz, John Henry Redwood's The Old Settler, A Raisin in the Sun and Ladies In Waiting. Darius has a B.S. in Speech from Jackson State University (MS) and a M.A. in Theatre from Bowling Green State University (OH). Darius played the lead role of Gullah Jack in Gullah Jack’s Bag at The Mobius Group in Boston. He attended Antioch University Los Angeles's low-residency MFA Creative Writing Program. His poetry book Contusion: poems beyond their bending limbs will be published soon. Darius plans to return to Mississippi this fall to start his own Theatre Company, Black Odyssey Repertory Theatre.

www.paulzaloom.com
(Performer, writer, designer) -Joined Bread and Puppet Theater in 1971; still works there every summer -The Mother of All Enemies is solo show number 12 -VENUES: Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, American Repertory Theater, Spoleto Festival U.S.A., Walker Arts Center, King Tut’s Wah-Wah Hut, etc. - 8 EUROPEAN TOURS: Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland; Les Semaines de la Marionette, Paris; and the Union Internationale de la Marionette (UNIMA) Congress in Dresden, D.D.R., etc. -AWARDS: Guggenheim Fellowship.a Village Voice Obie Award, a New York Dance and Performance Award (the “Bessie”), an American Theater Wing design award, four UNIMA-USA Citations for Excellence in the Art of Puppetry. -TV: appeared as Beakman in 91 episodes of cult favorite, Emmy winning, science educational TV show Beakman’s World and live stage version, Beakman Live! -FILM: co-wrote and narrated In Smog and Thunder, a comic film about a fictional war between San Francisco and Los Angeles, based on a series of paintings by Sandow Birk. AND coming this spring: Dante’s Inferno, a second collaboration with Birk and director Sean Meredith, is a feature length, high def, toy theater version of the classic tour of hell, set in a place that looks a hell of a lot like Los Angeles. Starring Dermot Mulroney, James Cromwell, and Paul Zaloom. www.dantefilm.com/