Jim Carmody is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin (B.A.) and Stanford University (Ph.D.). He was for many years Head of the MFA Program in Dramaturgy at the University of California, San Diego, where he was also the founding head of the recently established Ph.D. Program in Theatre. He is the author of Rereading Moliere (University of Michigan Press) and numerous articles on French theatre, both classical and contemporary. His most recent work has dealt with the history of Moliere production and translation in the American theatre. In addition to his scholarly work on French theatre, he has been active as a translator and director, and he is a member of Etant Donnes, an organization created by the French government to promote Franco-American artistic exchange. He serves on the Editorial Board of Le Nouveau Molieriste, an international journal of Moliere studies.

John Rouse holds a B.A. (magna cum laude) from Brown University, an M.F.A. (in Directing) from Temple University, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. He is Associate Professor at UCSD, where he teaches theatre history and dramatic literature; he also directs. He is the author of Brecht and the West German Theatre and numerous articles on contemporary German theatre. He has also written extensively on the American director Robert Wilson, and on performance theory. He has served as Vice President of the International Brecht Society, as a member of the delegate assembly of the Modern Language Association, and as Editor of Theatre Journal, the official journal of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. He is working on a collection of interviews about Brecht's theatre work, an anthology on avant-garde theatre, and a book on the German playwright, Heiner Müller.

Adele Edling Shank's (www.adeleshank.com) plays have premiered at the Magic Theatre (San Francisco) and have also been seen at the Actors Theatre of Louisville (once as the co-winner of the Great American Play Contest), in Los Angeles, New York, and in England. Her full-length works include a series of independent but interconnected plays set in various California locations. The California Series includes Sunset/Sunrise, Winterplay, Stuck: A Freeway Comedy, Sand Castles, The Grass House, and Tumbleweed. Other full-length plays include War Horses, Rocks in Her Pocket, With Allison's Eyes, The Wives of the Magi, and Sex Slaves. Her short play Dry Smoke was made into a chamber opera with music by Victor Kioulaphides, and her radio adaptation of Stuck was produced by Slovak Radio. She is currently working on a TV film adaptation of With Allison's Eyes and a stage adaptation of a Virginia Woolf novel. Shank is the recipient of many awards, including an NEA playwriting award fellowship, Rockefeller Playwrights-in-Residence Grant, and a Dramatists Guild/CBS Award. Her plays have been published by West Coast Plays and the Theatre Communications Group and have been translated into French, Polish, and Italian.

Theodore Shank (www.tedshank.com) is an award winning author and director. His eight books, chapters in about twenty-five others, and a hundred or so articles on contemporary theatre have been published in eighteen countries. His books include American Alternative Theatre (Macmillan, London; St. Martin's, New York), The Art of Dramatic Art (Dickenson, Belmont, CA; New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc), Theatre in Real Time (Studio Forma, Milan), Contemporary Experimental Theatre (Theater am Turm, Frankfurt), California Performance (Mime Journal, Claremont, CA), Contemporary British Theatre (Macmillan, London; St. Martin's, NY), and Beyond the Boundaries: American Alternative Theatre (University of Michigan Press). His play Wild Indian! received two CBS/Dramatists Guild Awards and co-premiered at the Magic Theatre (San Francisco) and at Victory Gardens Theatre (Chicago). His music-theatre work, Fly Away All, with music by Brenda Hutchison, premiered at Minnesota Opera New Music-Theatre Ensemble. He has directed over fifty productions including many premieres of plays and music-theatre works on which he was a collaborating writer. He is the founding editor of TheatreForum and has served as contributing editor to several arts magazines including New Theatre Quarterly (London and Cambridge) and The Drama Review (New York). His experimental theatre photographs have been widely published and exhibitions of the photos have shown in Europe and the USA. He has served on panels of the Arts Council of Great Britain, the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, Opera America, and is a consultant to Higher Education in England. His Ph.D. is from Stanford University.