Prozak and the Platypus CD Release Party (2008)

Elise Thoron writes music theater pieces and collaborates with musicians who usually dont work in theater to bring them to life. She enjoys working cross-culturally and story telling in multiple languages. Other music theater pieces include Green Violin based on murals Marc Chagall painted for the first Soviet Yiddish Theater in Moscow, 1920, with score by Frank London of The Klezmatics; and Life? or Theater? a 3 Color Opera, based on the paintings of a young German artist, Charlotte Salomon, with score by Gary Fagin. Her new piece, The THIEF of Venice, is about 16C Venetian poet and courtesan, Veronica Franco, includes Sephardic song and Canti Amorosi. Her plays have been performed in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Amsterdam, London, Los Angeles, Philly, Hartford, and once in a blue moon in New York. You can read Green Violin in the anthology: 9 Contemporary Jewish Plays (available through Amazon). When not writing, shes directing and developing new work, such as her current project The Beautiful Struggle with Tony award winning poet Lemon Andersen, or running theater exchanges in Russia, (which her friends think is actually a spy ring). Her first writing for the stage was to adapt and direct The Great Gatsby in Russian at a The Pushkin Theater in Moscow, where it ran in repertory for over nine years. Elise co-founded Literature to Life at American Place Theatre (where she is Associate Artistic Director), a theater literacy program that is now nation wide. Her adaptation of Sandra Cisneros House on Mango Street has been in rep for over twelve years. To learn more about Literature to Life: www.americanplacetheatre.org

Jill Sobule is an American singer-songwriter best known for the controversial 1995 song "I Kissed a Girl," and for "Supermodel" from the soundtrack of the 1995 film Clueless. Her folk-inflected compositions alternate between ironic, story-driven character studies and emotive ballads, a duality reminiscent of such 1970s American songwriters as Warren Zevon, Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman.

Autobiographical elements, including Sobule's Jewish heritage and her adolescent battles with anorexia and depression, frequently occur in Sobule's writing. An appreciable percentage of her work is also dedicated to detailed accounts of both her own fictional female creations and such troubled but celebrated women as Joey Heatherton and Mary Kay Letourneau, whose stories are usually used to make ironic comments about fame and celebrity.

See Jill's website! www.jillsobule.com

From a Chicago hood-rat to a Brooklyn recluse, there have been good times and embarrassing times in KellyAnne Hanrahan's life. In the grand scheme of things, considering the Big Bang to planetary formation, the cooling of this planet into multi-cellular organism-friendly atmosphere, the growth of plants on the mantle, primal slime evolving into sea creatures, those sea creatures adapting to land, the land creatures spreading all across the surface of the planet, the megafauna populations roaming the earth and the evolution of land-manipulating humans... this biography seems silly, almost meaningless. Just a tiny dot in time represented by a human who draws to pass the time here until she dies, like we all will.

David Cale grew up in England and moved to America at the age of twenty, where he soon began to write and perform solo performance pieces and plays, often incorporating live music. His shows including 'A Likely Story', 'Betwixt', 'Lillian', 'Deep in a Dream of You', 'Smooch Music' and 'The Redthroats' have been presented throughout the U.S. including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Chicago's Goodman Theatre and Off-Broadway venues including Playwrights Horizons, The New Group and The Public Theatre. His monologues have been featured on NPR's 'This American Life', 'The Next Big Thing', BBC Radio 4's 'Afternoon Play' and the HBO Special, 'Bette Midler's Mondo Beyondo'. A book of his monologues, 'The Redthroats' was published by Vintage Books. He is the recipient of an Obie Award and two Bessie Awards. His first musical, 'Floyd and Clea Under the Western Sky' for which he wrote the book, lyrics, co-composed the music with Jonathan Kreisberg, and appeared as Floyd, ran Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons. David made his film debut in Woody Allen's 'Radio Days' and has subsequently had roles in a dozen films including 'Pollock', 'The Slaughter Rule' and the forthcoming 'Two Lovers' directed by James Gray. In October he will appear in the U.S Premiere of Kevin Elyot's play 'Mouth to Mouth' at The New Group.