Alice in Bed

A highly respected American essayist and novelist, Susan Sontag was born in New York City in 1933. She studied at the University of California, Berkeley; The University of Chicago; Harvard - where she received two M.A. degrees, one in english and the other in philosophy—St Anne's College, Oxford; and the Sorbonne. She has said her desire is to be an écrivain, what the French call someone whose profession is a writer without specialization. Among her books are Against interpretation, and other essays, 1966; AIDS and its metaphors, 1989; The Benefactor, a novel, 1963; Death kit, 1967; I, etcetera, 1978; Illness as Metaphor, 1978; On Photography, 1977; Styles of Radical Will, 1969; and The Volcano Lover, a novel. Alice in Bed is her first play.

Bob McGrath's directing work at the American Repertory Theater has included Charlie in the House of Rue, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Alice in Bed. He is the winner of three OBIE awards for: Direction – Jennie Richee (2001), Best New American Work – The Carbon Copy Building (2000), and for Sustained Achievement. He has directed all of Ridge Theater's productions. Mr. McGrath was awarded a fellowship from The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, and has taught at NYU and the Eugene O'Neil Theater Center. He has directed at venues including The Kitchen; Lincoln Center; La MaMa, ETC.; MASS MoCA; The Kampfnagle (Hamburg, Germany); and The Carignano (Turin, Italy). He has worked with writers and composers including Mac Wellman, Ben Katchor, Susan Sontag, Robert Coover, Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, David Lang, Bang On A Can, and Cynthia Hopkins. As an actor and a writer, Mr. McGrath collaborated on the Scott Saunders films The Headhunter's Sister and The Lost Words.

Scenic Designer Laurie Olinder is a founding member of the Ridge Theater, an experimental opera and theater company in New York City. Her work at the A.R.T. includes Charlie in the House of Rue, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Alice in Bed, all directed by Bob McGrath. Recent set designing credits include the John Moran operas Mathew In the School of Life, Everyday Newt Burman, and The Manson Family, all produced by Ridge Theater. She is also a painter, last exhibited in 1995 at St. Peter's Church at the CitiCorp Building in New York City. She has been awarded artist residencies at The Kitchen, Millay Colony for the Arts, and Yellow Springs.

Scenic Designer Fred Tietz is a founding member of Ridge Theater, an experimental opera and theater company in New York City. He has collaborated on many productions with Bob McGrath and Laurie Olinder, including the Ridge production of Mathew In the School of Life, and the A.R.T productions of Charlie in the House of Rue, Alice in Bed, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Mr. Tietz's technical theater credits span over thirty off and off-off Broadway productions as a designer, production manager, technical director, or technician. Highlights include work on Stephen Sondheim's Assassins, A.R. Gurney's Later Life, special prop construction for Merce Cunningham, and realization of numerous designs by John Lee Beaty. He is also currently the scene shop supervisor for Playwrights Horizons in New York City.

Susan Anderson (costume designer for Alice in Bed) recently moved to Boston from Washington, D.C., where her design credits include The Pearl at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Twelfth Night for the Shakespeare Theater's Young Company, The Merchant of Venice at the Folger, First Lady Suite for the Signature Theatre, Muzecka at the Studio Theater, The Cockburn Rituals at Woolly Mammoth, and many productions for the Washington Shakespeare Company. In New York Ms. Anderson designed costumes for the Parry Street Theater's production of Morticians in Love.

Lighting Designer John Ambrosone has designed over thirty productions for the American Repertory Theater, including Lysistrata, Absolution, Marat/Sade, Othello, Animals and Plants, Mother Courage (2001 Elliot Norton Design Award), The Doctor's Dilemma, Three Farces and a Funeral, Nocturne, Ivanov, The Cripple of Inishmaan, The King Stag, Boston Marriage, Charlie in the House of Rue, Valparaiso, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, How I Learned to Drive, Nobody Dies on Friday, Man and Superman, The Old Neighborhood, When the World Was Green (A Chef's Fable), Alice in Bed, Slaughter City, and Buried Child. On Broadway he designed The Old Neighborhood. Work in resident theaters includes the Alley Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, the Coconut Grove Playhouse, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Walnut Street Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, and Arena Stage. Mr. Ambrosone also has designed in Singapore, Moscow, Japan, Brazil, Taiwan, Mexico, Germany, and France.

Christopher Walker has composed music and designed sound for We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!, Phaedra, Beckett Trio: Eh Joe, Ghost Trio, and Nacht und Traüme, and An Evening of Beckett, and designed sound for The King Stag, Loot, The Idiots Karamazov, Ivanov, The Cripple of Inishmaan, Charlie in the House of Rue, The Merchant of Venice, Valparaiso, The Taming of the Shrew, The Bacchae, The Wild Duck, Woyzeck, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Wild Duck, Alice in Bed, Slaughter City, Buried Child, Ubu Rock, The Threepenny Opera, The Accident, Demons, Waiting for Godot, The Oresteia, Hot 'n' Throbbing, The America Play, A Touch of the Poet, The Cherry Orchard, What the Butler Saw, and Those the River Keeps at the A.R.T. Previously he composed music and designed sound for productions at the Intiman Theatre, the Bathhouse Theatre, and the Alice B. Theatre. He also scores for dance and has composed for the Allegro Dance Festival, the Bumbershoot Festival, and On The Boards.

Jim Farmer, the composer of music for Alice in Bed, lives in New York City. He has scored music for director Tom Dicillo's feature films Johnny Suede, Living in Oblivion, and the forthcoming Box of Moonlight. He has composed music and sound design for various television and radio commercials for Sony and MTV, among others, and for Bob McGrath's Ridge Theater productions of Jungle Movie and Fragments of Ridge. Mr. Farmer has written, directed, and composed music for the plays Frontier Halloween, Pistols and Stamens, The Savage Routine of Living, We Never Learn, and When Existential Things Happen to Good People.

Bill Morrison, the filmmaker whose work appears in Alice in Bed, has collaborated with the Ridge Theater team on their last seven projects. The films Footprints and The Death Train, commissioned by Ridge, were both acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. The Death Train was awarded a 1993 Bessie Award and 1st prize at the Viper Film Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland. Mr. Morrison is currently working in Treviso, Italy, through a fellowship provided by Beneton.