Julian Henry Lowenfeld
Playwright in Residence (2024 & 2025)

Poet, playwright, composer, and experienced trial lawyer Julian Henry Lowenfeld is acknowledged to be one of the greatest living translators of Russian poetry into English, and also a celebrated authority on the life and work of Russia's national bard, Alexander Pushkin. Julian's book, My Talisman, The Poetry and Life of Alexander Pushkin (a combined anthology of Pushkin's verse and biography of Russia's most beloved poet), illustrated by Pushkin's own drawings, received Russia's prestigious Pushkin Medal in 2020 for “outstanding literary achievement,” as well as the Petropol Prize for Literary Achievement. It was the first time the medals had been awarded to a foreigner, despite the increasingly dark political climate in Russia.

Julian has lectured and performed his translations of Pushkin at the Russian Academy of Sciences, in concert at the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, at the Hermitage Theatre in St. Petersburg,, at Moscow's MosKontsert Theatre, at the United Nations, New York, The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., Trinity College, Dublin, the Performing Arts Center of the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Boston Public Library, the Philadelphia Public Library, Pushkin House, London, the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, Lehigh University, The First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia, The Russian Cultural Center, Washington, City Hall, Anchorage, AK, Anchorage Public Library, University of Alaska, Fairbanks,The Museum of Russian Art, The Tsvetayeva Musem, Moscow, the Akhmatova Museum, St. Petersburg, the Yesenin Museum, Moscow, and numerous other venues. He has performed his translations and been interviewed at length by the Voice of America, BBC World Service, Rain TV, Echo of Moscow, and many other media. Besides translating Pushkin, he has also translated verse by Lermontov, Tyutchev, Blok, Mandelshtam, Tsvetayeva, Akhmatova, Yesenin, Mayakovsky, Rilke, Goethe, Heine, Hugo, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Lope de Vega, Machado, Martí, Pessoa, Vinicius de Moraes, Leopardi, Ungharetti, Dante, Catullus, Ovid, and Horace.

Besides Thanksgiving, Julian has just completed the script and score for Even Love's a Melody, a musical adaptation with his verse translation of four plays by Alexander Pushkin. He is also in the process of finalizing his complete verse translation of Eugene Onegin, along with footnotes and commentaries. Julian is also known for his translations of Pushkin's Fairy Tales, as well as Pushkin's long narrative poem The Bronze Horseman, a profound meditation on despotic power, madness, and the danger of humanity's hubristic detachment from nature. A unique four volume DVD set of Russian cartoons, entitled Animated Soviet Propaganda, translated and partially edited by Julian won a New York TImes Critics' Choice award in 2006.

Other works by Julian include the novella Rose-Colored Glasses (a love story framed within an almost farcical courtroom drama), the dark one act comedy Kafka for Beginners, and an anthology of Julian's own poems, mostly about love, entitled Nonetheless.

Nicholas Aguilar
Music Director (The Dream Project)

NICHOLAS AGUILAR is a Mexico City based, Mexican-canadian guitarist, singer songwriter and music facilitator. He earned a degree in composition from Academia de Música Fermatta in Mexico City and a Masters in Leadership from Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, UK. Nicholas has worked as a creative artist in various contexts including cross medium collaborations in theater, dance and visual art.

Grant MacDermott
Playwright in Residence (2021 & 2022)

Grant MacDermott (Playwright) Jasper won the TRU New Voices Award in 2018. Other plays include: The Play About The Head Transplant (Bay Area Playwrights Festival Semi Finalist 2019, Wordsmyth Festival Semi-Finalist 2019), without you but also with you too as well (Play Penn Semi finalist 2017) An Independent Study on Race and the Brain (O'Neill Playwright's Festival Semi-Finalist 2014, PlayPenn Semi-Finalist 2015), and Like a Queen or Whatever (Project Y, Jersey City Theater). His most recent ten-minute play A Departure was named one of the Best 10-Minute Plays of 2019 and has been published by Smith and Kraus. Other works include: Dinner (Project Y, published by Indie Theater Now), Kings Richard (Boston Theatre Marathon), Sit Down, Daisy (Nylon Fusion Theatre, Barrow Group), What Men Do Alone On Islands (Come As You Are Festival), 10 Reasons Why Hamlet is Totally Gay (Edinburgh Fringe Festival). He has been a part of Interim Writers Writing Collective, Project Y Writers' Fellowship, and Athena's Writing Fellowship. He is originally from New Jersey.