Everyday Life and Other Odds and Ends

Charlotte Meehan

Charlotte Meehan, Artistic Director of Boston-based multimedia theatre company,

Sleeping Weazel, is also Playwright-in-Residence at Wheaton College (MA). Sleeping Weazel most recently premiered her multimedia collage, The Audacity: Women Speak, that she conceived and arranged using real-life stories of more than 30 women on everything from gender bias to sexual assault. The show garnered an Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production (small theatre) in 2019 and was named by The Boston Globe as one of 2019’s top ten Boston productions. Other Sleeping Weazel premieres of her work include:

Cleanliness, Godliness, and Madness: A User’s Guide, Beesus & Ballustrada, Real

Realism, and 27 Tips for Banishing the Blues. Previous stage works have been

presented in Providence at Perishable Theatre, in Bristol (UK), and in New York at

Dixon Place, the Flea Theater, La MaMa, Bleecker Street Theatre, and Pratt Institute,

among others. She is a MacDowell fellow (2020, 2008)and recipient of Massachusetts Cultural Council (2021) and Howard Foundation (2008) fellowships in playwriting.

Tara Brooke Watkins

Tara Brooke Watkins is a theatre director, instructor, playwright and activist. She holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from Tufts University and an MA in Theatre Education from Emerson College. Much of her research focuses on the effect of theatre in communities experiencing cultural trauma. She is an assistant professor of theatre and theatre program coordinator at Salve Regina University. In 2019, she worked with students at Eastern Nazarene College and guests and administration at Father Bill’s Place, a homeless shelter in Quincy, Massachusetts to hear stories and use applied theatre, story circles, and drama therapy techniques to respond to needs. From 2016-18, she worked with the Black community of North Tulsa to run story circles and used theatre to create a play showing how the history of the Tulsa Race Massacre still lives in Tulsans’ lives today. She is a member of Bethel AME Church where she co-facilitates the Shatter the Silence ministry which uses story circles and drama therapy to address sexual victimization. She is the creator of several plays which originated in this type of community engagement work using story circles. Such plays include The Bible Women’s Project, Tulsa ’21: Black Wall Street, and The Father Bill’s Play.  She directed Sleeping Weazel’s The Audacity: Women Speak in 2019,  Elliott Norton winner for Outstanding Production (small/fringe). She is the founder and executive director of South Shore School of Theatre in Quincy, MA, a children’s theatre school.

Peter DiMuro

Peter DiMuro/Public Displays of Motion develops and performs original artistic works in dance and dance/theatre. Intergenerational and intersectional by design, the company of collaborators often finds themselves in good company with communities of all kinds, illuminating the extraordinary in the everyday lives of those they encounter. Recent projects include “Stones to Rainbows/Gay to Queer Lives” which has been supported by New England Foundation for the Arts’ Creative City and The Boston Foundation’s LAB grants. The company made its Jacob’s Pillow debut in 2018 and its Gibney/NYC debut in 2019, and has performed throughout the Boston region in traditional, cabaret and site-specific settings. Peter DiMuro is a career-long artist, whose work has appeared internationally. He Is the Executive Artistic Director of The Dance Complex, following a 15 year relationship as a collaborator and Artistic Director of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange.

Lee Francois

In 2009, Lee Francois received his Digital Design degree from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online. When he could not find employment in his field, Lee started his own business. Following that, some unfortunate unwise choices were costly to Lee when he had to serve time in prison for 4 years, putting his dreams on hold. 

However, after a tremendous bounce back and re-evaluation of his life, Lee relaunched his company under the name “FrancoisGrphx.” Through hard work and opportunities to set a new course in life, Lee is building his business into a successful digital arts company.

Reflecting on his life, Lee says, “Looking back, I realized that if I had never experienced any struggles in my life, I probably would never have had the courage to take those giant leaps of faith to become the courageous man I am today.”

Today, in addition to being the CEO of FGXstudios, Lee is also the Director of the Digital Media & A/V Ministry at Bethel AME Church in Jamaica Plain, MA. Red Chair Stories, directed by Lee, reveals the riveting narrative of men impacted by incarceration who are becoming entrepreneurs.