Jason Alberty Jason is a local writer, director and actor whose full time gig is hanging out with his son at their family home. Among his direction credits are A Streetcar Named Desire and The Laramie Project for Theatre Cedar Rapids (TCR), as well as Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream for the Classics at Brucemore. He has been published in ETC: A Review of General Semantics, and was the script-coordinator and head writer for Moving Home, a local arts collaborative show (of which SPT was a driving force) at Brucemore in response to the devastating flood of 2008.

Jason's current projects include the third season of SPT's The Writers' Room, as well as the upcoming productions of Six Characters in Search of an Author and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for TCR. He has finished the first book of his eco-fantasy, The Galadahnia and is looking for funding to create a large scale interactive website for the trilogy.

David Martino is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in private practice in Iowa City.  He has been an adjunct professor of psychology at Grinnell College and Mount Mercy College.  He has contributed his experitse to nationally syndicated T.V. shows, academic conferences, regional news programs, and angry letters to the editor.

Dr. Martino's writing experience includes several books for children, stories included in an emotional curriculum textbook, IQ test items, slam poems, and an article in the sadly-defunct Journal of Polymorphous Perversity. He appeared twice as a writer and performer in A Modern Salon at Brucemore, has written 2 original SPT-TCR productions - rEvolutioN: 1963-1973 and Underground Passages: Stories of Love and Other Confusions, and was a writer and performer in SPT's Biographical Notes: An Incidental Musical performed at Riverside Theatre in Iowa City.

Akwi Nji-Dawson grew up in the African country of Cameroon, and then Springville, IA, before her family moved a final time to Cedar Rapids.  In 2002, she graduated from the University of Iowa, earning Bachelor's Degrees in Journalism and English.  As a young journalist, Akwi wrote for the Arts and Entertainment section of The Daily Iowan, served as the section Editor, enjoyed a short stint at the Tennessean in Nashivill, TN, and published an article in Upscale Magazine.

Akwi currently teaches at Washington High School and serves as Director of The Academy for Scholastic and Personal Success. She was gently nudged into acting by a colleague who convinced her to "just try it out". Since then, she has appeared in Macbeth, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Midsummer Night's Dream for the Classics at Brucemore.  This is Akwi's second season as a writer and actor with SPT Theatre's "Writers' Room" series. The job that makes her happiest, however, is that of mother to two amazing daughters.

Mary Sullivan grew up in Cedar Rapids, and then lived for many years in New York City and Los Angeles before returning to Iowa in 2008. She is a director, actor, lighting designer and a writer! In NYC she appeared Off-Broadway in the play Lovers, and on Broadway in The Real Thing. Mary has acted at regional theatres around the country from Portland, ME, where she was in the Curse of the Starving Class to Portland's, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where she played Laura in The Glass Menagerie. 

In LA, Mary acted in many national commercials, some theatre, a little film and television. Her first job was in the film Baby Boom.  She directed plays for several years at Glendale College, and did lighting designs for plays in Glendale, Santa Monica, & Hollywood. Mary was an actor & lighting designer with the Theatre Banshee Company in Burbank for many years.

Here in Iowa, Mary has worked with Riverside Theatre in Iowa City for the past dozen years, as an actor in such shows as How I Learned to Drive, Stop Kiss and several shows for Riverside's Shakespeare Festival. For the past seven years she has directed Riverside Theatre's Young People's Company and also directed Raising Medusa at Riverside Theatre.  She did lighting design for The Glass Menagerie at Old Creamery Theatre.

Adam Witte has been writing for as long as he can remember: stories, plays, and comics.  Born in Hinsdale, IL and raised in Normal, IL (yes, yes..."Normal"... he's heard it all before), Mr. Witte attended the Unviersity of Iowa, earning a Bachelor's Degree in English in '95 and spending alot of time loitering in the IA Writer's Workshop hallways, hoping to be mistaken for a member of that esteemed group. 

Mr. Witte works at Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, IA, where he is a teacher and Chair of the Language Arts Department.  His stage work includes numerous roles in The Classics at Brucemore.  He wrote and performed in the SPT productions; Tic...Tic...Tic...a Musical Midlife Crisis, an evening of monologues in 2007 and Biographical Notes: An Incidental Musical, in 2008, performed at Riverside Theatre in Iowa City.  

Since then he has been a member of SPT Theatre's "Writers' Room". His published work has appeared in The Armchair Aesthete & Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine  as well as Iowa City's Little Village magazine, which publishes his series IA Confidential, a comic-book history of Iowa City crime.  Mr. Witte lives in Iowa City with his beautiful wife Candice and their seven cats.  He is a lucky man.