This production of Shame the Devil! An Audience with Fanny Kemble by Anne Ludlum

is a collaboration by the faculty in the School of Theatre at Illinois State University.

LORI ADAMS (Actor)

Lori Adams has been a member of Illinois State Theatre acting faculty since 1997. She teaches acting, voice and also directs. She spent the summer of 2005 as part of the acting company for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival where she appeared in Macbeth and Henry VIII. Lori is currently portraying Fanny Kemble in Shame the Devil! An Audience with Fanny Kemble by Anne Ludlum. This one-woman show about nineteenth-century actress, abolitionist, and writer, Fanny Kemble, tours to theatres and universities across the country. As an actor, Lori has also worked with Nebraska Repertory Theatre, Actor's Theatre of Arizona, Actor's Lab Arizona, Childsplay Inc., and with the Breadline Theatre Group. She has appeared in the Illinois Shakespeare Festival benefit performance of Blue Yonder (with Tandy Cronyn) and with Tony-award winner, John Randolph, in Broadway Bound. In 2001 she performed the role of Stephanie Abrahams in Duet for One as an ISU faculty showcase. She has been seen on the Heartland Theatre stage as Patrice in A Fair Country and Maureen in The Beauty Queen of Lenane and as Hazel in Tiny Island. As a director, Lori's productions of To Kill a Mockingbird, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Grapes of Wrath, and A View from the Bridge opened four seasons of ISU theatre while serving the duel purpose of linking the School of Theatre to the University's Foundations of Inquiry general education curriculum. Her production of the original script, FRONT, was presented at the Region III American College Theatre Festival where it was selected as the 1996 Fourth Freedom Forum National Peace Play Award Winner. She most recently directed Crimes of Heart at Illinois State University. Lori holds an M.F.A. in Acting from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She has taught at Illinois Wesleyan University and Arizona State University. In 2000, Lori received the College of Fine Arts Outstanding University Teacher Award.

JANET WILSON (Director)

Janet joined the esteemed faculty of Illinois State as an Assistant Professor teaching acting in the fall of 2001. Janet directed Shame the Devil! An Audience with Fanny Kemble and continues to tour with the show to conduct talk backs and seminars in conjunction with artistic residencies at theatres and universities. Janet earned her BA in speech/theatre from Baldwin-Wallace College, then moved to New York City in 1977 where she began intensive training with Frances Chaney, one of Sanford Meisner's earliest teacher trainees. After earning membership in the professional unions (Equity, SAG & AFTRA) she worked in all areas of the business: theatre, film and television. In 1986 she established a Meisner acting studio and later taught for the Riverside Shakespeare Company. After moving to Richmond, Virginia in 1991 she taught acting for Shadowcast Theatre Works, and in 1994 she became a Founding Member of the Firehouse Theatre Project. She served as Co-Artistic Director and Director of Education for FTP where she produced, directed and acted in numerous productions. FTP received the 1998 Theresa Pollack Award for Excellence in the Arts. After teaching acting at Virginia Commonwealth University for three years, she enrolled as a student there to earn an MFA degree in theatre pedagogy, completed in May 2001. Janet is also a published and produced playwright and a member of The Dramatists Guild. Her article about the New Voices Program at TheatreVirginia is published in the Fall 2001 issue of Southern Theatre. In addition to her teaching responsibilities at Illinois State, Janet co-founded and serves as a faculty advisor to The Women's Project, a registered student organization (RSO) that empowers women to produce, direct, design, and perform theatre: by women, about women, for women. She spent the summer of 2002 researching and directing A Piece of My Heart about women who served America in Vietnam by Shirley Lauro for the AmeriCulture Arts Festival in Massachusetts. In the spring of 2004, Janet directed Roosters by Milcha Sanchez-Scott for ISU Crossroads Theatre. Most recently, Janet appeared on stage in Tiny Island by Michael Hollinger at Heartland Theatre.

JOHN C. STARK (Scenic Designer)

John C. Stark is a Professor of Design who joined Illinois State University in 1991 following teaching positions at Illinois Wesleyan University and Arizona State University. He has produced more than 100 designs for companies including: Next Theatre, Chicago, IL; Victory Gardens Theatre, Chicago IL; Famous Door Theatre, Chicago, IL; Noble Fool Theatre, Chicago, IL; Pennsylvania Centre Stage, State College, PA; The Wax Lips Theatre, Chicago, IL; Sacramento Theatre Company, Sacramento, CA; Indiana Repertory Theatre, Indianapolis, IN; Nebraska Repertory Theatre, Lincoln, NE; Actors Theatre of Phoenix AZ; and Childsplay, Inc., Tempe, AZ. John received a 1997 Joseph Jefferson Award for his scenic design of The Living at the Famous Door Theatre, Chicago, IL. John is the resident Scenic Designer for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival where he has produced at least one design each season since 1993. His recent designs for the festival include Hamlet, Twelfth Night, As You Like It and King Lear. John is a member of the United Scenic Artists of America - 829, Scenic Design. He is also active in The United States Institute of Theatre Technology, American College Theatre Festival and the Illinois High School Theatre Festival...............and he is married to Fanny Kemble...... well actually he's married to Lori Adams who brings Fanny to life in this production.

LAUREN LOWELL (Costume Designer)

Lauren Lowell is a Professor of Costume Design at Illinois State University. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in Costume Design from the University of Georgia. She also holds a Bachelor of Art degree from Central Michigan University with a major in General Theatre and double minors in Music and Broadcasting.

Recent design credits include Bald Grace, Pirate Queen (The Stockyards Theatre Project, Chicago, IL); Nine, Where’s Charley, and Suessical! The Musical (The Little Theatre on the Square, Sullivan, IL); As You Like It (Illinois Shakespeare Festival); Glass Menagerie (Apollo Professional Theatre); Shame the Devil! An Audience with Fanny Kemble (The Fanny Kemble Project); Macbeth (Shakespeare Under the Stars, Muncie, IN); Before the Fire (University of Georgia, Shorter College, and the New York Fringe Festival); The Crucible, Amadeus, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Illinois State University); Measure for Measure and The Living Newspaper: 1935 (University of Georgia). She recently created the look of Angeline Milner for an upcoming episode of WEIRD TRAVELS broadcast on The Travel Channel.

Lauren spent 5 years at The Highlands Playhouse in the mountains of North Carolina where she served in various capacities including 3 years as the Costume Shop Manager and Resident Designer. Lauren is an active member of the United States Institute of Theatre Technology. She studied drawing with Broadway designer Charles Berliner and draping and construction with NYU costumer Maggie Raywood. Lauren received the W. Joseph Stell Design Expo Award in 2001, and the USITT-SE Design Award in 2000.

JULIE MACK (Lighting Designer)

Julie is an Associate Professor of Lighting Design at Illinois State University. Currently, Julie is the Festival Lighting Designer for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, designing Two Gentlemen of Verona, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Hamlet. Recent lighting designs include Anything Goes at the Skylight Opera Theatre in Milwaukee, Speaking in Tongues at Famous Door Theatre and The Underpants at The Noble Fool Theatre, both in Chicago, and the 2003 Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Other Chicago credits include the Victory Gardens Theater, American Theatre Company, and Theatre on the Lake. Julie is a co-founder of the Fairbanks Shakespeare Theatre in Fairbanks, Alaska, now in its twelfth season.

AARON PAOLUCCI (Sound Designer)

Aaron Paolucci has been an Assistant Professor at Illinois State University since 1999 and currently teaches in both the Arts Technology program and the School of Theatre. He earned a B.F.A. in Technical Theatre from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and an M.F.A. in Theatre Design and Technology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. His emphasis is in theater sound design and digital audio creations, editing, and engineering. He is the sound supervisor for the School of Theater and the Arts Technology program and has made major contributions to the design and development of the audio systems at the new Ewing Theater and the Center for the Performing Arts. He has been the Resident Sound Designer for the nationally recognized Illinois Shakespeare Festival since 1999. His recent credits include Sound Designer for The Merchant of Venice directed by the internationally renowned Joshua Sobol, Mixdown Engineer for the latest Barron James Band album Inside Your Head, and audio designer for the Dance Crash Company in Chicago.

ANNE LUDLUM (Playwright)

Like Fanny Kemble, Anne Ludlum is an actress and a journalist as well as a playwright. Ludlum’s fascination with Kemble’s autobiographical books led to several years researching 19th century politics and morés and, finally, writing SHAME THE DEVIL! AN AUDIENCE WITH FANNY KEMBLE. The play debuted at The Group, Seattle’s MultiCultural Theatre, and has been subsequently been produced on the East and West Coasts and in Alaska.

COVER SHOT, Ludlum’s new play, is a 2003 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Competition Finalist. The script was developed with the assistance of readings at New York Theatre Workshop, Montana Repertory Theatre and The Empty Space Theatre; residencies at the Missoula Colony in Montana and the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois; a grant from Artist Trust, Washington; and counsel from Mame Hunt, dramaturg, through the Freehold Theatre Lab in Seattle, Washington.

Ludlum’s high school years in Havana, Cuba, and extended stays in Latin American and Spain, inspired her play KATE AND ISABLE, in which a contemporary American actress confronts Isabel, the Spanish Catholic Monarch of 1492. Like SHAME THE DEVIL!, it is published by Dramatic Publishing Co. and has been seen regionally.

As an actress, Anne Ludlum has appeared in regional theatres and in such movies as Twice in a Lifetime and Under One Roof on television. She’s also taught theatre at Miss Hall’s School in Massachusetts and acting at the University of Washington and Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington.

Ludlum’s reviews and commentaries have appeared on National Public Radio and in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Seattle Times, The Journal American in Washington; The Berkshire Eagle in Massachusetts; Equity News and Cover Magazine in New York; and The Caracas Journal in Venezuela.

She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the performers’ unions Equity, SAG and AFTRA. During the 2003-4 season, Ludlum was Visiting Playwright at the Seattle Repertory Theatre.

"As you from crimes would pardoned be,

Let your indulgence set me free."

[William Shakespeare's The Tempest]

Production photographs by Jesse Folks