Marion McClinton (Director) is making his Missouri Repertory Theatre directorial debut with Joe Turner's Come and Gone. With this production, he becomes the first person to have directed all eight extant plays in August Wilson's cycle covering the African-American experience in every decade of the 20th century.

Mr. McClinton was nominated for a Tony Award last season for his direction of Wilson's King Hedley II on Broadway, having previously staged it at leading theatres from Boston to Los Angeles. Mr. McClinton's staging of Jitney, created at the Huntington Theatre Company, continued its life at Center Stage, Buffalo's Studio Arena Theatre, GeVa Theatre, the Goodman Theatre, and the Mark Taper Forum; it then played a long-run in New York, winning numerous awards including an Obie for best direction, and this season won the Olivier Award for best play in London. Mr. McClinton's other Wilson productions include Seven Guitars for Center Stage and Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Two Trains Running for Baltimore's Center Stage, The Piano Lesson for Penumbra Theatre, and Fences for Indiana Repertory Theatre. Mr. McClinton has also directed at the Guthrie Theater, Hartford Stage, La Jolla Playhouse, Arena Stage, Joseph Papp Public Theatre, Dallas Theater Center, and Syracuse Stage. This season Mr. McClinton has directed Talk, which opened April 5 at the Public Theatre in New York, Breath, Boom at Playwrights Horizons Theatre in New York, A Raisin in the Sun at Center Stage, and Thunder Knocking at the Door at Trinity Rep in Providence. As an actor he has appeared in Wilson's Black Bart and the Sacred Hills, Jitney, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom; he was featured in Missouri Repertory Theatre's 1991 production of Fences. Mr. McClinton is also a widely recognized playwright whose plays Police Boys, Who Causes Darkness_, Hunters of the Soul, Stones and Bones, Walkers, and Enlightenment on an Enchanted Island have been performed in New York and across the country. He is an associate artist of Center Stage, a company member of Penumbra Theatre Company, and an alumnus of the Playwright's Center and New Dramatists.

Neil Patel (Scenic Designer) has recently designed the sets for the Tony Award winning Sideman on Broadway, the West End and Tokyo, and Dinner with Friends, for which he received a Drama Desk nomination. Mr. Patel's work with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company has appeared at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Exit Festival in Paris, the Holland Festival, the Hebbel Theatre in Berlin, Theatre Archa in Prague, Festival Ibero Americano in Bogota, New York Theatre Workshop, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He has designed the world premieres of plays by Tony Kushner, David Rabe, John Guare, Jose Rivera, Craig Lucas, and Chuck Mee, and has collaborated with directors such as Marion McClinton, Daniel Sullivan, Michael Mayer, and Robert Woodruff. His has also designed for Roundabout Theatre, the Joseph Papp Public Theater, Playwright's Horizons, the Guthrie Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, La Jolla Playhouse, Steppenwolf Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, and the Alley Theatre. He has received two Drama Desk Award nominations, four Dramalogue Awards, an EDDY award and two Obie Awards for Sustained Excellence in Set Design. Mr. Patel was educated at Yale College, Accademia di Belle Arti Brera and the University of California at San Diego.

Jennifer Myers Ecton (Costume Designer) has designed at Missouri Rep for Metropolitan Youth Company and A Christmas Carol, and has been assistant designer for the Rep's productions of Morning Star, The Philadelphia Story, Company, Major Barbara, and Inherit the Wind. Ms. Ecton has designed costumes for Hamlet and Woman in Mind at William Jewell College, The Little Princess and The Glass Menagerie at Coterie Theatre, and The Shadow Box at Marquette University. She received her BFA from Marquette and her MFA from UMKC. Ms. Ecton is an adjunct professor of design at William Jewell College.

Donald Holder (Lighting Designer) has won a Tony Award, Outer Critic Circle Award, and Drama Desk Award, among others, for his lighting design for the Broadway and London productions of The Lion King. His other design credits include The Last Hurrah, The Mikado, and Jitney for Huntington Theatre Company, Tiny Alice at Hartford Stage Company, Sight Unseen and Three Days of Rain at Manhattan Theatre Club, Avenue X at Playwrights Horizons, Desire Under the Elms at Berkshire Theatre Festival, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle and Spunk for the New York Shakespeare Festival. Mr. Holder's New York work also includes Richard II, Richard III, Titus Andronicus, The Green Bird, and The Changeling for Theatre for a New Audience, Hughie (for which he received an American Theatre Wing nomination) at Circle in the Square, and Juan Darien at Lincoln Center Theatre, for which he received Tony Award and Drama Desk Award nominations. Mr. Holder is a graduate of Yale School of Drama.

Rob Milburn (Composer, Sound Designer) is a resident designer at the Goodman Theater and also works extensively with Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble. His Broadway credits include music composition and sound for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, My Thing of Love and The Speed of Darkness and sound designs for Buried Child, The Song of Jacob Zulu, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, The Grapes of Wrath, and August Wilson's King Hedley II. Off Broadway he has composed music and sound for Boy Gets Girl, Jitney, Space, Red, Sin and Marvin's Room, which he also designed for its productions in Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. In London, he has designed the sound and music for Sam Shepard's Eyes for Consuela, and he designed sound for Jitney. He also designed sound for the national tour of Angels in America. He has designed or composed for many other leading American resident theatres including the Huntington Theatre where he designed the sound for Jitney and Bang the Drum Slowly and composed original music for Ah, Wilderness!. Mr. Milburn has been the recipient of thirty-one award nominations, winning fourteen awards for original music or sound design, including the Michael Merritt Award for Design and Collaboration.

Michael Bodeen (Sound Designer, Composer) has designed the music and the sound for One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, and the music for My Thing of Love on Broadway. His off-Broadway credits include designing the music and sound for Boy Gets Girl and Red at Manhattan Theatre Club, the music and sound for Space, and the music for Measure for Measure and Henry VIII at Public Theatre/New York Shakespeare Festival, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci at the Serious Fun Festival, and the music for From the Mississippi Delta at Circle in the Square. He has designed sound or composed music at many regional theatres including Arena Stage, Berkeley Repertory, Center Stage, the Goodman Theatre, Hartford Stage, Huntington Theatre Company, La Jolla Playhouse, Mark Taper Forum, McCarter Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory, Seattle Repertory, and Steppenwolf Theatre. His work has appeared internationally at Barbican Centre in London and Suzuki Acting Company in Japan. Mr. Bodeen has been awarded the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle award for music, the Garland Award for sound design, a Theatre LA Ovation nomination, a Drama Desk nomination, and fourteen Joseph Jefferson nominations resulting in five awards, three for original music and two for sound design.

Orbert Davis (Music) has recorded more than 2,700 television and radio commercials and many record projects for such artists as Ramsey Lewis, Kurt Elling, Oscar Lopez, Charles Earland, and William Russo's Chicago Jazz Ensemble. He also has been a featured soloist at the Chicago Jazz Festival, performing with Miles Davis and Gil Evans, among others. Mr. Davis' composition, "Concerto for Jazz Quartet and Orchestra" premiered with the Chicago Sinfonietta Orchestra in November 1998 at Chicago's Symphony Center. He has shared the stage with Wynton Marsalis, Thelonius Monk, Stevie Wonder, Dr. John, Kurt Elling, Ernie Watts, Ramsey Lewis, Grover Washington Jr. and the Smithsonian Masterworks Jazz Orchestra. Mr. Davis was the winner of the 1995 Cognac Hennessy National Jazz Search and was chosen as one of the Chicago Tribune's "1995 Arts People of the Year." Chicago Magazine named him "Y2K Best Trumpeter in Chicago." Mr. Davis recently completed musical arrangements for the upcoming DreamWorks feature film Road to Perdition in which he'll also have a cameo appearance.

Peter Altman (Producing Artistic Director) is in his second season as the leader of Missouri Repertory Theatre. Prior to coming to Kansas City, Mr. Altman served for eighteen years as founding producing director of the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston. In addition to directing all of the Huntington's artistic operations and planning, Mr. Altman oversaw all of that company's first 96 productions, among them over forty Boston, regional, and world premieres, nine plays by Shakespeare, a wide range of other classics, and ten major musicals. Under his leadership, the Huntington built its audience to include over 18,500 subscribers and won many honors, including Boston Theatre Awards for Best Production by a large resident theatre five of his last six years (for The Woman Warrior, A Raisin in the Sun, The Game of Love and Chance, Jitney, and Mary Stuart). It also shared four Tony nominations for its productions of plays by August Wilson. Prior to the Huntington, Mr. Altman served nearly a decade as Theatre Critic, Arts Editor, and columnist for the Minneapolis Star. He also has been Literary Manager of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Associate Producer of the Hartman Theatre, and co-director of the School of Theatre Arts and Associate Dean of the School for the Arts at Boston University. He has taught for over 25 years at the University of Minnesota, Boston University, and UMKC, his subjects including Modern Drama, Shakespeare, Dramatic Criticism, and Theatre History. He has been featured regularly on radio stations KSJN-FM, Minneapolis, and WBUR-FM, Boston, and has contributed to many publications, including The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Opera News, and Musical Newsletter. He is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania and also studied at Harvard University, the University of Urbino, Italy, and in Germany. Mr. Altman's honors include a National Endowment for the Arts critic's fellowship, a Bush Foundation fellowship for study and travel, and the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Contribution to Professional Theatre in Boston.

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