Ashley Risteen (Creature, Agatha, Female Creature, Elizabeth) is excited to be working with Central Square Theater. She has previously appeared in Beckett in Brief (Commonwealth Shakespeare Co.), Man in Snow (Gloucester Stage Co.), appropriate (Speakeasy Stage), Faceless, Cakewalk, The Big Meal, Neighbourhood Watch (Zeitgeist Stage Co.), Penny Penniworth (Titanic Theatre Co.), 6 Hotels (Hub Theatre Co.), Love/Sick, The 39 Steps, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Firehouse Center for the Arts), Speed-the-Plow, and Picnic (Actor’s Studio of Newburyport) among others in the Boston and North Shore.

October 2018

Omar Robinson* (Creature, Client, Felix, Servant, Ewan) Previous credits include Much Ado About Nothing, The School for Scandal, The Comedy of Errors, Henry VIII, Romeo & Juliet, Pericles, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet in the title role (Actors’ Shakespeare Project), Superior Donuts, Death of a Salesman, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning (Lyric Stage Co. of Boston), Tartuffe (Huntington Theatre Co.), Pride & Prejudice (Dorset Theatre Festival), Shakespeare in Love (SpeakEasy Stage Co.), Lost Tempo (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre), The Hunchback of Seville (Trinity Repertory Co.), Dog Paddle (Bridge Repertory Theater). He is a member of Theatre Espresso, an educational theatre company that performs throughout New England, and a Resident Acting Company member of Actors’ Shakespeare Project. He received a BA in Acting and Television/Video Production from Emerson College.

October 2018

Rebecca Bradshaw is a theatre director and producer in the Boston area. Directing credits include: Rebecca Gilman’s LUNA GALE (Stoneham Theatre), Joshua Harmon’s BAD JEWS (SpeakEasy Stage), Charles Mee’s BIG LOVE (Brandeis University), Stephen Karam’s SPEECH AND DEBATE (Bad Habit Productions), David Mamet’s OLEANNA and John Logan’s RED (The Umbrella), William Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST and Mary Zimmerman’s THE SECRET IN THE WINGS (Weston Drama Workshop), Obehi Janice’s FUFU & OREOS and MJ Halberstadt’s NOT JENNY (Bridge Rep), Timberlake Wertenbaker’s THE LOVE OF THE NIGHTINGALE (Hub Theatre of Boston), MJ Halberstadt’s THE DA VINCI COMMISSION (Can’t Wait Productions), Patrick Gabridge’s FIRE ON EARTH (Fresh Ink Theatre), and Mark Mazzenga’s A FEEBLE MIND (Brown Box Theatre Project). She has directed for other local institutions, including Huntington Theatre Company, Gloucester Stage, New Repertory Theatre, Boston University, New England Conservatory, Emerson College, and Harvard University. Ms. Bradshaw holds a BA from Emerson College in Theatre Studies. rebeccalynnbradshaw.com

Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), was the daughter of the radical philosopher William Godwin, who described her as ‘singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind’. Her mother, who died days after her birth, was the famous defender of women’s rights, Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary grew up with five semi-related siblings in Godwin’s unconventional but intellectually electric household.

At the age of 16, Mary eloped to Italy with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who praised ‘the irresistible wildness & sublimity of her feelings’. Each encouraged the other’s writing, and they married in 1816 after the suicide of Shelley’s wife. They had several children, of whom only one survived.

A ghost-writing contest on a stormy June night in 1816 inspired Frankenstein, often called the first true work of science-fiction. Superficially a Gothic novel, and influenced by the experiments of Luigi Galvani, it was concerned with the destructive nature of power when allied to wealth. It was an instant wonder, and spawned a mythology all its own that endures to this day.

After Percy Shelley’s death in 1822, she returned to London and pursued a very successful writing career as a novelist, biographer and travel writer. She also edited and promoted her husband’s poems and other writings.