Gabriel Vega Weissman 1(Director) Previously for Central square Theatre: Guards at the Taj (Boston Globe Top 10 Theatre of 2018). Gabriel has directed and developed work with companies including New York Theatre Workshop, Atlantic Theater Company, Primary Stages, A.R.T., Williamstown Theatre Festival, New Dramatists, Northern Stage, San Diego REP, National Black Theatre, Castillo Theatre, BRIC, and NYMF. He has directed concert events for Emmy Award nominated actor and musician Tituss Burgess at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall and co-directed productions of 2:22-A Ghost Story on the West End in London and in Melbourne, Australia. He has served as associate director on seven Broadway productions. Gabriel is an alum of the Drama League Director’s Project, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, Manhattan Theatre Club Directing Fellowship, Williamstown Theatre Festival Professional Training Program and New York Theatre Workshop 2050 Fellowship. In 2015, he was the finalist for the inaugural Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Directors Fellowship.  His collection of short plays, Loose Canon, and his adaptation, Aristophanes’ The Birds, are licensed and published by Broadway Licensing and have been produced around the world. Knocked 7,000 doors in Pennsylvania and Georgia during 2020 and 2022 elections. Proud father to Caleb.
gabrielvegaweissman.com

1 The Director is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, a national theatrical labor union.

Charles Dickens (Author) is much loved for his great contribution to classic English literature. He was the quintessential Victorian author. His epic stories, vivid characters and exhaustive depiction of contemporary life are unforgettable. His own story is one of rags to riches. He was born in Portsmouth on February 7, 1812, to John and Elizabeth Dickens. The good fortune of being sent to school at the age of nine was short-lived because his father, inspiration for the character of Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield, was imprisoned for bad debt. The entire family, apart from Charles, were sent to Marshalsea along with their patriarch. Charles was sent to work in Warren’s blacking factory and endured appalling conditions as well as loneliness and despair. After three years he was returned to school, but the experience was never forgotten and became fictionalised in two of his better-known novels David Copperfield and Great Expectations. Like many others, he began his literary career as a journalist. His own father became a reporter and Charles began with the journals The Mirror of Parliament and The True Sun. Then in 1833 he became parliamentary journalist for The Morning Chronicle. With new contacts in the press he was able to publish a series of sketches under the pseudonym ‘Boz’. In April 1836, he married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of George Hogarth who edited Sketches by Boz. Within the same month came the publication of the highly successful Pickwick Papers, and from that point on there was no looking back for Dickens. As well as a huge list of novels he published an autobiography, edited weekly periodicals including Household Words and All Year Round, wrote travel books and administered charitable organizations. He was also a theatre enthusiast, wrote plays and performed before Queen Victoria in 1851. He was inexhaustible and he spent much time abroad – for example lecturing against slavery in the United States and touring Italy with companions Augustus Egg and Wilkie Collins, a contemporary writer who inspired Dickens’ final unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He was estranged from his wife in 1858 after the birth of their ten children, but maintained relations with his mistress, the actress Ellen Ternan. He died of a stroke in 1870. He is buried at Westminster Abbey.

Courtney O’Connor is a theatre director and teacher living in Boston, MA. She is a senior affiliated faculty member with Emerson College, where she teaches acting, directing, and aesthetics.

 Directing credits include Stage Kiss, Buyer & Cellar, Red Hot Patriot, Rich Girl, Stones in His Pockets, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (Associate Director, Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Direction, Outstanding Production, IRNE Award for Outstanding Direction, Outstanding Production, Outstanding Ensemble), Red Herring, The Miracle Worker (Lyric Stage Company of Boston); Much Ado About Nothing, Two Gentlemen of Verona, (Commonwealth Shakespeare Intern Company); Macbeth, A Midsummer Nights Dream (Shakespeare Now!); My Heart and My Flesh, The House of Yes, Sin, This is Our Youth (Coyote Theatre); Caucasian Chalk Circle, Dancing at Lughnasa, Big Love, Robin Hood, Six Characters in Search of an Author, The Long Christmas Dinner & Pullman Car Hiawatha, Picnic, The Women, and Holiday (Emerson Stage). Last summer, Courtney directed the world premiere of Blood on the Snow, a site-specific play by Patrick Gabridge at the Old State House in Boston examining the events the day after the Boston Massacre. After a sold out initial run, the play will return this summer for a three month residency. 

 Through her work with the Tremont Street Project/Coyote Theatre Project, Courtney has overseen the creation of more than 200 new 10-minute plays by at-risk youths from Boston. She has previously served as the Program Director of Emerson’s Summer Stage for High School Students, Education Director for Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, and the Artistic Director of Coyote Theatre. 

She received her B.A. from Cabrini College and her M.A. from Emerson College.

 Courtney is also the Managing Director of Abella Publishing Services.