Rachel Carson Speaks at Anderson Auditorium

Originally from Southwest Virginia, Tiffany moved to New York City over 20 years ago to pursue a career in acting. Since then she has worked in several independent films, true-crime reenactment television shows, and has recently returned to the stage after rediscovering her passion for theatre. The last production she was in, Suite Sappho by James F. Broderick, completed a successful run the latest New York Theater Festival. She is truly honored to be portraying Rachel Carson in such an important and currently relevant work. Her favorite pastimes are hanging out with her husband Francisco and cat Sophie, as well as drinking coffee and thrifting unique fashion finds.

Bobni Das appeared in "Little Jewel" at the Theatre for the New City last summer as part of their New Plays Festival.

Ann Kathrine Grippo is thrilled to be a part of this very important piece!!! And that we'll be celebrating Earth Day together!!! Last seen on stage portraying Vita Loise Simmons in the classic, "Harvey"!!! Enjoying everything there is about theater and always learning as I go!! Thank you Frank Farrell for this amazing opportunity!!

Kalliopy Paleos is honored to be a part of this talented cast. Prior performances include Helen in First Flight Theatre’s production of "Night of the Living Dead" as well as Theseus in "A Midsummer Night’s Dream," Aunt ToniAnn in "My Big Gay Italian Wedding" and "Honey" with Old Library Theatre, and Lucille in "Gemini" and Louisa in "A Moveable Feast" for Nutley Little Theatre. Prior theater studies include Improvisation at NJSDA as well as workshops with Arcanthea, a troupe in Montpelier, France.

FRANK FARRELL in August 2025 directed Little Jewel at the Theatre for the New City in NYC. In 2024 he co-produced and directed Walt Kelly’s Songs of the Pogo as part of the New York City Fringe Festival, produced Hamlet on the Run at the Tank Theater and co-produced and directed Tongs and Bones Shakespeare at the Theater for the New City, he directed Little Women, Poe: An Evening of Mystery and the Macabre and Dickens Presents A Christmas Carol for the Hermitage in New Jersey. In 2023 Frank produced and directed Shakespeare’s Ladies at Tea and Shakespeare’s Deaths as part of the Little Shakespeare Festival in NYC. He was an actor in Chicago for 40 years receiving four Joseph Jefferson acting nominations and returned to NYC and New Jersey in 2016. While in Chicago he directed and produced plays for the Free Shakespeare Theatre Company, Temporary Theatre, Shakespeare’s Herd, Steppenwolf Theater, Raven Theatre, Equity Library Theater Chicago, the North Lakeside Players, Citadel Theater, and Theatre-Hikes. Frank has formed seven theater companies including the Free Shakespeare Theatre Company (Chicago’s first year-round Shakespeare theatre company), Theatre-Hikes, the Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company in Grand Haven, Michigan and in 2019 the First Flight Theatre Company. For FFTC he directed and produced 2022’s production of Maxwell Anderson’s play Valley Forge. Frank has published six plays by Anderson from the 1920s: What Price Glory, First Flight, The Buccaneer, Outside Looking In, Gods of the Lightning and Sea-Wife all available at Amazon.com.

Rachel Carson was an American marine biologist, writer, and conservationist whose lyrical and scientifically rigorous works, including her Sea Trilogy and the groundbreaking Silent Spring, helped ignite the global environmental movement. Her research on the dangers of synthetic pesticides spurred policy changes, a DDT ban in the U.S., and inspired the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

BEN MASTERTON has composed and arranged music for dozens of Shakespeare productions in Chicago with the Shakespeare Festival of Chicago, Free Shakespeare, and Body Politic, including Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Winter's Tale, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night, Merchant of Venice and All's Well That Ends Well. Other favorite productions include The Lennon Play, Dagon, The Lorenzaccio Story, A Dorothy Parker Revue, Dear Brutus, The Songs of the Pogo Podcast (with Frank Farrell), The Imaginary Invalid, The Successful Life of 3, The Snow Queen, The Crucible and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Raven Theater), Three Sisters (Commons Theater), and The Enchanted (Chicago Waldorf School). Ben has written over a hundred songs and currently resides in Gainesville, Florida.

Since 1973, Terry Leonino and Greg Artzner have brought their unique sound and remarkable versatility to audiences everywhere, featuring traditional and vintage Americana to contemporary and stirring original compositions. They are Magpie.

Attilio Favorini is the recipient of a Playwriting Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Of his five plays, Steel/City (written with Gillette Elvgren) was named on the Ten Best List of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1976 and as Best Production of the Year by the City Paper in 1992. Steel/City was further honored by an invitation to the Smithsonian Institution's Festival of American Folklife. Scenes from the play were performed at the 1992 National Convention of the United Steelworkers of America. The play has been published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Hearts and Diamonds is a quasi-documentary representing the intersection of two women's lives in Pittsburgh early in the 20th century; Willa Cather and Lillian Russell. Bones, a postmodern suspense drama based on the events of the "Piltdown Man" hoax, was presented in a staged reading in the City Theatre's TNT (Tuesday Night Theatre) series. In New York, it was directed in a staged reading by Roger Simon and featured Fritz Weaver in the main role of Arthur Conan Doyle. Yearbook, which contrasts the high school experiences of students in the 1950s and 1990s, was commissioned by Generations Together and toured high schools and senior citizen centers in Western Pensylvania. In the Garden of Live Flowers (written with Lynne Conner) won the 2002 Kennedy Center/ATHE David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award and a Jane Chambers 2002 Honorable Mention Award. This play uses scenes from the play IN THE GARDEN OF LIVE FLOWERS by Attilio Favorini & Lynne Conner.

Lynne Conner's plays and adaptations have been commissioned and produced by the Pittsburgh Playhouse, Pitt Repertory Theatre, Prime Stage, Gemini Theatre, Quantum Theatre, The Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival Young Company, the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society/Unseam'd Shakespeare Company, Gateway to the Arts and the Heinz History Center. In the Garden of Live Flowers (written with Attilio Favorini) won the 2002 Kennedy Center/ATHE David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award and a Jane Chambers 2002 Honorable Mention Award. Her play Nina was included in the Smith College New Play Reading Series in March 2002, won the Gemini Theater New Play Festival competition and was named a finalist in the Dorothy Silver Playwriting Award and the Oglebay Institute Towngate Theatre Playwriting Contest. As the founding director of the Heinz History Center's Stages in History professional theatre company, she wrote over 50 one-act plays, monologues and short scenes, including the one-act play, John and Sarah: Scenes from a Love Story, which received the Pennsylvania Federation of Museums Award of Merit/Outstanding Museum Programs in May 2000. Dr. Conner is assistant professor in the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Theatre Arts. She has received grants in support of her playwriting from the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, the Pittsburgh Foundation, the Alcoa Foundation, the Howard and Nell E. Miller Foundation and the Hewlett-Packard Foundation. This play uses scenes from the play IN THE GARDEN OF LIVE FLOWERS by Attilio Favorini & Lynne Conner.