Michael Rohd is founding artistic director of Sojourn Theatre in Portland, Oregon, where his original work includes Cities on a Hill and Look Away (co-created with Laura Eason of Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre). He has recently created and directed productions in Virginia, Finland and New Jersey. Rhod’s recent collaboration with Ping Chong, Truth & Beauty, premiered in New York City in late 2001, and will tour internationally. It is the featured script in the February 2001 issue of American Theatre magazine.
Rohd is the artistic director of Hope is Vital, an international theatre and community dialogue resource he founded in 1992. He designs and implements outreach models, trainings and theatre projects in a variety of settings. Hope is Vital works with high schools, universities, social service agencies and arts organizations around the United States using performance process to facilitate conscience dialogue around community identified social issues. His book Theatre for Community, Conflict and Dialogue is a training manual used by practitioners around the world. His undergraduate theatre degree is from Northwestern University. He has an MFA in directing from Virginia Tech, where he studied with Robert H. Leonard, founder of the pioneering Road Company in Johnson City, Tennessee.
Jules Bausch has been studying and practicing theater arts most of her life. While attending Virginia Tech, Jules was offered an opportunity to participate in two national tours, The Nutcracker and The Miracle Worker, with the National Theatre of the Performing Arts in New York City. Afterwards, she returned to Virginia Tech to complete a Bachelor of Arts with a concentration in music and dance. After graduation, Jules moved to Portland, Oregon as a founding member of Sojourn Theatre. She has been steadily working with Sojourn on a number of productions including Cities On A Hill, The Justice Project, Tartuffe, and touring around Oregon with Sojourn's touring show, Look Away, a piece geared towards helping teens deal with adolescence in today's society.
Bobby Bermea is an actor and a playwright who's spent most of his adult life in the Pacific Northwest in the cities of Seattle and Portland. As an actor, he's appeared in theaters coast to coast in plays such as Beirut, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Killers, Police Boys, Fraternity, A Raisin In The Sun (Portland Drama Critics Circle Award), Life Is A Dream, and his first production with Sojourn Theatre, The Justice Project: I Am Not Who I Might Have Been. This critical and commercial success led to a further collaboration in Hidden as part of the Anne Frank Exhibit and becoming an artistic associate with Sojourn Theatre; an honor of which he is very proud. Bobby also has done extensive work with so called "at-risk" youth, teaching life skills using theater as a paradigm and had directed a number of plays with these groups, including Frankenstein, The Martian Chronicles, The Dragon's Pearl, A Day In The Life Of Cordero and The Village.
Jono Eiland is a graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (Virginia Tech) with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theater Arts. While at Virginia Tech, Jono starred in several main stage productions, including The Misanthrope, Guys And Dolls, Shakespeare: Seen By Scene, Wish The Moon Swallow The Whole Hot Sun and as Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing, which earned him the 2000 Virginia Tech Theatre Arts Award. Jono is currently a company member of Sojourn Theatre, an organization of which he is also a founding member. Since its inception in 1999, Jono has been an active contributor in all aspects of development and performance of Sojourn's productions: Cities On A Hill, The Justice Project: I Am Not Who I Might Have Been, Tartuffe: The Visitor and Look Away, a touring piece exploring issues of youth and violence which was featured at the 2000 Oregon Peacemakers' Conference.
Ryan Keilty is a founding company member of Sojurn Theatre. He was most recently seen in the World premier of Reason directed by Ping Chong and Sojourn artistic director Michael Rohd at the market theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Recent credits for Sojourn include Look Away, Cities On A Hill, The Justice Project: I Am Not Now Who I Might Have Been, and Tartuffe: The Visitor, Sojourn's adaptation of Moliere's classic. While touring with Sojourn's Look Away, Ryan facilitated workshops and talk backs with thousands of youth in urban and rural settings. Ryan is a graduate of Virginia Tech with a BA in theater and philosophy.
Hannah Treuhaft is a graduate of Northwestern University in Chigago, Illinois where she studied acting and religion. She moved to Portland, Oregon to work with Sojourn Theatre in numerous capacities - as an artist and an administration producer. This is the balance she struck in Chicago when she performed in such shows as The Cleansing, Love's Fire, A New Brain, and The BFG while simultaneously producing The Grapes Of Wrath, Assassins and The BFG, which went on to perform at the Chicago International Puppetry Festival in the Summer of 2001.
Jennifer Van Nice graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in theater and continued her actor training with Shakespeare & Company in Lennox, Massachusetts before becoming a founding member of Sojourn Theatre. Her recent roles include Kitty Cochrane in Last Summer At Bluefish Cove, Celia in As You Like It, Miranda in The Tempest, and various roles in Sojourn's Cities On A Hill, Look Away, The Justice Project and Tartuffe: The Visitor.
