Year: 2006

Meade Palidofsky, an award-winning playwright, lyricist, and director, is the founding Artistic Director of Storycatchers Theatre in Chicago (formerly known as Music Theatre Workshop). She retired in 2021 after 37 years spent creating and performing works with Chicago community youth and with detained and incarcerated youth with the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice (IDJJ) and the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Cent (JTDC). She guided the youth through more than 100 productions of groundbreaking musical theater at the Field Museum, the Chicago Park District, the University of Chicago, and her signature program in the Juvenile Justice system.

In 2010, Ms. Palidofsky spent a year with Dr. Bradley Stolbach, a trauma psychologist, as a result of being awarded a Chicago Community Trust Experienced Leader Fellowship. Over that year, she and Dr. Stolbach compared Ms. Palidofsky’s storywriting method to the tenets of Complex Trauma Therapy. This resulted in an article in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma, a presentation at the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies in Montreal, and a story and playwriting handbook, The Transformative Power of Story and Song. The handbook demonstrates a safe and healing storywriting method for training artists to support youth in healing from their experience of trauma. As part of the Community Trust Fellowship, Meade also worked with the Citizens Theater Community Arts program in Glasgow, Scotland, and with Music in Prison at the York Women’s Prison in England.

Ms. Palidofsky’s work with girls in prison is the subject of an Emmy award-winning documentary, Girls on the Wall (2010) directed and produced by Heather Ross, a California documentarian. Ms. Ross was inspired by an Ira Glass This American Life radio recording of the first Fabulous Females production at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center. Heather filmed a 6-months-long residency at the Illinois Youth Center in Warrenville with access to the creation of a new musical along with interviews of the girls and their families. In addition to the Emmy, Girls on the Wall was the winner of the Bermuda Film Festival and won a Silver Award at the Chicago International Film Festival.

Since retiring from Storycatchers in 2021, Ms. Palidofsky has worked with a group of 1990s Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center alumni called Remember Our Names. Together, they are writing a feature film script, Where The Bad Kids Go, based on their lives and experiences of nearly four years of detention waiting for trial before coming together to create and perform the musical Dreaming Among Friends with 40 other youth at the Detention Center in 1995. 30 years later, as productive members of the Community and mentors to youth, Remember Our Names has presented workshops with Criminal Justice and Theater students at the College of DuPage and was featured in the Race and Lawyering series at the Bluhm Legal Clinic at Northwestern University.

Since 2010, Meade has been a member of the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center Advisory Board where she is currently the Chair. Prior to the pandemic, she created workshops for the Chicago Police Department where CPD recruits performed in and analyzed behavioral choices posed by Chicago youth-written scripts about their challenging interactions with police.

Meade is a recipient of the Bright Promises Visionary Award (2021), the Schweitzer Leadership Award (2016), Aspen Ideas Festival and Lincoln Center presenter with Angelica Garcia (2014), the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award (2013), the Theater in Social Change Award (2011), Columbia College-Scotland Arts Exchange Artist (2009), the National Endowment for the Arts (1988-90), the Illinois Arts Council (1988-90), the Mercedes Mentor Award (1988) the American Musical Theatre Festival Grand Prize (1986), and the John Gassner Memorial Playwriting Foundation Award (1985), among others.

Meade received one of the very first Meier Awards (2006) and is eternally grateful for the experience of working with the amazing Helen Merrier (Meier) who portrayed the indomitable Grandma in Dreams of Defiance in showcases in New York and Defiance, Ohio, culminating in a production at the Theater Building in Chicago.

Read more about Meade’s work with youth in detention here.

Jim served as Artistic Director of Redmoon Theater from 1992 to 2009. As artistic director he created numerous original theater and spectacle events ranging from massive public celebrations to formal indoor shows. Originally co-artistic director with founder Blair Thomas, Jim became sole artistic director in 1998 and has been a principal voice in over 30 productions in this capacity. Most recently, Jim created The Princess Club, an exploration of gender, fantasy, and beauty. He also created Redmoon’s large scale spectacle Twilight Orchard in Columbus Park on Chicago’s West Side, attracting 7,500 audience members over seven evenings.

Jim’s other productions include The Golden Truffle, a dessert musical, and Galway’s Shadow, which converted the facade of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art into a giant shadow screen. The All Hallow’s Eve Ritual Celebration, which he conceived and directed, attracted tens of thousands of people to Logan Square for an evening of community spectacle from 1998 to 2002. He also collaborated on a large scale, site-specific spectacle with an international team in Tasmania, Australia entitled Dream Masons, which opened in March 2007.

Jim designed the Family Center at the Spertus Institute in Chicago. Jim’s work has been commissioned by Chicago’s Field Museum, the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs, the Mayor’s Office of Special Events, the Pritzker family, and the Zell family.

Jim is a recipient of numerous Jeff citations, an Award for Excellence in Puppetry Arts from the International Puppetry Guild, and he was named an “artist to watch for the next decade” by The Chicago Tribune. He completed his course work for a PhD in Theatre and Drama at Northwestern University, but dodged his dissertation and took a Master’s degree instead.

Called “one of Chicago’s most creative individuals” by City of Chicago’s cultural affairs commissioner Lois Weisberg, in July 2009 he was named Chicago’s first-ever artist in residence.

Read more about Jim Lasko here.

A native Chicagoan, James served the Artistic Director of Remy Bumppo from his co-founding of the theatre in 1996 until 2012, when he handed the creative reins to fellow Meier Awardee Nick Sandys. Among the many shows he has directed for the company are Hapgood, Some Americans Abroad, Arcadia and Tartuffe. James has directed for many seasons at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin. He came late to the theatre, after spending his twenties teaching history and English in a program for high school dropouts.

 

Productions with Remy Bumppo

Night and Day, The Seagull, Waiting for Godot, Rockabye, Heartbreak House, Road to Mecca, Man & Superman, Hapgood, No Man’s Land, Top Girls, The Secret Rapture, Holiday, Money, Major Barbara, Some Americans Abroad, Hidden Laughter, A Delicate Balance, Arcadia, Humble Boy, Tartuffe, Power, The Best Man, The Real Thing, Bronte, On the Verge, The Voysey Inheritance, Old Times, Heroes, The Island.