Ann Feldman, Founder and Artistic Director of artistic circles
Ann E. Feldman, Ph.D. has produced a variety of nationally and internationally syndicated television and radio programs, public events, and musical CDs. Dr. Feldman is the Founder and Artistic Director of artistic circles, a nonprofit organization begun in 1989, which creates collaborative media projects to promote social change. During her career, she has received numerous awards including the Professional Achievement Citation from The University of Chicago Alumni Association (2000) and the Studs Terkel Humanities Award from the Illinois Humanities Council. She has won the Gracie Allen Award from the Foundation for American Women in Radio and Television (2000) and a "Special Jury Award" from the Seventh International Radio Shanghai Music Festival (1999).
Post 9/11, Dr. Feldman spent five years bringing together Chicago’s Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities in interfaith and diversity programs, which resulted in the award-winning Ties That Bind video documentary. EMMY-nominated Ties That Bind premiered at the Council for the World’s Parliament of Religions and UNESCO conference on Pathways to Peace in Barcelona, Spain and on Chicago’s WTTW/Channel 11. Ann was Director of Outreach for Ties at Bind, and has facilitated several dozen town hall meetings at international conferences, community events, theatres, high schools, houses of worship, colleges and senior centers. For the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Ties That Bind was syndicated to public TV stations in the U.S. by NETA (National Educational Telecommunications Association) and internationally by John McLean media. The documentary won a Gold Medal from the Aurora Awards (2007) and Honorable Mention from Accolade and Chris Awards (2006.)
Dr. Feldman is also the producer of various radio documentaries that were broadcast on WFMT Network, Chicago Public Radio and radio stations affiliated with Public Radio International. Those radio documentaries include the 12-part Unbreakable Spirits series about women and girls in China; and the ten-part Noteworthy Women series about women in music. Two of her musical CDs - Women at an Exposition and The Eternal Feminine - have received Grammy nominations.
Currently, Dr. Feldman is producing Water Pressures, an hour-long video, that highlights an innovative and globally reproducible water management model from the deserts of India. She and her video crew have already filmed in Rajasthan, India in partnership with the Jal Bhagirathi Foundation and the Sir Ratan Tata Trust and at Northwestern University. This March she is taking students from Northwestern to Rajasthan to film an historic educational exchange. This documentary will be distributed on public TV stations in the U.S. for World Water Day, March 22, 2011 , and internationally by John McLean Media.
Ann Feldman has a B.M.E. from the University of Indiana, a M.A. in piano from The American University and a Ph.D. in History of Culture from the University of Chicago. She is also a Visiting Scholar in Gender Studies at Northwestern University. In Spring, 2009, she taught the “Water Pressures” course at Northwestern University, as part of the Ford Foundation’s “Difficult Dialogues” series.
Andy White, Founding Ensemble Member and Artistic Director Elect of the Lookingglass Theatre
Andrew White is a founding member of Lookingglass Theatre Company, where he served as Artistic Director from 1990-92. As a Lookingglass Ensemble Member and performer, he has participated in the workshop and development of more than thirty Lookingglass original adaptations and world premieres. He wrote and directed the company’s 1989 production of Of One Blood, about the 1964 murders of Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in Mississippi. In 2004, he wrote and directed an adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984, which received a Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Adaptation.
Andy was in the 1987 production of Alice, from which Lookingglass derived its name and mission. Since then, his Lookingglass acting credits include The Arabian Nights (1992, 1997, 2009), Our Town, The Wooden Breeks, The Old Curiosity Shop, Hillbilly Antigone, The Secret in the Wings, Race, Summertime, Her Name Was Danger, They All Fall Down, Metamorphoses, Metamorphosis, Eye of the Beholder, The Master and Margarita, S/M, The Third Voyage, The Jungle, and The Odyssey.
Andy has also appeared in Northlight Theatre’s Inherit the Wind, the Goodman’s All the Rage, Steppenwolf’s Winesburg, Ohio and Another Time, and Victory Gardens’ Kids in the Dark. Film work includes Love and Action in Chicago, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Since You’ve Been Gone, and American Anthem. His television credits include TV 101, Eerie, Indiana, W.I.O.U., and Missing Persons.
Andy has worked in corporate, non-profit, and classroom environments, structuring and facilitating conversations with participants around organizational and community issues since 1990. He has worked in Lookingglass Outreach and Education programs with students of all ages: developing and implementing arts-integrated units in elementary and high schools; facilitating faculty workshops in schools across the Chicagoland area; and working with teenagers across the city to use theater as a means of engaging their peers in dialogue about community issues, from HIV to racism. He has taught Acting as an Adjunct Faculty Member at Northwestern University (B.S., 1987) and National-Louis University. He has worked with medical students and patients at the Rehabilitation Institute; and served as an Illinois Artist-in-Residence at schools in Chicago, Evanston, and Park Ridge. For the last eight years, Andy has been a facilitator with the Anti-Defamation League, and led Summer Institute sessions with teachers for Facing History and Ourselves, with the goal of using theatre techniques to enhance the toolbox with which faculty bring curriculum to their students.
In 2007, Andy co-founded Mosaic Experience, a company dedicated to dialogue and an arts-based approach to facilitating conversations about diversity. Mosaic Experience works with educational institutions, non-profit organizations, and corporations throughout Chicagoland. He has also worked as writer and director with The Breakthrough Group (2003 to present), constructing and designing scenarios which address the various needs of diverse corporate clients.
He lives with his wife, Shari, and their two children, Julia and Asher.