ABOUT THE AUTHOR/DIRECTOR

Author/director Philip Suraci lives with his wife, filmmaker Christina Biddle, in South Orange, NJ. He has studied and performed with Anne Bogart at the Experimental Theater Wing at NYU, acting in "At the Bottom" by Maxim Gorky and later in "History: An American Dream." He was a board member and actor with the badneighbors theatre company, performing in the North American premiere of Marston’s "Antonio and Mellida" and originating roles in "Pink Vinyl/Blue Guitar," "The Monk," "Sedewick Downing Harbor" by Christopher Renstrom and "Three Stories High" by Madeline Olnek. He worked at the International Theatre and the English Theater in Vienna, Austria starring as Allen Felix in "Play it Again, Sam" and in the continental premiere of A.R. Gurney’s "The Dining Room."

Suraci worked as radio disc jockey and created the biographical radio game show "Good Question" heard on WMCA radio in New York. He has produced radio drama on WBAI radio in New York.

While doing the weekly research for "Good Question," he became aware of the lack of interest in the subject of history by many of today’s students and came upon idea of using drama to teach history thus bringing immediacy to the subject matter. He then enrolled in the Educational Theatre program at NYU. There he studied the technique of process drama under Philip Taylor and Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed with Chris Vine of the Creative Arts Team. He received his M.A from NYU in 2004. Through the C.A.T. Youth Theatre, he discovered the power and originality of the voices of youth and began to look for ways to bring those voices to the stage, the result of which is "Lysistrata’s Children."