Wallace Norman, Playwright/Performer
WALLACE NORMAN is a playwright, director, actor and singer. “I am THRILLED and PROUD to be part of this great and important Gay Theatre Festival.” Norman is the founder and Producing Artistic Director of Woodstock Fringe now in its 20th year! Beginning in 2002 and for more than a decade. Woodstock Fringe produced an annual Woodstock Fringe Festival of Theatre and Song. The first Festival of Theatre and Song spanned two weeks. Ten years later the festival was six weeks long. Over the course of that decade, Woodstock Fringe was the producer and host of some 400 performances of original plays, solo performance art works, chamber opera, puppet theatre, concerts of new American songs, high-art clown shows, and readings of more than 50 new plays.
In 2005 Wallace instigated the Woodstock Fringe Playwrights Unit, a playwriting laboratory. The Unit is now in its 18th year. The Unit met in Greenwich Village (NYC) every other Tuesday until the Covid plague arrived. The Unit continues to meet every Tuesday evening using the Zoom platform.
Norman has appeared in more than sixty-five productions in Off-Broadway, Regional, Stock and Hudson Valley theaters. Wallace has been a soloist at Carnegie Recital Hall and participated as a singer in the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference Cabaret Symposium. For years prior to moving to Woodstock, Wallace was a denizen of the Off-Off Broadway arena in New York City. In his city days Wallace produced over 30 works for the stage. He was a founder of The Gilgamesh Theatre Group, part of the “At The Beckett Theatre Campaign" on 42nd Street in NYC. Norman also has enjoyed a long and artistically rich association with Golden Fleece, The Composer Chamber Theatre.
Wallace trained extensively at the Herbert Berghoff Studio in NYC and at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. He taught acting at Nassau Community College.
Off-Broadway directing credits include Jamaica Farewell at the Soho Playhouse and Greetings From Yorkville at the 78th Street Playhouse. Plays recently directed in the Hudson Valley include: The Realistic Joneses, by Will Eno (Performing Arts of Woodstock); Breaking The Code, by Hugh Wittemore (co-director Bette Siler); Happy Days, by Samuel Beckett, produced by Woodstock Fringe at the Bydcliffe Theater; Proof, by David Auburn; It Can’t Happen Here by Wallace Norman; Old Hickory, by Ric Siler; Women on Fire, by Irene O’Garden, The Great Nebula in Orion, by Lanford Wilson and Oh Virgil!, A Theatrical Portrait by Wallace Norman. Oh Virgil! was commissioned by the Virgil Thomson Foundation.
In addition to the World Premier of Brother’s Keeper at IDGTF, this play will be performed in July at the Byrdcliffe Theatre in Woodstock, NY and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival at theSpace on the Mile for three weeks. Brother’s Keeper will be one of three plays that Woodstock Fringe will produce under the banner VOICES FROM WOODSTOCK FRINGE. The other two plays are Doris Does the Edinboiger Fridge and Like A Sack Of Potatoes by Ric Siler.
In 2005 Wallace instigated the Woodstock Fringe Playwrights Unit, a playwriting laboratory. The Unit is now in its 18th year. The Unit met in Greenwich Village (NYC) every other Tuesday until the Covid plague arrived. The Unit continues to meet every Tuesday evening using the Zoom platform.
Norman has appeared in more than sixty-five productions in Off-Broadway, Regional, Stock and Hudson Valley theaters. Wallace has been a soloist at Carnegie Recital Hall and participated as a singer in the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference Cabaret Symposium. For years prior to moving to Woodstock, Wallace was a denizen of the Off-Off Broadway arena in New York City. In his city days Wallace produced over 30 works for the stage. He was a founder of The Gilgamesh Theatre Group, part of the “At The Beckett Theatre Campaign" on 42nd Street in NYC. Norman also has enjoyed a long and artistically rich association with Golden Fleece, The Composer Chamber Theatre.
Wallace trained extensively at the Herbert Berghoff Studio in NYC and at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. He taught acting at Nassau Community College.
Off-Broadway directing credits include Jamaica Farewell at the Soho Playhouse and Greetings From Yorkville at the 78th Street Playhouse. Plays recently directed in the Hudson Valley include: The Realistic Joneses, by Will Eno (Performing Arts of Woodstock); Breaking The Code, by Hugh Wittemore (co-director Bette Siler); Happy Days, by Samuel Beckett, produced by Woodstock Fringe at the Bydcliffe Theater; Proof, by David Auburn; It Can’t Happen Here by Wallace Norman; Old Hickory, by Ric Siler; Women on Fire, by Irene O’Garden, The Great Nebula in Orion, by Lanford Wilson and Oh Virgil!, A Theatrical Portrait by Wallace Norman. Oh Virgil! was commissioned by the Virgil Thomson Foundation.
In addition to the World Premier of Brother’s Keeper at IDGTF, this play will be performed in July at the Byrdcliffe Theatre in Woodstock, NY and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival at theSpace on the Mile for three weeks. Brother’s Keeper will be one of three plays that Woodstock Fringe will produce under the banner VOICES FROM WOODSTOCK FRINGE. The other two plays are Doris Does the Edinboiger Fridge and Like A Sack Of Potatoes by Ric Siler.
Bette Carlson Siler, Stage Direction
BETTE CARLSON SILER is an actor, playwright and director. Bette co-directed Breaking the Code with Wallace Norman in Woodstock. She has directed several of Ric Siler's solo shows, including Like a Sack of Potatoes, soon to be performed at the Edinburgh Fringe. In NYC, she directed at the One Man Talking Festival, Emerging Artists Theatre and the Midtown International Theater Festival. She is a member of the Woodstock Fringe Playwrights Unit and has developed, directed and performed plays with the Fringe since 2011. As an actor, she’s been fortunate enough to study monologue work with Stella Adler in New York, Chekhov with Earle Gister (Yale School of Drama) and Shakespeare with Toby Robertson (RSC, Old Vic). Bette is thrilled to be working with Wallace Norman again and eager to see some wonderful work in Dublin.