Staff

Jen Mitas (Managing Director) joined Hand2Mouth in late 2012. Biography coming soon!

Board of Directors

Merridawn Duckler (Board Chair) is a published writer and conceptual artist, with work forthcoming in Contact Quarterly, Cerise Press, Brevity, and the existential journal Fiddleblack. She’s a Professional Society of Journalists and NEA awardee with performance work seen at Red Cat, among many other venues. Her fellowships include Writers@Work, Yaddo, Squaw Valley, SLS in Russia and the Bertha Anolic Fellowship to Israel. A moderator at the Continental Philosophy symposium at Syracuse University she’s showing conceptual work on Walter Benjamin at Blackfish Gallery March 2012. She’s a Senior Fellow at the Attic Institute, Associate Editor at Narrative Magazine and is represented by the Weingel-Fidel Agency, NY. She blogs at www.merridawnduckler.com

Maesie Speer (Board Secretary) is a company member with Hand2Mouth. More info coming soon....

John Hayden is the co-founder and president of Versation, which provides international student management and English as a Second Language software to large educational institutions around the world. His passion for international education came from living in Tokyo, Japan immediately after college where he managed international partnerships for Hitachi, Ltd. John is also involved with several local organizations such as PSU's School of Business Administration as a member of its Business Advisory Council, Portland-based digital music licensing company Rumblefish as a member of the board, and Los Angeles-based Boston Educational Services as a member of the advisory board.

Rachel Sample is the development director for local nonprofit Schoolhouse Supplies and has a diverse background in the arts, nonprofit management and teaching.  In Portland she's worked with local consulting group Decisions Decisions and has lead national nonprofit Street Yoga.  While in New York Rachel received a degree from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and worked both as a freelance artist and at the literary agency Jill Grinberg Literary Management. While in Brisbane Australia Rachel received her masters degree in Education and taught academic English at Queensland University of Technology.

Jerry Tischleder is an actor, performance curator, and a company member with Hand2Mouth. He has helped create eight original productions with Hand2Mouth and manages the company’s regional, national, and international touring programs. Jerry founded the Risk/Reward Festival of New Performance in 2008, which presents emerging performance works in theatre, music and dance from across the west coast. He is a passionate world traveler and designs authentic vacation experiences in South America with local tour operator Avanti Destinations. Jerry holds a B.A. in Theater and Management from St. John’s University and is a member of Wesleyan University’s inaugural class for the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance. The program is the nation’s first post-graduate degree focused on the curation of contemporary performance.

Jonathan Walters founded Hand2Mouth in 2000, after beginning his career in Poland. As Artistic Director, Jonathan has co-conceived, co-created, and directed the bulk of Hand2Mouth shows, and works closely with guest writers and the ensemble to develop original devised theatre work. Under his direction, Hand2Mouth Theatre has premiered 18 major new works, as well as site-specific and commissioned short pieces in the Portland area, and toured these works regionally, nationally and abroad, presenting at today's leading venues for contemporary theatre performance. He teaches and directs devised theatre at colleges and theatres across the Pacific Northwest, the greater US, as well as in Europe and Latin America. His directing work has been reviewed in the New York Times, New York Post, Just Out, Willamette Week, Oregonian, Time Out NY, the Portland Tribune, the Portland Mercury, the Seattle Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and The Stranger, international newspapers and websites, and on Portland-area radio and TV programs.

Advisory Council

Walter Jaffe and Paul King (co-Founders, White Bird Dance), Cynthia Kirk (principal, (syn●tax)), Ben Moorad (writer and co-Founder, Write Around Portland), Michael Rohd (artistic director, Sojourn Theatre), John Schmor (Theatre Arts Department head, University of Oregon), and Meghan Vogel (development director, Dell’Arte International)