Artistic Director, Lon Church, with more than 20 years of directorial and choreographic experience, now splits his time between Maine and Minnesota.
In Maine, he premiered Winterblue Theatre, with a production of Miss Julie, in the fall of 2009. His goal is to produce ‘great works old and new’, with an emphasis on plays that offer audiences passionate, poetic language, as well as distinctive movement and music elements in each production.
In Minnesota, he is the founder and director of Summerblue Arts, a visual and performing arts program for youth, now in its 14th season. He directs Winterblue Theatre’s second production, Romeo and Juliet, in Two Harbors, Minnesota in the winter of 2010, before returning again to Portland in the spring.
Mr. Church wrote and produced his first dance play, entitled Letters For My Daughter, at the University of Michigan – Flint campus, and with The Michigan Shakespeare Festival there, he played the lead role of Christy in Synge’s Playboy of the Western World. He danced with The Jamaica School of Dance in Kingston, Jamaica; and for five years as a principal dancer with Brosseau Danceworks, based in Charlotte, NC, touring the southeast. He has performed, directed, or created original theatre and dance works from Seattle to New Jersey, from Memphis to Milwaukee. He continues to teach students of all ages, most recently leading movement workshops for a Philosophy of the Mind class as part of a two-year grant at Vassar College.
Some of the many plays he has directed include The Birds, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Antigone, Thieves’ Carnival, The Liar, Nicholas Nickleby, Mother Courage, The Crucible, Blithe Spirit, The Miracle Worker, Twelve Angry Men, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and John Lennon and Me; and many musicals, from the well-known Anything Goes to the lesser-known Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope.
