Team

DEBBIE BRINDIS, MA , Curriculum Director, worked for 25 years as a New York City public school educator where she was very active in bringing disarmament education to high school youth.  She is a glass artist, parent and community activist.  She coordinates a disarmament theater collaboration between New York Theatre Workshop and various public high schools, including East Side Community High School where she spent much of her career.

LINDA S. CHAPMAN, BFA, has served as Associate Artistic Director for New York Theatre Workshop from 1995 to the present. With her partner Lola Pashalinski, she co-wrote and performed in the acclaimed Gertrude and Alice: A Likeness to Loving. Most recent work includes co-writing the GLAAD Award winning Beebo Brinker Chronicles with Kate Moira Ryan, to be published by Dramatists Play Service this year. Linda is Vice President of Membership on the Board of the League of Professional Theatre Women and is Founding President of Youth Arts New York.

ROBERT CROONQUIST, MA, is the Founder and Program Director of Youth Arts New York. He taught an interdisciplinary, multicultural survey of global literature and culture in the New York City Public Schools for 20 years and in 2006 he became the first teacher in Jamaica High School’s 100 year history to be invited to give the school’s Commencement Address. Robert is a member of the Advisory Board and contributor to White Crane Journal for Gay Wisdom, Spirit and Culture.

MAKI FUJITA, MA , is the HIbakusha Stories Development Director. Maki was born and raised in Japan where she later taught music in junior high schools for several years. After obtaining her BA at SUNY Fredonia in Arts Administration, she recently completed her MA at NYU in Performing Arts Administration, focusing on marketing and development for the Arts.

CAROLINE REDDICK LAWSON, MFA, is the Director of Education at New York Theatre Workshop. She served for two years as the state director for the Alabama Thespian Society during which time she was awarded the Alabama Theatre Educator Hall of Fame Award. She has worked for the Creative Arts Team, NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study and the High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology. She has been published in TDR/The Drama Review and is a veteran theatre and television director. Caroline recently co-founded Nora’s Playhouse, a theatre company dedicated to telling women’s stories and supporting women playwrights and directors.

CHIORI MIYAGAWA, MFA, is a NYC-based, U.S. playwright. Her plays have been produced at Off-Broadway theaters, renowned performance houses in NYC and regionally. A Resident Playwright at New Dramatists, she is a recipient of a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard University and many other grants and fellowships. In May 2009, Chiori had the honor of having three survivors from Hiroshima attend her play I Have Been to Hiroshima Mon Amour at the Ohio Theatre in New York City. Two collections of her plays, Thousand Years Waiting and Other Plays from Seagull Books and America Dreaming and Other Plays from NoPassport Press, are being published in 2011-12. She designed and manages the undergraduate playwriting program at Bard College under the chair, director JoAnne Akalaitis.

ROBERT SINK, is a talented and inspired web site designer who has brought all his skills to the fore and his ardent prayers for peace on behalf of Hibakusha Stories. He is an accomplished graphic designer of twenty-five years and a long-time filmmaker, recently completing the restoration of The Rudi Movie, a documentary on a meditation master.

KATHLEEN SULLIVAN, PhD, is an education consultant to the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs working to develop disarmament related curricula for the UN's Cyberschoolbus website. In 2005 she produced her first film, a feature documentary about survivors from Nagasaki entitled The Last Atomic Bomb. From 2000 to 2006, Kathleen coordinated the Nuclear Weapons Education and Action Project of Educators for Social Responsibility. At the time it was one of the most significant disarmament education initiatives in the US.

MIYAKO TAGUCHI, BFA, is a founder of Miyako i Studio.  As an accomplished graphic designer, she has made major contributions to diverse projects for numerous Fortune 500 companies for over 20 years. Her belief in power of art and the individual drives her actions for a world of peace.  Both her parents are survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

Partners

MICHAEL F. CASSANDRA, was chief of the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs Information and Outreach Branch, including the development of the UN Cyberschoolbus site. He was instrumental in revitalizing disarmament education at the UN where he worked in various capacities for 37 years.

SONOKO KAWAHARA, Theater Director, has directed at a number of New York Theaters including Dance Theater Workshop and Soho Repertory and worked as an assistant director to Anne Bogart on Private Lives at the Actors Theatre of Louisville and to David Petraruca on Fuddy Meers at the Manhattan Theatre Club.

NINA RESNICK, ESQ, is an attorney in the areas of entertainment— including theatre, publishing, media, television and film; and not-for-profit corporate law— including organizations involved in alternative medicine; environmental; artistic; human rights and Native American/indigenous peoples' issues.

SAM SADIGURSKY, saxophonist, multi-reedist and composer whose critically-lauded first recording, The Words Project, was hailed as “an impressive debut” by the New York Times and was given a four-star review by Time Out New York who named it one of the Top Ten Albums of 2007.

SHIGEKO SASAMORI, a teenager in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb struck on August 6, 1945, was one of the 25 Hiroshima Maidens who were brought to New York City in 1955 for reconstructive surgery by Norman Cousins and Rev. Hiroshi Tanimoto. She has been a disarmament activist ever since.

BONNIE ORA SHERK, Smithsonian Laureate and Founder and Director of Life Frames, Inc. & A Living Library, creates and implements systemic design processes called Think Parks, one of which is on New York’s Roosevelt Island.