About Us Show Directors
Lynne Bolton
Lynne Bolton is a professional actor and director and an entrepreneur. She is the president of Journeys…with Purpose, a company she co-founded, and regularly acts, directs, produces and teaches acting and directing.
Ms. Bolton also is the founder and president of the White Heron Theater Company, a classical company based in New York City that produces plays, readings and workshops, including The Seagull at Second Stage in New York. Earle Gister, Yale Graduate Acting Dean from 1980 to1995, has served as artistic director.
Directing credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Seaside Shakespeare; Copenhagen, Arcadia, Enchanted April, Agnes of God, The Powerhouse; Driving Miss Daisy, Westport Theater.
Ms. Bolton has served on an Advisory Board for the National Endowment for the Arts. She is a member of the board of the Women’s Project, the nation's oldest and largest company dedicated to producing and promoting theater created by women.-
Annie Breeding
Annie Breeding returned to the Theatre Workshop after many years to direct the 2008 production of Moon Over Buffalo and 2009’s Lend Me a Tenor. Ms. Breeding moved to Nantucket in 1977 and has appeared in twenty plays with the Workshop beginning with The Moon Shines Over Kylenamoe under the direction of the founding artistic director Mac Dixon. Favorite roles with the workshop include: Alma in Summer and Smoke, Linda in Death of a Salesman and Celia in The Cocktail Party. Other directing credits for the Workshop include: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, True West, Crimes of the Heart and Les Liaison Dangereuse. Other acting credits include productions of The Belle of Amherst, The Glass Menagerie, Talley’s Folly and Old Times.
In 1999, Ms. Breeding directed Polka at Theater for the New City in New York.
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Laura Gallagher Byrne
Laura Gallagher Byrne Is a graduate of Shenandoah University and Conservatory of Music where she earned a BFA in Musical Theater. She studied Meisner Technique at The New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts, and Shakespeare with Shakespeare and Company in Lenox MA. She has appeared in leading roles with the Theaterworks USA, Mill Mountain Playhouse, Dorset Theater Festival, The Downtown Musical Theater and The Harlequin, among others. She performed with the comedy improv group, The New York Hysterical Society. TWN on-stage credits include Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors and Agnes in I Do I Do. Her Nantucket directorial credits include TWN’s I Hate Hamlet, Oliver!, Don’t Count You’re Chickens Until they Cry Wolf, Really Rosie, Cinderella, Rounding Third, It’s a Wonderful Life, Captain Louie and Madeline’s Christmas. She directed Seaside Shakespeare’s production of The Vagina Monologues and The Hot Flash Club. In addition to teaching musical theater and improvisational classes, she maintains a private voice studio on Nantucket. She is member of Alpha Si Omega, the dramatic fraternity, National Association of Teachers of Singing, and Stage Directors and Choreographers Society
Jane Karakula
Thirty years of employment in the theatre world makes Jane the ideal candidate to teach the skill of public speaking to the non actor. Currently, a theatre director with fifteen years of directing credits, she just concluded a three year appointment as Artistic Director for Theatre Workshop of Nantucket. Previously she served as Associate Director for Actors Theatre. In addition to directing, she also teaches acting, and coaches actors interested in pursuing work in television and movies. Formerly a member of the Screen Actors Guild, she has appeared in three major motion pictures. She began her stage career three decades ago and has performed in Tokyo, New York, Boston and San Francisco. Jane also has a background in fundraising and theatre administration. She received her master’s degree in theatre from the University of Essex in Colchester, England.
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Meredith Martin
Meredith Martin comes by her love of the stage honestly. Both her parents were opera singers and performed on Broadway. Her paternal grandmother was a concert pianist and co-founder of the Van Cliburn competition. Her maternal grandmother was a Vaudevillian actress, singer and dancer who danced with Fred Astaire. Upon completion of two years as a Theatre major at William Paterson College, Meredith went into private study, working with a wide range of teachers from Stella Adler Conservatory, The Neigborhood Playhouse, NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and HB Studios. Her studies included theatre history, Shakespeare, acting technique with a focus on Meisner, improvisation, scene study, directing, play scripts, movement, design and stagecraft. Acting credits include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Barefoot in the Park, Light Up the Sky, The Dining Room, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Shirley Valentine. Meredith made her directorial debut in the 1987 with "An Evening of Great Playwrights" showcasing the works of Williams, Strindberg, Pinter and Millay. She went on to direct several productions for TWN including Taking Steps, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo & Juliet and Scrooge and Marley, A Christmas Carol. Meredith has taught acting classes for TWN and also coaches acting privately using Meisner Technique and Hagen's Object Exercises. For the past four summer's she has directed and acted in "Shakespeare In the Garden" for the Nantucket Arts Council June fundraiser for The Nantucket Shakespeare Festival with excerpts from Twelfth Night, As You Like It and A Midsummer Night's Dream
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David McCandless
David McCandless became a member of the Theatre Workshop when he first "washed ashore" in Nantucket in the early 70's fresh out of college. In that time David has acted, directed, built sets, designed, and been involved in all phases of production. Acting credits include; Sylvia (1998 and 2008), two off Broadway plays (The Wedding and Sheare St. Social Club), A Christmas Carol, Oliver, Psychopathia Sexualis, Smell of the Kill, Fools and Lovers, Harvey, Black Comedy, and Death of a Salesman. Directing credits include: Sylvia, Dancing at Lughnasa, Beyond Therapy, View of the Harbor, and Death Defying Acts.
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Fritz Michel
Fritz Michel directed the hit production of the thriller I'll Be Back Before Midnight at TWN in 2007. Other Nantucket productions include roles in Bedroom Farce, Deathtrap, Do It and The Foreigner with Actors’ Theater. Acting credits also include the Broadway revival of Inherit the Wind (National Actors Theater), Private Jokes, Public Places (La Mama ETC), The Just/Les Justes, Vanity Fair, Cyrano de Bergerac and Dangerous Liaisons. Film and television acting includes Angels & Demons, Syriana, Great Expectations, ER, Alias and Daphne and the Brilliant Blue. Fritz directed a reading of Steve Belber's Drifting elegant in Los Angeles and produced Belber’s play Through Fred in New York. He was associate producer on the feature film The Broken Giant starring Will Arnett. Fritz produced and acted in the film Semmel Weis which screens in the Science Cinematheque at the Museum of the Moving Image. His filmmaking won awards from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Hungarian Fulbright Commission and from over forty film festivals. He graduated from Yale with a history degree. Fritz lives in Bronxville, New York with his wife and two daughters. His family has been spending summers on Nantucket for over eighty years.
