Staff & Board
STAFF
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
MANAGING DIRECTOR
LITERARY MANAGER
BOARD
- Gemma Whelan, President
- Adam Liberman, Treasurer
- Chris Coughlin, Secretary
- Tracy Cameron Francis
- Mary Hansen
- Pancho Savery
RESOURCE COUNCIL
- Jan Baross
- Claudia Dissel
- Brendan Finn
- Michael Griggs
- Charlotte Headrick
- Steph Hartford
- Diana Hennessy
- Megan McGarry
- Charlotte McIvor
- Matthew Spangler
- George Thorn
- Ramsey Weit
Gemma Whelan
Gemma is the founding Artistic Director of Corrib Theatre. She has extensive experience working on both classical and contemporary works, ranging from Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, Hellman, and Coward, to Arrabal, Mrozek, Sam Shephard, Nilo Cruz, and David Ives, and has directed and assisted in the development of numerous world premieres. For Corrib, she has directed Eclipsed, James X, How to Keep an Alien, Four Last Things, Quietly (Drammy nomination for Best Actor in a Play), Belfast Girls, Chapatti, The Testament of Mary, Our New Girl, Little Gem, The Hen Night Epiphany, St. Nicholas, and A Night in November (Drammy nomination for Direction, Drammy award for Solo Performance). In Portland, she has directed Broomstick and Ithaka at Artists Repertory Theatre, The Call at Profile Theatre, Words that Burn for Los Porteños at Milagro Theatre, and also at CoHo, Boom Arts, and Portland Center Stage’s JAW Festival. She was the founding Artistic Director of Wilde Irish Productions in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she directed The Importance of Being Oscar (Dean Goodman Award for Direction, Dean Goodman Award for Solo Performance), Ariel (US premiere), Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me, Eclipsed, and Endgame. Other favorites include Last Summer at Bluefish Cove (Cable Car Nomination for Outstanding Achievement in Directing) and Vita and Virginia (Curve Magazine, Best Theatre of the Year Award) at Theatre Rhinoceros, Duet for One at Zephyr Theatre, Top Girls at Phoenix Theatre, and Equus at Douglas Morrisson Theatre (Little Theatre Nomination for Outstanding Achievement in Directing). Gemma received the Gerald Duff Award for Continuing Contribution to Theatre in the San Francisco Bay Area. Educational credits include Mills College (Chair, Drama Dept), UC Berkeley, American Conservatory Theatre, Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, Portland Actors Conservatory, Portland State University, Literary Arts (Delve), Pacific University, Willamette University, and Ngee Ann Polytechnic (Singapore). She is an award-winning filmmaker and a published novelist. BA Trinity College Dublin; MA Theatre UC Berkeley; MFA Cinema, San Francisco State University. Member SDC (Stage Directors and Choreographers Society).
Adam Liberman
Adam first got involved in theatre at Beaverton High School during the era of the amazing James N. Erickson, and went on to get a BA in drama, with an emphasis in lighting design, at the University of Washington (where he also studied film-making). As a major sound designer in the Bay Area, he designed over 40 shows and was a resident designer for many years at Berkeley Jewish Theatre and Lorraine Hansberry Theatre in San Francisco. He also studied acting at the Jean Shelton Acting School (aka Shelton Studios). Adam worked as a technical support engineer and technical writer in audio test and measurement for nearly ten years, and is an expert in audio testing and programming audio test automation. At Liberman Sound, which he has operated for over thirty years, he has designed, maintained, and modified audio equipment for many major motion pictures and TV shows. He also worked for many years as a production sound mixer for feature films, commercials, and documentaries, and in post-production sound as a mix engineer. Adam worked in radio at KPFA for over 15 years, as a news reporter, maintenance engineer, instructor, and on-air board-op. He also has a graduate level certificate in TESOL from UC Berkeley Extension, and has taught English in the US and in Guatemala. He sang songs for social justice in the La Peña Chorus in Spanish for twenty years, where he also co-led musical tours to Cuba, Chile, and Mexico. For Corrib, he has co-led the theatre tours to Ireland. He has also registered students to attend an intensive Spanish language school in Guatemala for the last 20 years. Other areas of expertise include programming (C#, PHP, LabVIEW, Javascript, MySQL, etc), database design, web design, and photography. Adam is a member of AES and IEEE.
Pancho Savery
Pancho Savery is Professor of English, Humanities, and American Studies at Reed College, where he teaches courses on modern and contemporary drama, African-American literature, American literature and culture, and American Indian fiction. He has published essays on Ralph Ellison, Saunders Redding, James Baldwin, Adrienne Rich, Robert Creeley, Ezra Pound, and others. He serves on the Board of Directors of Artists Repertory Theatre (vice chair), Boom Arts (chair), Coho Repertory Theatre, Confrontation Theatre, Corrib Theatre, Original Practice Shakespeare, P.E.T.E. (chair), Phame (chair), Portland Playhouse, The Red Door Project, Shaking the Tree Theatre, Third Rail Repertory Theatre, and Our Children Oregon. He has worked as dramaturg at Artists Repertory Theatre, Clackamas Repertory Theatre, Corrib Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Profile Theatre, Shaking the Tree Theatre, and Third Rail Repertory Theatre. Additionally, he is Literary Dramaturg at Artists Repertory Theatre, and Literary Manager at Corrib, Shaking the Tree, and Third Rail. He is a member of the Mercury and DNA:Oxygen theatre companies, and is a member of The Modern Language Association, LMDA, and the Jazz Journalists Association.
