Natsu Onoda Power (
Director) specializes in adapting non-dramatic texts into new works of visual theater, but sometimes also directs plays. Original works (writing/ adapting/ directing) include:
Thumbelina at Imagination Stage;
The Lathe of Heaven at Spooky Action Theater;
Alice in Wonderland with National Players;
Wind Me Up, Maria!: A Go-go Musical at Georgetown University;
Astro Boy and the God of Comics at the Studio Theater and Company One Theater, Boston. Other directing credits include: Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival, Olney Theater Center, the Studio Theatre, Baltimore CenterStage, Mosaic Theater, and Theater J. She is the recipient of two Elliot Norton Awards (for Outstanding Direction and Production Design), two Helen Hayes Awards (Outstanding New Adaptation and Outstanding Set Design), as well as a DC Commission in the Arts fellowship. Onoda Power holds a PhD from Northwestern University, and is the author of
God of Comics: Osamu Tezuka and the Creation of Post- World War II Manga (The University Press of Mississippi, 2009). She is a Professor of Theater and Performance Studies at Georgetown University.
Nikolay Kolyada (Playwright) is a playwright, actor, director, teacher, editor and publisher. He was born in 1957 in a village in Kazakhstan into a family of farm workers. He graduated from the Sverdlovsk Theater School in 1980 and began writing for the theatre. In 1989 he was admitted to the Union of Writers of the USSR, and in1994 he made his debut as a director at the Sverdlovsk State Academic Drama Theater and the Moscow Sovremennik Theatre. In 2003, he founded the Kolyada Theater in Yekaterinburg where he serves as Artistic and Executive Director. The company’s repertoire consists of more than thirty-five works based on classical and contemporary texts. Winner of numerous literary prizes, Nikolay is the author of more than one hundred twenty plays. His work has been staged in Russia and around the world. A teacher for more than twenty-three years, Nikolay has mentored numerous playwrights recognized throughout Russia and abroad. Critics describe Nikolay’s theatre and playwriting community as the “Ural School of Drama.”
