Liz's mission is to create engaging theater that is deeply connected to kid's thoughts and feelings, producing a repertoire that reflects the opinions and issues of the young performers she works with. In extensive workshops lasting from three months to a year, she trains a diverse group of adolescents (aged anywhere from 11 to 20) in acting, movement, voice and writing skills. Through company exercises and improvisation, a group of disparate individuals coagulates to form an ensemble as each person joins in the creative process, adding their own monologues, scenes and songs. Liz believes that children are misrepresented, condescended to, and made to participate in theater that has nothing to do with their day-to-day concerns. By approaching theater from the point of view of the children involved, a new theatrical form is born that truly is young people's theater. Due to Liz's unique, exciting and engrossing educational methods, her ensembles perform at an extremely high level. Many of Liz's plays for and about youth are available on the Plays page. Liz is currently writing a memoir/text book for Faber & Faber about creating theater with adolescents. The book includes sample exercises and descriptions of the techniques she has developed over 25 years. Through theater education, Liz strives to give children the skills they need to create theater they can make their own.- Stacey Brook.
UNUSUAL WOMEN, INDEED!
Laura Lauder is determined to make sure that the Jewish community flourish and prosper nationwide and worldwide, by using her incomparable knowledge of venture-capitalism methods. Her objectives are noble: The creation of a cadre of well-trained educators and teachers in both, Jewish and secular education and learning, so they could and would fill the ever increasing ranks of Jewish scholars and pedagogues in Jewish day schools and centers of learning. In addition, this great woman comes from an outstanding Jewish philanthropist family who raised approximately $100 million for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. An organization, Laura’s mother, Evelyn founded herself.
Stacy Madison. The Jewish Woman reported: “For Stacy Madison, getting fired from a restaurant in Honolulu "was the best thing that ever happened." After months of working more than 80 hours a week as a manager, she had asked when her bonus check would be coming—and found herself without a job. "That's when the entrepreneurial gene clicked," she says. "I was now motivated to go into my business for myself." Seven years after co-founding Stacy's Pita Chip Company with her former husband and current business partner, Mark Andrus, the 39-year-old Madison presides over a multimillion-dollar natural-snack-food company that's equally dedicated to its products, employees and charitable contributions. A single mother of twin baby girls, she also has a newfound respect for women who juggle work and family. "I am proud of all of my choices," she says. "I learned to stop waiting for things to happen to me and, rather, became proactive." Ranked the number-two-selling snack food in Costco stores worldwide, Stacy's Pita Chips have earned Madison numerous accolades, including an invitation to visit the White House in 2000.” As a successful female business leader, doing good works remains a crucial component of her modus operandi, which she attributes to her Reform Jewish upbringing.
