ABOUT MIFA

MIFA:Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts brings audiences the finest examples of contemporary practice in opera, theatre, dance, film, music, and the visual arts.

Since 1993, MIFA has hosted ground-breaking theatre companies: France's Comedie Francaise in La Derniere Lettre ; Centre Dramatique National/Orleans Loiret-Centre in Requiem pour Srebrenica; England's Complicite in Noise of Time; Out of Joint in Some Explicit Polaroids by Mark Ravenhill and Blue Heart by Caryl Churchill; Two's Company in Ten by Pinter and Some Kind of Alaska; The Moving Theatre productions of De Profundis by Oscar Wilde starring Corin Redgrave, and Sarah Bernhardt Comes to Town by Anton Chekhov starring Vanessa Redgrave; South Africa's Side Street Productions in The Island by Athol Fugard and the Handspring Puppet Company in Faustus in Africa by William Kentridge, and Ireland's Gate Theatre in I'll Go On by Samuel Beckett starring Barry McGovern.

MIFA's opera presentations have included The Coronation of Poppea by Claudio Monteverdi and Alcina by George Frederick Handel in productions by the Onafhankelijk Toneel and the Nationale Reisopera of The Netherlands, and the American debut of Moscow's Helikon Opera in Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades.

Executive Artistic Director Donald T. Sanders, a director, writer, and producer, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. and was awarded a Thouron Fellowship. He received a C.I.D from the University of Bristol, England, and an M.F.A from the Yale School of Drama where he was assistant to Nikos Psacharapoulos and drama master of Stiles College. Known for his stage adaptations from novels, his Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs and Old New York by Edith Wharton were both presented by Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater. Mr. Sanders has been executive artistic director of MIFA/Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts since 1993. He is also the author of 33 Scenes on the Possibility of Human Happiness , Thomas Cole, A Waking Dream and Dubrovsky, the opera by jazz composer William Russo. He has been Director of Theatrical Productions for Ensemble for the Romantic Century (ERC) in New York City since 2005. In 2002, he was made a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the Republic of France.


BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Vanessa Redgrave, Honorary Chair
William F. Weld, Honorary Chair
Terecita Alicea
T. Marc Futter
Joyce Higgins
Barbara Gillian Lazarus
Ralph Levy
Donald T. Sanders
Mary Richie Smith
Edisa Weeks
David Gottesegen

Emeritus
Mary Maples Dunn
Grace Glueck
Sarah S. Montgomery
Gregory Prince
Hiltrud Schulz
John H. Davis
Ted Pennock


STAFF

Meg Lefkowitz   Administrative Assistant
Bobbi Melville   Graphic Design
Connie Kennedy    Festival Assistant
Tim Young    Festival Assistant and Bookkeeping
Hector Diaz   Intern
Fritz Farrington   Production-Technical Director
Harvey Glick   Accounting
Laurie Herrick   Development Consultant
Russell Powell   Marketing and Promotion Consultant
Margaret Wood   Holyoke Project Consultant