Sarah Hawkins Rusk, a native of Indiana, has been working as an actor, director, and educator across the country for the last 18 years. Hawkins Rusk received her Master of Fine Arts degree from Wayne State University and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. As a director, she has worked with such theaters as Open Book Theatre Company, Tipping Point Theatre, Wagon Wheel Theatre, Motor City Youth Theatre, and Detroit Mercy Theatre Company, where she garnered national recognition from the Kennedy Center American Theatre Festival in 2021 for her impactful production of Antigone. In the digital realm, she directed DOYC’s first-ever digital opera performance of Cary John Franklin and Michael Albano’s The Very Last Green Thing in 2020, pushing the boundaries of artistic expression. As a performer, Hawkins Rusk has graced the stages of renowned theatres across the country, including the Detroit-area theaters of Tipping Point Theatre, Planet Ant, and Matrix Theatre; the Commonweal Theatre Company in Lanesboro, Minnesota; CLIMB Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota; and the prestigious Creede Repertory Theatre in Creede, Colorado. Hawkins Rusk’s dedication to her craft extends to sharing her knowledge and expertise with aspiring artists. As a certified teacher in the transformative Michael Chekhov technique, she teaches at the University of Detroit Mercy, shaping the next generation of theatrical visionaries.

The songs of American composer Ben Moore have been heard at venues across the world including Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, the Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall in London and the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. His work has been called “brilliant” and “gorgeously lyrical” by the New York Times while Opera News has praised the “easy tunefulness” and “romantic sweep” of his songs. Singers who have performed his work include Deborah Voigt, Susan Graham, Frederica von Stade, Isabel Leonard, Lawrence Brownlee, Nathan Gunn and Audra McDonald.  Moore’s work includes opera, musical theater, cabaret, choral music, chamber music and comedy material. Moore composed the scores for three operas including Enemies, a Love Story (libretto by Nahma Sandrow) which premiered at Palm Beach Opera in 2015 and has been called “an important new work that will find its place among those works that audiences will be moved by...” (Fred Plotkin/WQXR). Odyssey and Robin Hood (librettos by Kelley Rourke) are youth operas commissioned by the Glimmerglass Festival.  They have been seen at venues across the country including Seattle Opera, Minnesota Opera, Houston Grand Opera and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 2006 the Metropolitan Opera featured two of Ben’s comedy songs in a gala broadcast nationally. Recent events include the premiere of the song cycle “And Another Song Comes On” (words by Mark Campbell) for the London Song Festival and the premiere of a newly revised version of the choral work, The Wave Rises, for Cantori New York. For more information, please visit www.mooreart.com.

Kelley Rourke is a librettist, translator and dramaturg. She has collaborated with composers including John Glover, Laura Karpman, Ben Moore, Kenji Oh, Kamala Sankaram and Wang Lu. Her modern English adaptations of numerous standard and not-so-standard operas have been hailed as “crackingly witty” (The Independent, London) and “remarkably well wedded to the music and versification in arias” (New York Times).  Her work has been commissioned and performed by the Metropolitan Opera, Washington National Opera, English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Boston Lyric Opera, Young People’s Chorus of NYC, Seattle Opera, Minnesota Opera, Carnegie Hall, Urban Arias (Washington, DC), Milwaukee Opera Theatre, Kentucky Opera, Walnut Hill School for the Arts, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, and Nautilus Music-Theater, among others.  Kelley is resident dramaturg for The Glimmerglass Festival and Artistic Advisor for Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative. She was founding editor of Opera America magazine and a contributor to the New Grove Dictionary of American Music. Kelley holds degrees in piano performance and arts management, and she is a Certified Critical Response Practitioner.  Upcoming premieres include The Emissary (Kenji Oh, composer) at Opera Parallèle; Right Now, an orchestral song cycle with composer John Glover for Chrystal E. Williams, Felipe Hostins, and American Composers Orchestra; Macbeth and the Weïrd Sisters, a rock adaptation of Verdi’s Macbeth featuring Andrew Wilkowske at Theater Latte Da; Songbird at Washington National Opera; and a new adaptation of Hansel and Gretel for Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.