The Little Mushroom

John Reed is the author of A Still Small Voice (Delacorte), The Whole (Simon & Schuster / MTV Books), the SPD bestseller, Snowball's Chance (Roof / Melville House); All The World's A Grave: A New Play By William Shakespeare (Penguin / Plume); Tales of Woe (MTV Press); Free Boat: Collected Lies and Love Poems (C&R Press); and A Drama In Time: The New School Century (Profile); The Family Dolls: A Manson Paper + Play Book (Outpost19); MFA in Creative Writing, Columbia University (fellowship); published in (selected) ElectricLit, the Brooklyn Rail, Tin House, Paper Magazine, Artforum, Hyperallergic, Bomb Magazine, Art in America, the Los Angeles Times, the Believer, the Rumpus, Observer, the PEN Poetry Series, the Daily Beast, Gawker, Slate, the Paris Review, the Times Literary Supplement, the Wall Street Journal, Vice, The New York Times, Harpers, Rolling Stone; anthologized in (selected) Best American Essays (Houghton Mifflin); works translated and performed worldwide; films distinguished at festivals internationally; two-term board member of the National Book Critics Circle; faculty at The New School University MFA in Creative Writing.

Raul Rothblatt was born in San Francisco and studied classical composition at UC Berkeley, where he started playing Javanese gamelan, then spent six months in Indonesia, where he had the opportunity to study music at the Mangkunegaran palace in Surakarta. He then went to Budapest to study classical composition at the Liszt Academy of Music, followed by New York where he received his MFA in Musical Theater Composition from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Now based in Brooklyn, he has performed nationally with Életfa Hungarian Folk on bass and enjoys combining adventurous music with public history. An active musician at Yiddish New York, he regularly presents panel discussions on Brooklyn Jewish History, and he established the Brooklyn Mishpucha Facebook group. Since 2004, he has been active in protecting and preserving Downtown Brooklyn's abolitionist and suffragist history and co-founded a new cultural institution at 227 Duffield Street. He is currently a cellist actively playing Mande music in the griot tradition with Famoro Dioubate's Kakande. In 2022, he was hired as Director of Community Affairs for Assembly Member Brian Cunningham in Brooklyn.

Lori Elizabeth Parquet (she/her) is an actor, director, and playwright from New Orleans, Louisiana with a B.A. in Theatre Arts from Cornell University. Her New York City stage credits include Macbeth, Dispatches From (A)mended America (Off-Broadway, Epic Theatre Ensemble), The Providence of Neighboring Bodies (Dutch Kills Theater/Ars Nova), The Honeycomb Trilogy: Sovereign (Gideon Productions), Medea (Phoenix Theatre Ensemble), Dog Act, Ajax in Iraq, Honey Fist, Operating Systems (Flux Theatre Ensemble), and Republic, Baal, Murder In the Cathedral (JACK/Hoi Polloi). She made her international debut performing in Pillars of Society at Teater Ibsen in Skien, Norway. She also performed in The Providence of Neighboring Bodies at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2018. In 2019 she was nominated for and won the New York Innovative Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Lead Role for her performance in Operating Systems. As a director, Lori has directed Topdog/Underdog at Princeton Summer Theater and assistant directed The Public Theater’s most recent Shakespeare in the Park productions of As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. She was also as an acting coach on Disney’s Hercules, a Public Works production. Lori served as Associate Director of New York City Center’s Encores: Off-center production of Maria Irene Fornes’ Promenade, and has directed many readings and workshops with Public Works, Flux Theatre Ensemble, The Brooklyn Generator, and other theater companies across New York City. As a playwright, Lori was selected as one of six featured playwrights for Season Five of The Fire This Time Festival, which produced a reading of her full-length play In Communion, and her short plays have been produced through Flux Theater Ensemble, New York Madness, and other NYC indie theaters and festivals.

“Part celestial creature, part sophisticated human” is how Charlotte Lily Gaspard has been described by Faerie Magazine when contemplating the ethereal artist and her work in one of their features. Shadow puppet artist, educator and children’s entertainer, Charlotte’s mission is to activate imaginations and celebrate playfulness wherever she goes. Charlotte is the founder and artistic director of Midnight Radio Show, a shadow puppet sci-fi fairytale theater company based in Brooklyn, NYC. She designs puppets for theater, film, and music videos, and award-winning indie films. Mommy Poppins declares, “The incredible shadow puppets will amaze the audience.” Along with puppets and performance, Charlotte also creates costumes for theater and film projects. She holds credits for her costume & wardrobe work from the Public Theater including Shakespeare in the Park, Signature Theater, Roundabout Theater, and many others. Charlotte is the resident production designer at Child’s Play NY, a children’s theater company. She also facilitates puppetry & theater arts workshops all over NYC and beyond.