RED EARTH THEATRE Bd Members - BIOGRAPHIES
3-2015
Kate Hawkes
Originally from Australia, Kate has lived in the USA for over 26 years and has worked in all
aspects of theatre from management to teaching, producing, directing and writing as well as
performance. For many years she was the Education/Outreach Director and Artistic Associate at
Artists Repertory Theatre, (Portland) and Theatre Arts adjunct professor at Linfield College,
McMinville, Oregon. Kate created Performing Wellness ™ an arts in healthcare text and
performance program, and later co-founded and administered the Well Arts Institute in Portland,
Oregon. She served as Executive Director of the Elks Opera House in Prescott as well as
producing and directing for them in 2011-13.
As a director her work includes many Red Earth productions, professional productions of Secret
Bridesmaid’s Business, Quilters, The Weir, and Sweet Phoebe and the world premier of Fred &
Mary: An Unconventional Romance at the Prescott Elks Opera House in 2012. She directed
college productions of Mother Courage, Antigone, Reckless, Voice of The Prairie, and Keely and
Du. On stage Kate’s favorite roles include leads in The Gingerbread Lady, Medea, Equus,
Painting Churches, Eleemosynary and the one women show Performing Wellness: 1 Woman,10
Stories On Stage. Writing credits include professional productions of Composers In Skirts and
Singing Our Way Home. Sky….Diamonds, about a family living with Alzheimer’s, was recently
produced in Flagstaff before traveling to Sedona (Kate played the lead role) and nominated for a
Viola Award. Her most recent play Loplop and the Queen was written specially for the Sedona
Wrts Museum week of surrealism events. She has had several 10 minute plays produced and is
working on a trilogy of plays about a career military family dealing with the death of their
daughter in Iraq. (www.wellnesswithkate.com)
John Crawford
John is a native Scotsman with an BA in Hotel Management and a BA (Honours) in Business
Economics at Strathclyde University, Glasgow, Scotland (1968 and 1969). He qualified as a
"Chartered Accountant" with the Scottish Institute of C.A.'s with Thompson McLintock CA
(now part of KPMG) in 1974. He has worked in Operations Management, Hotel and Regional
Finance for Intercontinental Hotels Corp (now InterContinental Hotels Group plc ("IHG"), from
1974 till retirement in 2010. He worked with IHG on Audits (worldwide), London, New York,
Paris, Nairobi (Kenya), Washington DC, and Miami. He is retired as VP Finance of Latin
America & Caribbean Region. Recently he served as Treasurer of the South Florida British
American Club, 2007-2010, and as a Board Member of my HOA in Weston, FL. John moved to
Sedona in 2011 with his wife Veronika.
Linda Damita
Linda Damita is a native of Arizona and a resident of Sedona since 1999. Linda started working
professionally as an actress, dancer and model in her teens. Her credits include spokes model on
television, commercials, theater and minor film roles. After taking a hiatus to raiser her
daughter, Linda played the role of producer and entrepreneur having created a production
company, Nightlife Sedona, which featured dinner theater, live music and dance events, musical
productions and improv. She has produced several fund raising events in Sedona for Desert Star
School, Hurricane Katrina and Haiti. Ms. Damita has returned to her passion as an actress
performing on stage over the last three years in The Vagina Monologues, with Canyon Moon
Theatre, and for various theatrical productions. Currently she is playing the villainess, Lorinda
Dawkins, on the supernatural comedy TV show The Rocks and is one of the founding members
of the Red Earth Theatre Company
RED EARTH THEATRE Bd Members - BIOGRAPHIES
3-2015
Ingrid Hagelberg
Born and raised in Sweden, Ingrid has been singing and performing since an early age. After
finishing a college degree in teaching she moved to Los Angeles in 1980 to pursue her singing
and acting career. She has performed in clubs and on stage all over the world and has two TV
shows and four CD’s to her credit. In 1987 Ingrid won the best actress award at the Glendale
Center Theater in Los Angeles for her role as Mama in I Remember Mama. Also to her credit is a
performance of The Stronger by Strindberg at the Main Theatre in Warsaw, Poland.
She recently opened her original one-woman musical play, Songs from My Red Suitcase at
Studio Live in Sedona, her current hometown. She tours locally and in Europe with her
jazz/cabaret show, singing in many languages, including French, German, Portuguese, Swedish
and Spanish. www.ingridhagelbergjazz.com
Marlou Elewaut
Originally from Los Angeles, CA she received a Bachelor’s degree in Theater from U.C.L.A.,
Marlou studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City with renowned acting
teacher Sanford Meisner. Marlou has managed clothing stores beginning in 1978 with a 300 sq
ft store for locals at the Mammoth Mountain ski resort in CA and eventually became a store/ ski
shop with locations in Ca and AZ. In 1986 she and her husband took over an abandoned,
bankrupted movie theater in Mammoth, CA which quickly became the second highest grossing
single screen independent theater in the country. In 1990 Marlou moved to Lake Havasu, AZ
where she and her husband bought a 21 unit apt building and refurbished it into Hidden Palms
All-Suite Inn, renting nightly and weekly to water skiers, snowbirds, and corporate accounts such
as Ford Motors. Marlou went to massage school in 1998 and worked for a Day Spa in Lake
Havasu called "The Secret Cottage", and after two years bought it from the owner, running it
until selling and moving to Sedona in 2009. She is currently a massage therapist at Enchantment
and has also retuned to her first love, the theatre. She has played lead roles in Steel Magnolias
(Truvey) and as Blanche Dubois in Streetcar Named Desire. With her years of business and
acting experience, Marlou is both excited and proud to be a part of Red Earth Theater, and
welcomes the opportunity and adventure of bringing live theater back to Sedona and the Verde
Valley area and to encourage others to pursue their own creative passions.
Tom Davis
Thomas G. Davis has lived all his life in the Verde Valley being raised in Sedona and now living
in Cottonwood. He has served on his children’s PTA, been a banker and has returned to the hotel
and service industry. Tom has had a passion for acting since the age of 6 and has worked lighting
and sound for productions of Hedda Gabler, Barefoot in the Park and Agnes of God. He
appeared in Sedona Arts Center production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
He took a 10-year break from the stage to raise his two children and made a comeback into the
theater scene by participating in Canyon Moon Theater's Improv Showdown where his group
took first place, continuing with CMTC in Sabotage in Sedona! and About This Child. After
another break he has returned to the theatre world with Red Earth theatre appearing on stage in
The Wild Party, stage managing Recylcing With A Unicorn and serving on the Board.
Sarah Ann Lesslie
A multi-talented young woman, Sarah Ann is a businesswoman with 15 years as a massage
therapist running a private practice, and, since 2010, as a chocolatier making hand-made
RED EARTH THEATRE Bd Members - BIOGRAPHIES
3-2015
chocolates and running her company Chocolita. (https://www.chocolita.co/) She is a graduate of
ASU’s Herberger Institute for the Arts with a BA in Theatre where she played Marie in Georg
Buchner's Woyzeck for her thesis performance in acting. She appeared in the film, Sedona The
Motion Picture, as well as the award-winning Snapshot, and other films such as Spinach and
Arugula, More Than A Kiss, and Cookie Jar. She plays Josie in the TV series, The Rocks. In
theatre, she has played lead roles with Verde Valley Theatre, Canyon Moon Theatre's Twelfth
Night, A Marriage Minuet, and the play festival's Open Heart. Sarah has performed with Red
Earth Theatre in the reading of Family, Crushes & Bouquets, Painting Churches, Recycling With
A Unicorn (for which she was also one of the writers), and Loplop And The Queen She is proud
to be on the Red Earth Theatre board and looks forward to the future of live theatre here where
she lives. She believes acting is a means by which to free the spirit and share the realities of
humanity with one another in order to learn and grow.
Jim Bishop
James Bishop, Jr., now many years in Greater Sedona, is an author, free lance writer, editor and
creative writing instructor who is also committed to grass roots organizing, arts advocacy and
environmental sanity. Since leaving the nation’s capital for the West two decades ago, he has
served as a consultant to government agencies and non-profit organizations ranging from The
RAND Corporation to the Grand Canyon Trust, The Aspen Institute at Wye Plantation to
American Rivers and the Coconino National Forest, Sedona Ranger District and the Sedona
Creative Life Center. His writing has appeared in newspapers and magazines from Seattle to
Denver, Prescott, Arizona to Washington D.C. His book, Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist – The
Life and Legacy of Edward Abbey is now in paperback. He recently voiced the audio book of his
collection of short stories The Pink Nectar Café form which some of the stories will appear on
stage this summer.
Before moving west from D.C. and New York City in the early ’80s, Bishop was a senior
member of the White House Energy Policy and Planning staff responsible in 1977 for creating
the nation’s first comprehensive energy plan focused on the nation’s renewable energy potential.
A year later, he became Director of Communications for the Federal Energy Administration,
Chief Spokesman for Energy Secretary James Rodney Schlesinger and Deputy Assistant
Secretary for Intergovernmental and Institutional Relations. In 1980, Bishop received the
Secretary’s Medal for Outstanding Service that included an innovative energy conservation
education program.
Nowadays, Bishop, the descendant of Nantucket whalers and the Delaware Indian Nation and the
son and grandson of distinguished artists, is far from retirement in Sedona, creating screenplays,
two novels and also advancing the cause of Sedona Recycles, Keep Sedona Beautiful, and Red
Earth Theatre among other causes and organization to which he gives his energy. He continues to
teach, writes prolifically and travels. Bishop was educated in New England and New York City,
and has three grown children who are involved in public health, web development and design,
and cyberspace. He continues to believe in impossible things.