THE CREATIVE TEAM
(For 2011 Off-Broadway Production)

SAMUEL SHEM, Producer and Co-author

Samuel Shem, pen-name of Stephen Bergman, is a doctor, novelist, playwright and activist. A Rhodes scholar, he was on the faculty of Harvard Medical School for three decades. Shem has been described in the press as “Easily the finest and most important writer ever to focus on the lives of doctors and the world of medicine”, and “He brings mercy to the practice of medicine." The Lancet called THE HOUSE OF GOD: "One of the two most significant medical novels of the 20th century". Its sequel, MOUNT MISERY, reviewed as “another medical classic,” is about training to be a psychiatrist; FINE is about a psychoanalyst.

His 2008 novel, THE SPIRIT OF THE PLACE, about a primary care doctor in a small town, was reviewed as "The perfect bookend to THE HOUSE OF GOD". It won the "National Best Book Award 2008 in General Fiction and Literature" from USA Book News, and the “Independent Publishers National Book Award in Literary Fiction 2009.”

As a playwright, with his wife Janet Surrey he wrote the Off Broadway hit play Bill W. and Dr. Bob,about the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, which won the “Performing Arts Award of the National Council on Alcoholism 2007”, and is being produced all over the country. He was playwright-in-residence at the Boston Shakespeare Company; and has had many othe plays produced, including “The Shem Plays” Off Off Broadway, which were published in THE BEST SHORT PLAYS anthologies.

With Janet Surrey he has also published the nonfiction book: WE HAVE TO TALK: HEALING DIALOGUES BETWEEN WOMEN AND MEN, winner of the Boston Interfaith Council’s Paradigm Shift Award, 1999.

He has given over fifty commencement speeches on “How to Stay Human in Medicine,” including 2009 at his alma mater, Harvard Medical School. Shem and Surrey live in Boston and Tierra Tranquila Costa Rica. Website: www.samuelshem.com

JANET SURREY, Co-author

Janet Surrey is a clinical psychologist, author, Buddhist teacher, and founding scholar of the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute at Wellesley College. She is co-author of WOMEN’S GROWTH IN CONNECTION, and MOTHERING AGAINST THE ODDS, as well as other nonfiction books that deal with women’s relational psychology, addiction, and spirituality. She was a faculty member of Harvard University for many years, and is now a member of the Institute of Meditation and Psychology in Boston. She is co-author with her husband Samuel Shem of Bill W. and Dr. Bob, and WE HAVE TO TALK: HEALING DIALOGUES BETWEEN WOMEN AND MEN, which won the “1999 Paradigm Shift Award of the Boston Interfaith Council,” and also a curriculum, “Making Connections: Building Gender Dialogue and Community in Secondary Schools, 2006.” Known for her writing and speaking all over the world, she recently completed a training program to be a Community Dharma Leader. She and Stephen Bergman live in Boston and Costa Rica.

SETH GORDON, Director

Seth Gordon is thrilled and honored to become the Associate Artistic Director of the St. Louis Rep this season. Previously, he spent nine seasons in the same capacity at the Cleveland Play House. At the Play House, he produced FusionFest, a performing arts festival, and the Next Stage Festival of New Plays. His Play House directing credits include Dinner with Friends, Proof, Forest City (world premiere), Vincent in Brixton, Tuesdays with Morrie, A Christmas Story, RFK, Of Mice and Men, The Chosen, Doubt, The Lady with All the Answers, Inherit the Wind, Bill W. and Dr. Bob, and A Soldier’s Tale, which featured a rarely produced libretto by Kurt Vonnegut. This season for the Rep he’ll direct Next Fall at the Grandel Theatre and The Fall of Heaven in the main stage season, in addition to directing A Christmas Story at Syracuse Stage. He has also directed in Cleveland for Dobama Theatre, the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival, and the Beck Center for the Arts. He recently directed the Arabic premiere of Our Town in Cairo. Previously, he served as Literary Manager and then as Associate Producer of Primary Stages in New York, where he produced and/or directed countless productions, workshops and readings of new plays by this country’s leading playwrights. He has also directed at many other New York theatres, and has directed and lectured at various universities including The New School and Case Western Reserve University. He received the 2004 and 2006 Northern Ohio Live Award for Excellence in Theatre. He considers himself a lucky man. Seth directed the box-office smash, critically acclaimed production of Bill W. and Dr. Bob at the Cleveland Play House in 2010.