meet our team

John freedman

Ukraine Program Director​

John Freedman is an American writer and translator who, after working 30 years in Russia, now lives in Greece. He lived in Moscow from 1988 to 2018, where he was the theatre critic of The Moscow Times (1992-2015). His play Dancing, Not Dead (2011) was winner of the Internationalists Global Play Contest (2011); his short play Five Funny Tales from the Heart of Buenos Aires (2013) has been performed in NY, Chattanooga, and Edinburgh. He has translated over 100 plays, of which productions have been mounted in five continents. He is the author of numerous books, including Silence’s Roar: The Life and Drama of Nikolai Erdman (1992), and Provoking Theater: Kama Ginkas Directs (2003). He is the curator of two Worldwide Play Readings projects: Insulted. Belarus (2020 to present) and Ukrainian Play Readings (2022).

howard shalwitz

Associate Director & Poland Program Director

Howard co-founded Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC in 1980 and guided the company as Artistic Director for 38 seasons.  Under his leadership, Woolly Mammoth grew from a tiny alternative theatre into one of the nation's most influential producers of provocative new plays.  He has directed and performed in works by American and international playwrights – at New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Arena Stage, Portland Center Stage, Milwaukee Rep, Woolly Mammoth, and other US theaters.  In 2014 he received the prestigious Margo Jones Award for his lifetime commitment to new American plays.  Over the past decade, partnering with CITD, Shalwitz has sought new models for American theatre by engaging with artists in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Russia, and sharing his insights with the US theatre field. He teaches in the graduate theatre program at the University of Maryland and is currently working on a book about the language of theatre.

susan stroupe

Arnoult Legacy & Communications Manager

Susan is a theater maker, primarily working as a director, who specializes in interdisciplinary and devised works of theater often performed in non-traditional spaces. Throughout her career, Stroupe has also worked as a performer, writer, puppeteer, teacher, and collaborator in professional and community-based projects, with actors and nonactors of many ages and many abilities and disabilities. Focus and passion lies in theater in nontraditional spaces or arrangements, collaboratively devising pieces or working with scripts that challenge norms of race, gender, and genre.

BRANDICE THOMPSON

General Manager

Brandice is a self-generative artist, educator, and director from the Pacific Northwest. As a graduate of Towson University’s interdisciplinary MFA program, she developed a training method that cultivates the actor-creator through the devising of original works. She has also studied Ensemble-Based Physical Theater at Dell'Arte International and yoga, ritual, and art in Quito, Ecuador.

Brandice has worked with CITD since 2020, collaborating with Howard Shalwitz to lead multiple delegations to Poland and overseeing various projects centered on Ukrainian and Hungarian artists.

YURY URNOV

Associate Director

Yury is a theater director, producer, and teacher. He has been working with CITD for twenty-five years in Eastern Europe, Africa, and the USA. Currently, Yury serves as the co-artistic director of the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, which received the 2024 Regional Theater Tony Award.

Between the US and Europe, Yury has directed over fifty theater productions. His recent directing credits at the Wilma Theater include Twelfth Night, Minor Character, and Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play. Woolly Mammoth Theater in DC has been Yury’s first artistic home in America, where he has directed My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion (Helen Hayes Award for Best Production 23/24), KISS, Marie Antoinette, and You for Me for You, and he has been a proud company member since 2014.

From 2009 to 2011, Yury was a Fulbright Scholar in Residence at Towson University, MD, where he still teaches.