Principal Biographies

Ralph Lewis directed the company's Mitya's Ordeal, Part IV of the Lincoln Center Director's Lab serialization of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov; 3Christs, co-directed with partner Barry Rowell; Jonah's Escape?, in the Performance Zone and Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Play festivals; aRT, a finalist in the Turnip Theatre's 15 Minute Play Festival; Babel's Children, co-produced with the Prism Playhouse; "...Take 3..." for The Field's 90 Plays in 9 Days; staged readings of Threshold and Cedar Bar; and short pieces for 10% Peculiar: The Discussion, Myra Claybourne, and Goddess at Midnight. He acted in the company's It's Good Enough for Me, Gat Him to His Place, Joe and Friend for 10% Peculiar, and Before I Wake. Other NYC directing includes Remains, a NYSCA recipient for the Turnip Theatre Company; Leave the Light On, a Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Play festival finalist; Let Us Go Out into the Starry Night at The Kraine Theater; and several adaptations for children at Barnes & Noble Bookstores. Other acting credits include: As You Like It in Fort Tryon Park; The Imaginary Invalid at the Westbeth Theatre Center; Strike of '92 and Just War at the Nat Horne Studio Theatre; a season with the NJ Shakespeare Festival; with Jose Ferrer in Fanny at the Paper Mill Playhouse; and numerous productions of the circus musical, Barnum. Film work includes the upcoming Big Daddy, Stepmom, Jungle2Jungle, Quiz Show, Law & Order and Across the Sea of Time (in 3D). Ralph is a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Director's Lab, Actors Equity Association and Screen Actors Guild.

Since co-founding Peculiar Works Project in 1993, producer/actor Catherine Porter has played many memorable roles in PWP productions, most recently the Voice of God/Faith in Barry Rowell's It's Good Enough for Me, Grushenka in Marina Shron's Mitya's Ordeal, Dr. Anderson in S.M. Dale and Barry Rowell's 3Christs, Cedilla in Dale's Privileged and Confidential, and Eleanor in Rowell's Freiheit Makes a Stand. Other PWP projects she has performed in include Ruth Margraff's Gat Him to His Place, Veronique Jeanmarie's aRT, Dale's Wallpaper, and Rowell's Before I Wake. She appeared Off Broadway with En Garde Arts in Mac Wellman's Obie Award-winning Crowbar. She has also been seen Off-off Broadway in Every Man Jack of You (Cloven Patriarchs), The Adding Machine (78th Street Theatre Lab); Wednesdays, Masque of the Bull and Strangeness and Save Time (Empty Space Theatre); The John Phillip Sousa Workshop (Manhattan Punch Line); The Story is True, But the Names Have Changed (Theatre Row Theater); and Blood Primer (Aboutface Theatre). In addition to her work with PWP, Catherine was the Assistant Director for over three years at Dixon Place, the renowned performance space on NYC's Lower East Side, and continues to freelance with Dixon Place as a development consultant. Catherine has served as a funding panelist for The Fund for Creative Communities, Manhattan Community Arts Fund and The Nancy Quinn Fund for Emerging Theatres. A Texas native, Catherine graduated from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth with a BFA in Theatre. She moved to NYC in 1990 and lives in Manhattan. She is a member of Actors Equity Association.

Peculiar Works founder and director Barry Rowell has written and directed a number of productions including the tour of The Judson House Project, Freiheit Makes a Stand, It's Good Enough For Me, Before I Wake and Blood Primer. He was co-writer of 3Christs with S.M. Dale, which he and Ralph Lewis staged in the balcony at Judson Memorial Church; and he directed the Los Angeles side of the bi-coastal videoconference of S.M. Dale's Privileged & Confidential, as well as the staged reading of the piece for the Rat(FEST)ation '97 at the Ohio Theatre. In addition to work with PWP, Barry staged a concert performance of Kurt Weill's opera The Protagonist for the American Symphony Orchestra at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, and directed productions of Ruth Margraff's Gat Him to His Place in the American Living Room at HERE and Renee Philippi's plays A Queen: Bea for TheatreKore and stone-blind in adobe theater's Fleet the Time series. Barry acted in Reza Abdoh's Father Was a Peculiar Man and Charles L. Mee's Another Person is a Foreign Country directed by Anne Bogart, in addition to Off-off Broadway and regional productions. He has served as a grant panelist for the Vineyard S.P.A.C.E. Fund, The Nancy Quinn Fund for Emerging Theatres and the Manhattan Community Arts Fund. Born and bred in Texas, Barry received a BFA in Theatre from Texas Christian University and studied post-graduate Theatre History and Criticism at the University of Texas in Austin.