The Homestretch

Anne de Mare is an award-winning playwright, director, professional video artist, and filmmaker. She completed her first documentary feature, Asparagus! Stalking the American Life, which broadcast regionally on PBS in 2009, in collaboration with Kirsten Kelly, her partner at Spargel Productions. Anne’s original plays have been presented in Chicago, London and New York, where she was a five-year resident artist with Richard Foreman’s legendary Ontological-Hysteric Theater. She is a founding member of The Independent Theater Company, The Nevermore Theater Project, and Theaters Against War. Her video work has been seen on stage at Lincoln Center and at The Park Avenue Armory, and she’s worked with Innovative Music Programs to develop the film component of Accidental Heroes, a multimedia performance work based on the lives of eastern and western European artists coming of age during the Cold War.

Kirsten Kelly is an award-winning documentary film and theater director who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She and filmmaker Anne de Mare founded Spargel Productions in 2002, to make their first feature documentary, Asparagus! Stalking the American Life, about Kirsten’s hometown. The pair is currently in development for The Girl with the Rivet Gun, an animated new media documentary project on Rosie the Riveter. Her short film work has been seen at Juilliard and Lincoln Center. Kirsten is a two-time Helen Hayes Award-nominated best director and has directed award-winning theater productions in Chicago, Washington DC, and off-Broadway in New York. She is also an arts educator and the director and co-creator of “CPS Shakespeare,” which was featured on NBC Nightly News in 2010, a highly acclaimed program that works with Chicago public high school students at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. She is a graduate of Juilliard’s Master Directing program where she received the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, and is a member of Rising Phoenix Repertory in New York