Van Wallach ’80

Van Wallach ’80

Van Wallach is a writer based in Katonah, NY. A native of Mission, Texas, he started in journalism and then switched to corporate communications. Van’s a language buff, having studied Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian (don’t ask him to speak any of them). His first book, A Kosher Dating Odyssey: One Former Texas Baptist’s Quest for a Naughty and Nice Jewish Girl, appeared in 2012 (available on Amazon). He blogs at both the Times of Israel and mission2moscow.blogspot.com. His open-mic appearances are at venues like the Hudson Valley Writers Center, Museum of Sex’s Wide Open Wednesday series, Delaware Art Museum and Katonah Village Library. He’s been the webmaster for the Great Class of 1980 since 2001 and wears Reunions gear as often as possible. Van’s pandemic creative project is a novel set in the Rio Grande Valley on the Texas-Mexico border.

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Emily Tepe ’00 and Adam Ollendorff ’00 (ADAM + IVA)

ADAM + IVA make woke music comedy for a broke world. Think Portlandia and Nichols and May. The duo met in music theory class their freshman year at Princeton. IVA went on to become a crossover pop and opera star in Sweden and has acted and sung in sketches on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. ADAM performed at Chicago’s Improv Olympic Theater before moving to Nashville and playing in the bands of Kacey Musgraves and John Oates. ADAM + IVA’s music videos—including “Make America the Beautiful Again,” “Quarantine” (a parody of the Beatles “Yesterday”) and “Vegan Leather”—turn a wry, satirical eye on social convention and have developed a cult following on YouTube. Follow them on Instagram @ADAMandIVA or wherever fine books are sold.

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Adam Ziv ’11

Adam Ziv is a New York City based actor, musician and dancer. He has performed in many productions on the East and West Coasts, including Dangerous Liaisons (Valmont), West Side Story (Diesel), A Doll’s House (Helmer, Krogstad), Measure for Measure (Lucio), The Oresteia (Orestes), and Romeo and Juliet (Tybalt). He frequently collaborates with fellow alumni, most recently with Dominique Salerno ’10 on their 2020 (pre-pandemic) original video “Basique” (with music by Jason Pomerantz ’09), and with Dominique Salerno and Lovell Holder ’08 on Laughing Wild (Los Angeles Theater Center) in 2018. While waiting for the world to reopen its stages, he has been focusing on his (virtual) piano studies. For tonight's performance, he has selected two excerpts (the Allemande and Corrente sections) of the Bach E minor Partita. This is one of his absolute favorite works for piano.

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Joe Quinn ’80

Joe Quinn ’80

Performing as an undergrad with many campus theater groups and the Program in Theater and Dance, Joe spent 14 years working with Off-Off-Broadway troupes in New York City. Returning to his home state of Maine after a severe back injury, he eventually recovered enough to participate in the active performing arts scene in the Greater Portland area. His recent work includes musical revues, new play festivals, audio drama, and Shakespeare, in which his roles have included Prospero, Jaques, Friar Lawrence, and Polonius.

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Granville Burgess ’69

Granville Burgess: plays/musicals produced Off-Broadway and regionally, including: WPA Theatre, Douglass Fairbanks Theatre, Walnut Street Theatre, Ford's Theatre, Capital Rep. Plays: THE FREAK (Samuel French); DUSKY SALLY (Broadway Play Publishing); PLAY IT AS IT LIES (Playscripts). Musicals: CONRACK, BATTLECRY, A COUNTRY CAROL, COMMON GROUND. Teleplays produced: network (CBS:CAPITOL), PBS(TRIFLES, THE TURTLE STONE), syndication(TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE). Awards include: EMMY nomination (CAPITOL), CBS/Foundation for the Dramatist Guild production award, grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (2 times), Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Five County Fund (3 times), he National Endowment for the Humanities, the US Department of Education, and numerous playwriting competition winners. Books: STONE IN THE CRICK, FORK IN THE CRICK, THE LAST AT-BAT OF SHOELESS JOE (Chickadee Prince Books). Co-Founder of Quill Entertainment Company, educational nonprofit (mission: "Teaching America's Heritage Through Story and Song") which creates and tours musicals about American history. Former Director of Walnut Street Theatre School.

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Ben Diamond ’19

Ben Diamond is a stage and screen actor based in New York. While at Princeton, he participated in the theater department and was a member of the Triangle Club, BodyHype, and Shere Khan. He performed in Assistants: The Musical (Off-Broadway) in the year after graduation before the pandemic hit. Since then, he has been cooking, long-distance walking, and trying not to go bonkers.

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Tessa Albertson ’20

Theater: Upcoming Happy Days at The Wild Project streaming March 5th (dir. Nico Krell '18), Broadway’s Shrek The Musical, The Public Theater’s The Low Road. Tessa is best known for portraying Caitlin Miller on Younger (TVLand). Others include Law & Order: SVU (NBC), The Family (Netflix), and CBS’s The Good Wife and Instinct. Upcoming: Generation (HBO Max). Films include Blame, November Criminals and Barry. Princeton University Class ’20 where she played the titular role at the Berlind Theater's Macbeth (dir. Elena Araoz). For her senior thesis in English, Tessa wrote an original lip-sync absurdist play Feminine Products, detailing the failures of mainstream, white feminism and how pop music plays into women's delusional ideals of romance and stability.

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Miyuki Miyagi '12

Miyuki Miyagi is an actor, singer, dancer, and multi-instrumentalist. Miyuki has performed regionally with Tuacahn, East West Players, 5-Star Theatricals, Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, and The Culver City Symphony. Most recently, she performed as the Jasmine and Mulan cover in Disney’s WHEN YOU WISH at Tuacahn and as Peggy Maruyama in the L.A. premiere of ALLEGIANCE with George Takei. Miyuki concentrated in politics with certificates in environmental studies and theater. (She unofficially majored in Triangle and Roaring 20.) Miyuki is passionate about the overlap of arts and activism.

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Katie North '18

Katie North is an actress and writer based in NYC. She graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor’s in neuroscience, and has been involved in professional theater, film, and television since then. Recent projects include a guest star role on Disney’s “The Big Fib” with Yvette Nicole Brown and Rhys Darby and a playwriting debut with The Man Goes Woo at the Thespis Theater Festival.

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Yang Shao '20

Yang Shao '20

Yang graduated in 2020 and currently lives in NYC. She's always loved singing, and it has been a great comfort during quarantine to cover songs that she loves with accompaniment from her digital piano. On campus she sang with VTone, an East Asian music group, and the Glee Club. She is excited to explore musical opportunities in the city once it becomes COVID-safe to do so; in the meantime, she hopes everyone can stay safe and healthy and continue enjoying and supporting the arts!

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Kemi Adegoroye '13

Kemi Adegoroye is a singer-songwriter, actress, and producer based in the DC Metro Area. Her artistic career spans multiple disciplines and genres, ranging from jazz and soul to musical theatre and pop. She performs regularly as a solo artist and as the frontwoman of DC-based jazz and soul band Terra Firma. On Valentine's Day 2020 Kemi released her first original single, The Man Who Stole the Moon, inspired by the 2010 movie Despicable Me starring Steve Carell. For the Record EP, debuting on January 29, 2021, is her first album of original music, inspired by her lifelong love of Aretha Franklin, Motown, jazz standards, and Broadway-style storytelling.

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Eve Kochen Budnick '84

Opera del West is a nonprofit opera company founded by Eve Kochen Budnick ‘84 in 2006 in the metro west area outside Boston. Our mission is to be a professional opera company that performs fully staged classic and new operas in intimate settings around Boston. We also act as a stepping stone for New England based emerging artists to perform opera roles in smaller venues before being hired by larger companies. Eve Budnick is the Artistic Director and has a Masters degree from Boston University and a Graduate Diploma from New England Conservatory.

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Carla Schwartz *84

Filmmaker and photographer Carla Schwartz’s poems have been widely published and anthologized, including in The Practicing Poet (Diane Lockward, Ed), and in her second collection, Intimacy with the Wind, (Finishing Line, 2017). Her CB99videos youtube channel has 2,200,000+ views. Learn more at carlapoet.com, wakewiththesun.blogspot.com, or find her on YouTube, Twitter, or Instagram @cb99videos.

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Catherine Barnett '82

Catherine Barnett '82

Catherine Barnett (class of 1982) is the author of three poetry collections, HUMAN HOURS (2018 Believer Book Award in Poetry), THE GAME OF BOXES (James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets), and INTO PERFECT SPHERES SUCH HOLES ARE PIERCED. A Guggenheim fellow, she teaches at NYU, Hunter, and Barnard. She lives in NYC, where she also works as an independent editor.

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Alexandra Palocz '20

Alexandra is a 2020 graduate in computer science with a certificate in theater. She is a thinker and tinkerer, a dreamer and do-er, learning what it means to be a creative individual in collaboration with the world. She is fascinated by a myriad of topics, including world mythology, evolutionary biology, and the inner workings of computers. She likes making things, telling stories, and looking for the patterns and connections that tie us all together.

Alexandra met Ally through the production of Echoes in Glass, Alexandra's theater thesis, and afterwards they worked together on this song as part of the Final Winter Sessions, a series of duets made with the goal of recording shared moments of music, creation, and friendship as memories to carry forward.

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Lia Romeo '03

Lia Romeo’s plays have been produced off-Broadway and regionally around the country, and developed at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, the Lark, and elsewhere. Four of her plays have been recognized by the Kilroys List. She was the winner of City Theatre’s 2019 National Short Playwriting Award, and was a 2018 Individual Artist Fellowship winner in playwriting from the New Jersey State Council for the Arts. Her plays are published by Dramatists Play Service, Playscripts, Broadway Play Publishing, and Smith & Kraus.

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