Part One was conducted at Ellen Maddow's Home via Zoom on July 14, 2023

Part Two was conducted at Casey Childs' Home on September 8, 2023

Ellen Maddow is a composer, playwright, and performer.  She is also trained in mediation -working in community, civil and criminal courts, and in custody and visitation cases.  She also does conflict coaching and family care at The New York Peace Institute.  She worked in The Open Theater, directed by Joseph Chaikin, along with fellow acting members Tina Shepard and Paul Zimet.  Maddow, Shepard and Zimet continued their work together by forming their own company, The Talking Band.  Paul Zimet and Ellen Maddow married.  The three founders write and perform works together and invite collaboration on many of their projects.  The work is regularly challenged to keep the company ‘off balance’ and open to new ideas and possibilities.  The work has found many collaborative venues such as Antioch, Smith College, and the Children’s Theatre of Minneapolis, and Off-Broadway theaters including HERE Arts Center, La Mama E.T.C., P.S. 122, St. John the Divine, St. Mark’s Place, The Flea, and the Connelly Theater.  Maddow has traveled to Ireland, Poland, Moscow, Paris, Serbia, Belgrade, Macedonia, and she has also walked across the United States with Taylor Mac.  Maddow’s list of work includes:  MUTATION SHOW (1969), NIGHTWALK (1969), KALEVALA (1976), THE DYBBUK (1977), WORKSONG (1978), PEDRO PARAMO (1979) SOFT TARGETS (1980), TRISTEN & ISOLT (1982), AN EVENING WITH PABLO NERUDA (1982), GIACONDA (1982), HOT LUNCH APOSTLES(1983), THE BETTY PLAYS (1984), FURIES (1985), BIG MOUTH (1985), THE THREE LIVES OF LUCIE CABROL (1987), LIFE SIMULATOR (1987), NO PLAYS NO POETRY (1988), KRAPP’S LAST TAPE (1989), SOMETHING DANGEROUS: THE BEST OF BETTY SUFFER (1989), NEW CITIES (1989), MALADY OF DEATH (1989), A PAGE OF THE TALMUD (1990), MUSIC RESCUE SERVICE (1990), DOPPLEBETTY & FAKE BOOK (1991), FATA MORGANA (1991) EMPTY BOXES (1992) A PERFECT LIFE (1992), FERN AND ROSE (1992) NINE TO TWELVE (1993), THE BLUE SKY IS A CURSE (1993), LILAC AND FLAG (1994), BETTY SUFFERS THEORY OF RELATIVITY (1995), PERSEPHONE (1996), HOME ENTERTAINMENT(1997), BLACK MILK QUARTET (1998), TILT (1999), HOME/WIRE WALKING (2000), BAD WOMEN (2000), STAR MESSENGERS (2001), BITTERROOT (2001), PAINTED SNAKE IN A PAINTED CHAIR (2003), THE PARROT (2003), BELIZE (2005), THE NECKLACE (2006), DELICIOUS RIVERS (2006), FLIP SIDE (2007), IMMINENCE (2008), BUCCANEER (2008), RADNEVSKY’S REAL MAGIC (2009), PANIC! EUPHORIA! BLACKOUT (2010), NEW ISLANDS ARCHIPELAGO (2010), THE LILY’S REVENGE (2010), THE WALK ACROSS AMERICA FOR MOTHER EARTH (2011) MARCELLUS SHALE (2013), OBSKENE (2013), THE GOLDEN TOAD (2015), FAT SKIRT BIG NOZZLE (2016), BURNISHED BY GRIEF (2016), THE ROOM SINGS (2017), FUSIFORM GYRUS – A SEPTET FOR 2 SCIENTISTS AND 5 HORNS (2018), DANCE NATION (2018), CITY OF NO ILLUSIONS (2018), EFFLORESCENCE (2021), LEMON GIRLS OR ART FOR THE ARTLESS (2022), SHIMMER AND HERRINGBONE (2024), EXISTENTIALISM (2024), THE FOLLOWING EVENING (2024).  Her awards include a Drama Desk Award (2018 DANCE NATION), an Obie (2003 PAINTED SNAKE IN A PAINTED CHAIR), the Frederick Loewe Award for Music Theater (2003/1999), nytheatre.com People of the Year Award (2008), NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre Award (2020).  Grants for Maddow’s work include: Playwrights’ Center National McKnight Fellowship (1997), INTERPLAY – New Dramatists Eastern European Exchange with Czech Republic (2004), New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Playwriting (2006).  She is also  a recipient of the NEA/TCG Theater Residency Program for Playwrights (2007).  Maddow is an alumna of New Dramatists.

Maddow, whose father was a screenwriter, did not get cast often in her Hollywood High School productions as her classmates were mostly professionals-in-the-making.  However, a Milton Berle movie on the subject of teen suicide was seeking non-actors and she was cast because she evoked pity.  Her mother was a dancer with Martha Graham and was on Broadway in Finian’s Rainbow. Both parents took Maddow to New York to see shows, many Off-Broadway, introducing Maddow to Judith Malina and Joe Chaikin in the Living Theatre’s MAN IS MAN.  Going backstage after the matinee, she encountered them in their costumes of underwear.  She thought, ‘I’m going to do that when I grow up!’  Antioch College in Ohio had a work study program and for a year she went to France to study with Etienne Decroux becoming a mime.  Returning to New York she was disillusioned with the formulaic narcissistic, theater she saw and was ready to quit when she got a job as a musician with Joe Chaikin and The Open Theater in TERMINAL.  The actor-based theater company renewed her sense of theatrical possibilities, and she went on to build The Talking Band with Zimet and Shepard, establishing a theater where you ‘can make it up and do it yourself.’