Finding the Michaels follows the story of a New Yorker shaken by her experience watching the Twin Towers fall on the bright Manhattan morning of 9/11. When your world explodes-literally-it's time to rewrite your story. Cassie realizes this when she sets out on a quest to find her missing father, Michael. She finds a trail of Michaels, both dead and alive. She portrays the people she finds with humor and determination and pieces together their fractured stories in this moving and inspiring one-woman play.

When Cassie stepped on the F train the morning of 9/11, she was ready. Ready to be back in New York after a three-month hiatus with her mid-life crisis fling, Messed-Up-Mary. Ready to get back to work with her students in the South Bronx. Ready to finish writing her novel. But that morning and the rest of her life didn't go as planned. Why that burning plane in the tower made her think of her missing father isn't clear. What is clear is that witnessing the 9/11 tragedy set her on an extraordinary quest to find the hole in her own history and propelled her on a path to family, hope and healing.

BIOGRAPHIES:

Cassie Angley, Solo Performer, Playwright, is an award-winning published playwright, actor, singer, and theater-maker. She performed, trained and wrote in New York City for over 15 years. She worked professionally as an actress for many years. Her favorite roles were as Rose in the national tour of Meet me in St. Louis, and Donna Carmen in the San Francisco Mime Troupe's production of Spain. She paused her acting career to focus on writing when she received a three-year fellowship to the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop where she studied as a lyricist and book writer. Her full length musical Hungry ran at HERE Theater in Soho. Little West 4th Street, a musical which she co-wrote, played to sold out houses in midtown Manhattan. Her play The Wallet won the West Coast Ten-Minute Playwriting Contest and was chosen to be published in The Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2003. Cassie wrote, produced and often performed in more than 12 original plays and musicals presented in Off-Off Broadway venues such as HERE Theater, W.O.W Theater and Dixon Place.

Jennifer Stuckert, Director, is an actor, playwright, director, and psychotherapist. She received her BFA in acting from NYU, and her MA in counseling psychology from CIIS in San Francisco. Her plays include What Evie Wants, Far From Home, and the one-person show Taming the Wolf. As an actor, some of her favorite roles include Alma in Honey Brown Eyes at SF Playhouse, and Peggy in Pleasure and Pain and Claire in The Long Christmas Ride Home at the Magic Theatre. She currently works as a drama therapist at the Living Arts Counseling Center in Oakland.

AIM: Artists in Motion is the name for the performing arts residency program at Shotwell Studios. Footloose presents performances of the new work created during the residencies. An individual or group whose residency culminates in a showcase may also invite guest artists to share the bill. This ongoing, year-round series features live performances of dance, theater, music, spoken word and multi-media. Artists at Shotwell are considered for a variety of programming here and at other venues. In addition, participating artists in Footloose productions are offered free rehearsal space, publicity and marketing, technical and administrative support and mentoring on how to self-produce.

The Rita Hayworth of this Generation is the story of Carmelita Cristina Rivera, a queer Latina performer whose passion, power and heartache impact her drive to stardom. She gambles on landing a part in a syndicated TV show and winning the love of a Latino transgender. From the Black Jack King to the iconic Rita Hayworth, Tina plays the unconventional characters-real and imagined-that help Carmelita break into show business. Fate deals her access into a parallel dimension where integrity is at stake in this humorous and dramatic one-woman show.

Much as been written on Rita Hayworth, but no one has portrayed the actress known to the world as the "Love Goddess" in such a magical realm as Tina D'Elia in her newest play. Tina's fascination began long before the Latin craze broke out with Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony in the late 1990's. Tina was already doing her Rita style nightclub act with the one glove striptease as part of the queer women of color performance troupe 1994-1995 of Drag Kings Sluts and Goddess in her hometown of Boston. Tina researched and portrayed Rita for a live audience in Boston's The American History, Television Channel and was hooked as a huge Rita fan.

As a lesbian/queer identified Mexican-Italian Latina Femme, Tina relates to Rita being born from a Spanish father and an Irish mother (maiden name of Hayworth) who maintained her cultural integrity despite being whitewashed by movie industry monsters like Harry Cohn. Tina's writing was inspired by film noir classics like Gilda and in 2003, Tina wrote a two-person performance piece with singing and dancing influenced by Rita called Black Jack King. It was also published as a short story in the Anthology, Best Lesbian Erotica Anthology 2004, which won the prestigious Lambda Award for Best Lesbian Erotica in 2004.

She has been developing the play with writing coach, David Ford, who says "Tina has that magic talent to have fun and move the audience at the same time. Extraordinary." She tried her first draft in front of an audience at Brava's black box theater in June 2011, to a sold out crowd who gave her a standing ovation. Encouraged by the positive audience response, Tina and Footloose Artistic Director, Mary Alice Fry, decided to present a short theatrical run as the next step before Tina takes the show on the road. Fry, of the acclaimed Women on the Way Festival, previously produced Tina's hit show Groucho: a Day in the D'Elia Soup at Venue 9 in 2001. See below for more biographical information.

BIOGRAPHIES:

Tina D'Elia, Solo Performer, Playwright is a Mexican-Italian actor, playwright, award winning screenwriter, poet, and casting director. She is an expert storyteller and character actress. Tina's short story, Lucha, was adapted to a screenplay and won the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival Audience award in 2009 and was nominated for the prestigious Iris Prize in the United Kingdom.

Footloose produced Tina's premiere of her popular one-woman show: Groucho: a Day in the D'Elia Soup, directed by Ellen Sebastian Chang. Tina's performance in the Women on the Way Festival in 2001 and subsequent successful engagement at Venue 9, led to her being chosen for the National Queer Arts Festival in 2002 in San Francisco. She made a film of Groucho and finished that process in 2008. Tina started to develop The Rita Hayworth of this Generation in an AIRspace residency at The Garage in San Francisco in 2010, and continued working on the show in David Ford's solo performance class at The Marsh. Tina performed a first draft to a full house at Brava's black box theater in June 2011 and is now ready for the premiere run with Footloose presents at Shotwell Studios. She intends to tour the show to festivals as the next step.

Mary Guzmán, Director, has directed for the stage and is an award winning filmmaker. Her theater credits include work for Theatre Rhino, The Playwrights Foundation and The Lark Theater in New York City. Highlights include Enrique Urueta's, Learn To Be Latina, at IMPACT Theatre and Bright Ideas with Shotgun Players. Ms. Guzmán's films have screened in Spain, France, Australia, Indonesia and the U.S. Three of them are in distribution. Her film, Do the Math, is part of the Frameline Voices initiative which helps LGBT films become more accessible to the public. She has completed the screenplay for her mystery, Lost Dog, and is creating a women's college basketball TV pilot titled, Starting Five. Her newest short film, The Wait, was an official selection of the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival in 2011.