Artistic Director Meredith Bean McMath

Meredith is a published author, prize-winning playwright and award-winning historian who has been working in theatre arts and arts management for over 30 years. She is the Director of Run Rabbit Run, editor of LoudounPerformingArts.com and holds an M.S. in Arts Administration. Past work includes video documentaries, contemporary and historical plays, historic fiction novels and articles, as well as arts management positions as Founder and Artistic Director of the nonprofit Aurora Studio Theatre, Inc. and Program Director of The Round Hill Arts Center.

McMath's living history productions have been commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, the National Trust's Oatlands Plantation, The Newseum (Rosslyn), and many other museums, history organizations, libraries and schools. Run, Rabbit, Run history videos have appeared on The History Channel and in Virginia classrooms. McMath serves on the Board of Directors of The Hillsboro Community Association and is Vice President of the Loudoun Lyric Opera Company.  For more information, visit www.storyroot.com or contact her via meredith@storyroot.com.

Music Director Diane El-Shafey

Diane honed her musical theatre, acting, writing, directing and producing skills in California before moving to Virginia in 1999.  Since then, she's directed several main stage productions and served as Music Director for both The Growing Stage and Aurora Studio Theatre.   Productions include The Growing Stage's The Fantastiks as well as youth theatre productions of Bye, Bye Birdie, Anything Goes, The Wizard of Oz, and Fiddler on the Roof, and also served as Musical Director for The Growing Stage's Fame, West Side Story and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. She directed Aurora Studio Theatre's The Pajama Game and served as Musical Director for all other Aurora musicals, including Cinderella and Treasures: The Musical Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Guys and Dolls. Her original music and lyrics for Run Rabbit Run's 2010 Once Upon A Christmas Carol garnered high praise.

Diane worked for several years at Waterford Elementary School, directing several original musical plays for which she wrote both music and libretto. Local acting credits include The Music Man (Mrs. Paroo),The Diary of Anne Frank (Mrs. Van Daan) and Alcott's Little Women (Marmee), and more recent roles include Tony in The Art of Dining, and Social Worker in Case 22 at the 2010 Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, D.C .  A well-known voice and piano instructor, Diane is also Artistic Director of the 1940's-era singing troupe Swingin' by a Star.  (Photo by R.W. Tope )

Assistant Music Director CARMA OLIVEREZ

A music teacher at Round Hill Elementary School in Loudoun County, Virginia, Carma also plays piano and leads the worship team at Christ Community Lutheran Church in Leesburg. She is a 1993 graduate of Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, Virginia and played keyboard, flute, clarinet and saxophone for three summers with the Shenandoah Summer Music Theatre Orchestra. Shows included Candide, The Murder of Edwin Drood and Annie. As Assistant Musical Director for Aurora Studio Theatre, Inc. (2004-2008), she helped produce all Aurora musicals, from The Pajama Game to the Aurora's final production, the fall 2008 presentation of Guys and Dolls at Franklin Park Performing Arts Center.

A CLOSER LOOK AT RUN RABBIT RUN THEATRE... PRESS & PATRON REVIEWS

George Bernard Shaw 's Pygmalion

Run Rabbit Run Dinner Theatre at Grandale Farm Restaurant

- December 3-19, 2011 -

PRESS REVIEW: "Penny Hauffe, Craig Snyder, and Phil Erickson shine as Eliza Doolittle, Colonel Pickering, and Henry Higgins"... About ALL the Actors: "... nine people who are so good at pretending to be other people that you wonder whose voices they hear when they talk to themselves—"  About Grandale's food: "[Executive Chef/Owner] Author Clark and his sous chef, Enrique Jaciento... serve some of the most compelling food I've ever eaten."

— "Pygmalion Serves Many-layered Feast,"

Mark Dewey, Shenandoah Free Press

Read the whole Shenandoah Free Press review

PATRON REVIEW: "Pygmalion was full 'of chocolates... and taxis, and gold, and diamonds!' The cast presented a feast of Shavian wit and a social statement that is applicable nearly a century after its premier. Bloody good show, Run, Rabbit, Run!"

— Matthew Gallelli, Patron

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All for the Union

Written and Directed by McMath

Produced at the Capital Fringe Festival

- July 2010 -

PRESS REVIEW: "All For the Union is a welcome addition to stories of that time in our nation’s history."

- ShowBizRadio.net

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Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest

Run Rabbit Run Dinner Theatre at Grandale Farm Restaurant

- April 29 - May 15, 2011 -

PRESS REVIEW: "Run Rabbit Run Theatre's production of Oscar Wilde's period comedy... has achieved a level of excellence not often seen on the dinner theatre circuit. From casting to staging to wardrobe, the show exudes meticulous attention to detail that results in an evening of marvelous entertainment"... Critics Choice: The Importance of Being Earnest (Run Rabbit Run Theatre)

Best Acting: Full Cast The Importance of Being Earnest (Run Rabbit Run Theatre)

— Beverly Ford, Theatre Critic

of the former All Arts Review

PRESS: "Award-winning artist and Hillsboro resident Laney Oxman, whose work is featured at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts as well as the Corning Museum of Glass, designed the vibrant but simple set pieces to reflect McMath's hyper-realistic interpretation of the play.... Grandale Farm Restaurant neatly parallels Run Rabbit Run's focus on local resources."

— Michelle Delgado

"Dinner Theatre Serves Up Comedy"

Loudoun Magazine, spring 2011

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Once Upon A Christmas Carol

Adaptation by McMath, Music and Lyrics by Diane El-Shafey,

Instrumental Music by Carma Oliverez

- December 2010 -

PATRON REVIEWS

"Our High School Cotillion Club just attended, "Once Upon a Christmas Carol," and it was fabulous!  A wonderful family show..."

— Jean Ann Michie

"My friend and I LOVED IT! — all the nuances, both humorous and touching, creative staging, wonderful voices and costumes, the perfect accents... I could feel everyone's hard, fun work and play, and together, you brought Dickens' timeless message alive to share with all of us. Bravo!! I thought the ghost effects/choreography were particularly brilliant, btw..." — Mary Hunter (Leach)

"I really was impressed by your staging. The simplest ever but very effective. The Ghost of Christmas Future was a real knockout."

— Carol White

"FANTASTIC show tonight! My husband says it is the best performance we have been to in our 3-1/2 years in Loudoun County."

— Karen Colvin

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Romance from Broadway to Lincoln Center

Written and Directed by McMath with Public Domain Music

Produced by Loudoun Lyric Opera Company

- August 2010 -

PRESS REVIEW: "If you are among the many people who like music but have never been to an opera because it has seemed too serious this is a wonderful opportunity to hear what you have been missing... 'Romance' gives the audience a chance to zero in on the amazing sound that operatic singers produce without being concerned about spending a couple of hours not understanding a story in Italian or French."

— David Sackrider, Purcellville Gazette

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Case 22

Written and Directed by McMath

Produced at the Capital Fringe Festival

- July 2010 -

PRESS REVIEW: "Pitch-black comedic sensibility… seamlessly operates on multiple levels… Packs a wallop of an ending."

— Tzvi Kahn, DC Theatre Scene

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OTHER PRESS

"McMath, an award-winning historian and prize-winning playwright, has garnered a reputation for producing high-quality theater in the area." - The Loudoun Times-Mirror

"Renowned locally for her playwriting prowess,..." - a July 2010 article on McMath

by Margaret Morton, Leesburg Today

"Meredith McMath’s adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man is full of exchanges that make a guy nostalgic for a language alive with wit and humor, with deliberation and suggestion, a language rich enough to express the complicated truth about each of us and thereby make it possible for us to know ourselves." - Mark Dewey, Blue Ridge Leader review of McMath's Arms and the Highlander.

"Directors Meredith Bean McMath and Diane El-Shafey gave us the glass slipper, and so much more…" - David Sackrider, Purcellville Gazette's review of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella.