MISSION AND BIOS
OUR MISSION: THE DRESS CIRCLE was created to act as a showcase for the Performing Arts. Our mission is to help preserve musical and spoken word performances to keep alive the memories of performers, composers, lyricists, and librettists who made contributions to the world of musical theatre, film, and performance art. We feel that there is a need to preserve these histories so that a more complete understanding of the present can be had.
MICHAEL KOWNACKY was born and raised in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and graduated from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania in 1981 with a B.F.A. in advertising design, speech/theatre, and literature. Theatre, always a passion, has played an important role in Michael's life, and he's been in over one hundred productions in both professional and non-professional theatres, toured in stock, and directed numerous productions for which he actually got paid every so often. He has also appeared in a few films. He is a proud member of The Actors' Equity Association, the union of theatre professionals. He has taught in the Theatre, English, and Sociology Departments of Mercer County Community College where he was an adjunct instructor teaching freshman composition and second-year sociology courses. Michael also produces/hosts WWFM’s Sunday Opera.
TED OTTEN was born in New York and grew up on Long Island. He attended his first opera at the Old Met in 1955 at age 12 and was hooked from that moment on. Ted began theatre-going to Broadway in 1958 and started reviewing for his high school newspaper then and continued reviewing in college at St. John's University, Brooklyn, from whence he graduated with a B.A. in English in 1964. He received his M.A. in American Literature from New York University in 1966 and taught high school and junior high school English in New York City public schools from 1966 to 1968. In September 1968, he joined the faculty of Mercer County Community College where he continued to teach literature and freshman writing courses until 2014. He began reviewing locally or a weekly shoppers' paper called THE PRINCETON SPECTRUM which was bought by THE TIMES OF TRENTON; his editor at THE SPECTRUM brought him to THE TIMES where he wrote a weekly theatre column and frequent reviews from 1986 to 2020.