Click on the links below to download Roadside staff biographies and photographs.

Dudley Cocke
Director

Ron Short
Playwright/Composer/Performer

Donna Porterfield
Managing Director

Dudley Cocke
Bio (download as MS Word file)

Dudley Cocke, director of Roadside Theater, is a stage director, teacher, writer, and media producer. He recently directed Zuni Meets Appalachia for the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian in New York City and Washington, D.C., and he is currently developing Betsy, a musical theater collaboration with Nashville jazz musicians.

International work includes directing the company’s innovative performances in the Czech Republic (1992), directing Junebug/Jack for England’s Festival of the American South at London’s South Bank Centre (1994), and conducting dance/story workshops for the 1996 Baltic Dance Festival in Poland.

Under Mr. Cocke’s direction, Roadside has toured its original plays to 43 states and performed in big cities from London to Los Angeles.

He has taught theater at Cornell University and the College of William and Mary, and often speaks and writes as an advocate for democratic cultural values. In 2001-2002, his policy remarks and essays were published by the Urban Institute, Yale University, American Theatre, Americans for the Arts, Grantmakers in the Arts, the Community Arts Network/Art in the Public Interest, among others.

He co-edited, From the Ground Up, Grassroots Theater in Historical and Contemporary Perspective (Cornell University, 1993), and several of his speeches are collected in Voices From the Battlefront: Achieving Cultural Equity (Africa World Press, 1993). Red Fox /Second Hangin’, which he co-authored, is one of seven plays in Alternate Roots: New Plays from the Southern Theatre (Heinemann, 1994), and he recently co-edited Journeys Home: Revealing a Zuni-Appalachia Collaboration (Zuni A:shiwi Publishing and the University of New Mexico Press, 2002).

Mr. Cocke was executive producer of Roadside’s latest CD, "Wings to Fly" (Copper Creek Records), and has produced several of Roadside’s plays for public television.

He received his B.A. from Washington & Lee University; his graduate work was conducted at Harvard University. He is a recipient of the 2002 Heinz Award for Arts and Humanities.

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Ron Short
Bio (download as MS Word file)

Ron Short, a native of the Appalachian Mountains of Dickenson County, Virginia, has worked at Roadside Theater for the past 26 years as a playwright, musician, composer, actor, and director. He scripted and wrote music for 15 musical plays and helped script three others, all currently in Roadside's touring repertoire. He performs in all of the company's touring productions.

Mr. Short has contributed articles to several publications, including All Of Us: Americans Talk About the Meaning of Death, (Delacorte Press, 1992) and Appalachian Mountain Religion: A History, (University of Illinois Press, 1989). An excerpt from his musical play, South of the Mountain, appears in the publication, A Southern Appalachian Reader (Appalachian Consortium Press, 1989).

His music recordings include "Cities of Gold", on the June Appal label; Roadside Theater's "Singing"; and "Wings to Fly", a compact disc of music from Singing on the Mountain and Music from Home, (Copper Creek Records, 2002.)

Mr. Short produced Roadside's three year project in collaboration with Cornell University which included developing and teaching a course, "Issues in Community Based Art" and convening a national theater symposium, "From the Ground Up: Grassroots Theater in Historical And Contemporary Perspective." In 2002, he is teaching "Story to Stage: Exploring Grassroots Theater" at the University of Virginia's College at Wise.

Mr. Short produced a four-year project with Lewiston-Auburn Arts in Lewiston-Auburn, Maine that included playwriting and storytelling projects with factory workers, ethnic social clubs, an elementary school, and the police department.

He has been instrumental in developing Roadside’s cross-cultural collaborative projects which include full length, musical plays with Idiwanan An Chawe, the Zuni language theater from Pueblo Zuni, NM and Junebug Productions, the nationally recognized African American theater from New Orleans, LA. He is Roadside’s playwright and composer on Promise of a Love Song, a collaborative musical production with Junebug Productions and Teatro Pregones, the premier Puerto Rican theater from the South Bronx. Most recently, he and jazz pianist/composer Beegie Adair wrote and perform in Betsy, Roadside’s newest play, which explores the intersection of jazz and bluegrass music.

Currently, Mr. Short is a board member of Appalshop. Prior to his work with Roadside, he was the Administrator for Highlander Research and Education Center; the Administrator for the Tennessee Appalachian Child Development Project; the community organizer, program planner for Virginia's Appalachian Regional Commission of Early Childhood Development; and director of a social services nutrition program at Mountain Empire Older Citizens.

Mr. Short graduated from Clinch Valley College of the University of Virginia, now the University of Virginia's College at Wise, from which he received the 2002 Outstanding Alumni Award.

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Donna Porterfield
Bio (download as MS Word file)

Donna Porterfield is Roadside Theater's Managing Director. She is also a writer, producer, teacher, and dramaturge. She recently CO-edited Journeys Home: Revealing a Zuni-Appalachia Collaboration, a 112 page bilingual book, with accompanying compact disc, that probes and documents the sixteen-year collaboration between Roadside Theater and Native American artists of Zuni, New Mexico (published by Zuni A:shiwi Publishing, 2002, distributed by The University of New Mexico Press).

Working with Roadside since 1978, Ms. Porterfield has produced many of the company's cultural residencies including the 1990-1996 Zuni-Roadside artistic exchange that resulted in the co-creation and touring of the play, Corn Mountain/Pine Mountain: Following the Seasons, which she co-authored. Most recently, she conducted a residency with a women's shelter in southwest Virginia through which she wrote and produced Voices from the Battlefront, a play addressing domestic violence that continues to tour.

Ms. Porterfield's publications include "Mountaineers, Farmers, and Cowfolk Create Two Plays About Place," National Endowment for the Arts website (www.arts.endow.gov), 1999; "Appalachia's Roadside Theater: Celebration of a Community's Culture," The Citizen Artist: 20 Years of Art in the Public Arena; Linda Frye Burnham and Steven Durland, editors, Critical Press of the Gunk Foundation, 1998; and "Arts Presenting and the Celebration of a Community's Culture" - High Performance Magazine, Vol. 16, #4, Winter 1993.

She is a member of the Appalshop Board of Directors and has served as consultant to the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Arts Council, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Arkansas Arts Council, Alternate ROOTS, Urban Bushwomen, the Southern Arts Federation, and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Consortium.

Ms. Porterfield graduated from West Virginia University and her graduate work was conducted at the University of Texas at El Paso.

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