Elise Thoron

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Elise Thoron is a playwright, director, translator, who works cross-culturally within the United States and abroad developing new work. She has received multiple grants from ACC (2008-2015) to travel to Japan for her work on Washi Tales. Her productions incorporate the work of fine artists, musicians, poets, and are often performed in multiple languages. Hatuey: Memory of Fire, her Afro Cuban Yiddish opera based on an epic Yiddish poem, went from development at Sundance to a production at Opera de La Calle in Havana to Peak Performances in the USA. She is co-founding artistic director of Literature to Life, a highly successful theater literacy program now in its third decade nationwide, adapting books into verbatim solo performances with facilitated discussion and workshops to spark a passion for reading in young people.