Michael Whaley, Administrator
Summer (’09) Office Hours: 1:00-5:00pm, Wednesdays
Michael Whaley is on the faculty of the Taliesin School of Architecture (Spring Green, WI and Scottsdale, AZ), where he teaches Writing Workshop and Shakespeare Seminar to bachelor’s and master’s students of architecture. He has been a founder and board member of the River Valley Soccer Association, the Spring Green Literary Festival, the Spring Green Area Arts Coalition, and the Spring Green Center for Creativity and Innovation, for which he now serves as President. He worked for American Players Theatre (Spring Green) for seven seasons, from 1985-91, first as Academy Director and then as Associate Artistic Director. Among his solo directing credits at APT are MacBeth (1990) and The Winter’s Tale (1991). His most memorable theatre experience came in 1979 when he co-directed Prometheus Bound for a professional state theatre in Wrocław, Poland. (After just two performances the production was shut down and he was expelled from the country.) He has written for television (NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Streets) and children’s theatre. His adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince, featuring all twenty children from the R.E. program, debuted at Park Hall in 1997. In April, 2000, he directed an expanded version, a ballet-drama with a cast of 52, as the first production to take the River Arts Center stage. He received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1974 and his M.F.A. in Dramatic Literature and Criticism from the Yale School of Drama in 1977. He and his wife, Gigi La Budde, have three children: the youngest is a junior at the University of Miami, another just graduated summa cum laude from Macalester College, and the eldest is studying for her doctorate in Art History at the University of Chicago. Michael likes to hunt wild mushrooms and play soccer, and he has noticed that as he gets older his soccer game looks more and more like mushroom hunting.
Gigi and I have been members since the early 90s. Each of our three children has been involved in R.E. here. I am strongly attracted to the beauty of this Hall and the park in which it resides. I’m thoroughly inspired by its 157-year history. I’m an atheist but I’m drawn to connect with something larger than myself and the familiar world. This place does it for me, as do the arts and nature.
