Peggy Moore, President

Peggy has lived in the Colestin Valley for 33 years. She and her partner, 39 goats, and rescue cats and dogs live on a farm and raise hogs and make goat milk soap. Peggy taught at Foothill College in the San Francisco Bay Area for 19 years. She taught English and drama and had the distinction of teaching King Lear about 82 times. She has actually taught the entire Shakespeare canon. Peggy started the women’s studies program at Foothill, which was the first community college in the country to grant an associate degree in women’s studies, awarding the first one in 1975. Before retiring in 2004, Peggy was the academic vice president at College of the Siskiyous for 15 years, an interim VP at Shasta College (twice) and Lassen College once, and the interim superintendent/president of College of the Siskiyous. She holds two master’s degrees—one in English and one is social science (women’s studies) from San Jose State University. Peggy loves theatre and is delighted serve on the ANPF board. She has been a reader for several years, as well. Peggy also loves animals and previously served as the president of the board for Friends of the Animal Shelter; she has been on that board since 1999. She also served on the board of AAUW Ashland. She chairs the board of the Colestin Rural Fire District and the Animal Control Advisory Committee for Jackson County. She volunteers with the Ashland Independent Film Festival and continues to serve as a consultant for colleges in both California and Wyoming.

William (Bill) Grove, Vice President

Bill was born in a small farm town in Kansas into a family of three generations of physicians. His parents appreciated the arts and took him to see Helen Hayes and Maurice Evens in a touring performance from Shakespeare in Wichita. It was transforming, and, although he was predestined to be a physician, he has made theatre a part of his life since then. He graduated from Rice University (attending the Alley Theater and the Houston Opera) and Northwestern Medical School (The Goodman Theater, Second City, etc.) and did his residency in Pathology at Stanford. He practiced medicine at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose. During that time, he served several terms on the nonprofit Medical Staff Corporation, including time as treasurer and president of the board. He also served a term as treasurer for the Medical Staff. In the Bay Area theatre scene, he had season subscriptions to ACT, TheatreWorks, San Jose Rep, and the San Francisco Opera and regularly attended Berkeley Rep and other venues. In 1982, he discovered Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He became a member of OSF with regular visits increasing in frequency culminating in buying a home in 2012, so that he spends around a quarter of his time in Ashland now. Bill is active in the local CERT activities and the Atherton Disaster Preparedness Committee, acting as a neighborhood coordinator. He has also been treasurer and president of the Peninsula Wine Tasting Group as well as Chef de Cave and Grand Senechal (President) of the Confrérie des Chevaliers de Tastevin, Sous-Commanderie de Silicon Valley – a Burgundy-centric group. He is also a volunteer reader for ANPF, which he’s loved doing the past two years. He is honored to be a part of ANPF to help find good new theatre and nourish it.

Beth Falkenstein, Treasurer  / Production Manager

In 2016 Beth moved to Ashland from Los Angeles, California, where she had spent many years working in the entertainment industry. As a Production Coordinator for episodic television and movies-of-the-week, her nearly compulsive need for organization served her well; as a writer for several network sitcoms she found a productive outlet for her natural inclination toward irreverence and sarcasm. More recently, Beth has been the owner and manager of a successful music publishing and recording catalog. A graduate of the University of Michigan with a degree in theatre, she has fond memories of the regular summer trips her family made from Detroit to the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario.  Making a home here, amid the theatre community of Ashland, has been a dream come true. As a member of the board, Beth is thrilled for the opportunity to unite her administrative and artistic sensibilities, and to be a part of an organization as dynamic and vital as ANPF.

Roger Pearce, Secretary

Roger worked for many years in community theatre as a dancer, singer, and actor while supporting his theatre habit by working as a cook and baker. After going to law school in his thirties, he practiced land use law at one of Seattle’s largest law firms for 23 years. Roger and wife, Julie, have been trying to move to Ashland for years. In 2013 they were finally able to make the move, where Roger is practicing law less, enjoying it more, and making time for theatre-oriented pursuits like Ashland New Plays Festival.

Jane Bardin

Jane has loved the theatre since she had the lead in her senior play in high school. She considered a career in theatre when she enrolled at UC Berkeley but decided she needed something that would support her more reliably in the future. She majored in economics and graduated with highest honors. She then got an MBA with a specialty in finance, also from UC Berkeley. After working for Wells Fargo in Investment Advisors for 10 years, during which she earned the designation Certified Financial Analyst (CFA), she founded her own firm, Bardin Financial Services, a Registered Investment Advisor. In 1987 she moved her firm from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Sierra foothills town of Jackson. She was one of the founders of the Amador Land Trust and served on the board in many positions, including president. In addition, she helped found the Amador Community Fund, again serving as a board member; she still consults with the board on financial questions. She returned to her love of theatre by joining the Volcano Theatre Company, serving on the board for several years as secretary and treasurer, but best of all she got to act and do something she had always wanted to do: direct. It was from her fellow thespians that she learned about Ashland, which they lovingly called “Mecca,” and thus began the twice yearly trips to the Rogue Valley. When she retired and sold her firm, she and her husband moved to Medford. She quickly sought out ANPF and has been a reader since 2012. She says she thinks she has died and gone to heaven if she has a play in her hands.

Eric Poppick

Eric recently moved to Medford after spending 40 years in Los Angeles and San Diego, working as an actor and director for stage, television and film. His film/TV credits include Basic Instinct; Mouse Hunt; Single White Female; Hero (with Dustin Hoffman); Seinfeld; Columbo; Curb Your Enthusiasm; NYPD Blue; L.A. Law; General Hospital; and The Young & The Restless. He has performed in over 100 television commercials.

His theatre credits include: From Another House (Old Globe Theatre); BUG; In the Heat of the Night (ion theatre); Beau Jest, Barefoot in thePark(AVO Playhouse); An Enemy of the People(Intrepid Shakespeare Company); Awakeand Sing!; To Kill a Mockingbird; Death of a Salesman; Golden Boy; Four Dogs and aBone(New Village Arts Theatre); The History Boys(Cygnet Theatre); Morning’s atSeven (North Coast Repertory Theatre); The Heir Apparent; The Sunshine Boys; How the Other Half Loves; Deathtrap; Not Now, Darling (Scripps Ranch Theatre) and One for the Road (Lyceum Theatre).

His directing credits include the world premieres of Ripples from Walden Pond (Cygnet Theatre) and W.C. Fields by Himself! (North Coast Repertory Theatre) as well as Play it Again Sam; Over the River and Through the Woods; a feminine ending; Sunset Park; Skin Deep; Good People; and For Better (Scripps Ranch Theatre). Eric has a BFA in acting from Boston University and an MA in directing from The State University of New York.

Jim Risser

Jim is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the retired director of the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists at Stanford University. A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Jim reported for 20 years for the Des Moines Register, mostly as the paper’s Washington DC bureau chief until moving to Stanford in 1985. Jim served as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board from 1989 to 1999, including service on the Board’s Drama Committee. He was on the board of San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre, and, in 2003, he was elected to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Board of Directors, where he served nine years, including a two-year term as president. His proudest moment there was chairing the search committee that chose Bill Rauch as OSF’s new artistic director. Jim and his wife Sandi started coming to Ashland in the late 1980s to see OSF plays and moved to Ashland in 2004. Both do volunteer work at OSF. They have attended the Ashland New Plays Festival ever since moving to Ashland.

Kate Wolf-Pizor

Since Kate Wolf-Pizor and her husband, Jim, had come to Ashland for years as tourist/theatre goers. Feeling at home and falling in love with Ashland was easy to do. When retirement time rolled around there really wasn’t much discussion about a good place to retire. Five years of being in Ashland has only confirmed a good fit. Ashland is home. Before retirement Kate was a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice and also taught in Palo Alto at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology for seventeen years serving as the chair of the Clinical MA MFT Program. She also spent four years in both the Clinical MA and the MA in Spiritual Guidance Programs. She served on the board of directors of California Division of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy for ten years in several roles, including the presidency.

Kate and Jim share a passion for theatre. They volunteer at OSF and have sponsored plays there for the past three years.  Kate has also been a reader for ANPF. Kate’s first love affair was with A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the age of four.  After seeing it on stage, her mother bought her a recording of the play and Kate played it constantly, managing to memorize much of the play.  This was not good preparation for kindergarten but it did set a life-long love of words and stories and the power of listening in groups in theatres—Kate’s holy places. As a result of Jim and Kate's love of theatre, they managed to raise a theatre-loving family. Those adults now come to Ashland regularly (in fact some of them have moved here).

Kate looks forward to helping to further ANPF’s mission and growth. The magic of theatre can enrich those who do it and those who witness it and keep the deep meaning of our shared lives in motion.