In 2003 Ricardo Pitts-Wiley and his wife Bernadet formed Mixed Magic Theatre & Cultural Events, a non-profit arts organization, dedicated to presenting a diversity of cultural and ethnic images and ideas on the stage. Ricardoserves as the company’s Artistic Director.
  
Ricardo Pitts-Wiley is an accomplished actor, director, playwright and composer. He has performed at noted theatersthroughout the United States including The Actor’s Shakespeare Project in Boston, Trinity Repertory Company inProvidence, RI, The Old Globe Theater and San Diego Repertory in San Diego, North Carolina Black Repertory, Rites and Reason and Perishable Theater. He has also performed at the North Shore Music Theatre, Foxborough Orpheum, New Repertory Theatre, Worcester Forum, Westerly Shakespeare in the Park, The People’s Light and Theatre in Westchester,PA and the Providence Black Repertory. Ricardo has played feature roles in Othello, Fences, Macbeth, Master Haroldand the Boys, Driving Miss Daisy, The Tempest, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Spunk, Boseman and Lena, The Good Times Are Killing Me, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Island, Threepenny Opera and John Brown’s Body. He has also appeared in productions of The Emperor Jones, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Hamlet, Of Mice and Men, The Taming of the Shrew, Only In America, The Colored Museum, A Raisin In The Sun and many others.

 

He has directed over 70 plays and musicals.

 

Ricardo Pitts-Wiley has adapted and directed productions of Moby Dick, Frankenstein, the Narrative of Frederick Douglass and a play featuring the poetry and life story of Paul Laurence Dunbar. He has also written  the script, lyrics and music for a musical, Celebrations: An African Odyssey  and co-composed the music for The Spirit Warrior’s Dream, Sara’s Jukebox, Night Voices, Man/Woman/Chaos, A Secret Meeting of Black Men, and A Kwanzaa Song. Ricardo also wrote Waiting for Bessie Smith which features the music of the legendary blues singer. He recently collaborated with his son Jonathan, a Yale University graduate, to create From the Bard to the Bounce: A Hip-Hop and Shakespeare Experience.

 

Ricardo came to Rhode Island as a member of the Trinity Repertory Company  He was the first East End Black Artist-in-Residence in Suffolk County Long Island and been Artist in Residence at the University of Rhode Island and Long Island University at Southampton, where he directed and taught acting. He has been a guest artist at Eastern Michigan University, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, Suffolk Community College, Johnson & Wales University. He has been a teaching artists at Marin Academy in San Raphael, CA as well as Blackstone Academy, North Kingstown High, South Kingstown High and Shea High School in Rhode Island.

Bob Schleeter is a thirty-year veteran of music performance, creation and education.  His composition credits include four “rock and soul” musicals produced throughout New England and the West Coast. The Boston Globe called his co-creation, SARA'S JUKEBOX, "A hit parade of music...the songs are tantalizingly diverse, yet widely appealing.” Bob has performed as a guitarist and sideman with an equally appealing and diverse group of musicians, including wild weekends with The Drifters and Del Shannon and longer stints with Shana Morrison and dozens of his own ensembles.

 

He is a co-founder of several Marin-based jazz/soul/Latin groups, having been moved to create exciting, underpaid, rhythm-based ensembles after successive visits to Bahia, Brazil and Havana, Cuba. He plays guitar and contributes original songs and arrangement ideas to these groups.

 

A 1989 graduate of Berklee College of Music, Bob is currently the Music Director at Marin Academy in San Rafael, California, where he has enjoyed some small part in developing a parade of under-age talent since 1990.