Originally from Bucks County, PA, Pam has been part of Chicago’s theater community for more than twenty-five years enjoying work on both the creative and administrative sides. She happily divides her time between Chicago and the east coast.

 

As a writer, her plays include the full-length drama Life Defying Acts (Winner: 2017 UMass New PlayLab; Finalist: 2019 Inkslinger Playwriting Award), the dramedy Relative Distance, the comedy Fugue in a Cold State and the children’s musical, The Little Turtle, a parable on homelessness. Her one-act Promising was selected for the 2009 East Village Festival at New York’s Metropolitan Playhouse, and two of her plays were finalists at Stage Left Theatre’s 2009 DrekFest at ComedySportz, ultimately placing 2nd & 3rd. Pam was also a contributing writer/assistant director for The Arab-Israeli Comedy Hour at Chicago’s iO. Her play Someone Has to Die Tonight or the Play Can't Go On was Shortlisted for the British Theatre Challenge, and her play Life & Death & Crap was Shortlisted for Short+Sweet in multiple countries. 

 

As a producer/director, she worked with Tony-nominee Herb Schapiro, helping to shape his world-premiere of The Love Song of Saul Alinsky, which included panel discussions with such luminaries as (then) Senator Barack Obama, Monsignor Jack Egan, and Studs Terkel. (Pam’s refusal to “release the tape” of the play was the focus of Andrew Breitbart’s final blog entry on Breitbart.com before his fatal heart attack, earning her the moniker of “treasonous Obamabot” on right wing blogs and several mentions by Sean Hannity, even though AEA does not allow such usage of archival tapes.) As founding managing director of Terrapin Theatre, she produced ten seasons of award-winning world-premieres, and directed such plays as Laurel & Hardy Sleep Together, The Inspector General, and From Thought to Finish.  With Ifa Bayeza she produced such Chicago premieres as Passages of Martin Luther King, What Use Are Flowers (part of Chicago’s Lorraine Hansberry Festival), Undesirable Elements-Chicago (written/directed by Ping Chong), and Bayeza's Kid Zero. Their premiere of Bayeza’s Amistad Voices at Chicago Shakespeare Theater was Critic’s Pick in the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Their creation of The ShoeBox Theater, a subscription series of original plays for very young audiences at the Chernin Center for the Arts, was cited for excellence by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Chicago Arts & Business Council. 

 

Pam received her BFA in theater performance from Syracuse University, where she later served on the College of Visual and Performing Arts’ inaugural Advisory Board. She is a proud member of The Dramatists Guild.