Margaret Ladd
(Creator and Co-Founder)
Ms. Ladd was first moved to create the Imagination Workshop when she and internationally acclaimed playwright Eugene Ionesco happened to attend a play performed by patients in a mental hospital. They witnessed, first-hand, the patients’ remarkable onstage transformation from withdrawn and disengaged to vibrant and charming. Ionesco called it, “creating from the place where dreams come from.” Ladd instantly realized what an inspirational gift such performances could be to the professional theater community, as well as what an effective tool the world of theater could offer to those with mental health challenges.
Lyle Kessler
(Creator and Co-Founder)
Lyle Kessler is an American playwright, screenwriter, actor, and director, best known for his internationally acclaimed play Orphans. Born in Philadelphia on April 11, 1936, he began his career as an actor before turning to playwriting. He studied under legendary acting teacher Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.
Orphans, premiered in Los Angeles in 1983 and later gained international acclaim through productions at Steppenwolf Theatre Company and on Broadway. The 2013 Broadway revival starring Alec Baldwin, Ben Foster, and Tom Sturridge received two Tony Award nominations. His notable works include The Watering Place, which premiered on Broadway in 1969, as well as Collision, The Great Divide, Robbers, Possession, and Unlisted. Kessler adapted Orphans for film and wrote screenplays for the movies Gladiator, The Saint of Fort Washington, and Touched. He served as Artistic Director of the Sundance Screenwriters Lab and led playwright/director programs at the Actors Studio.
Victoria Stevens
(Psychologist Consultant)
DR. VICTORIA STEVENS (Psychologist Consultant), Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, as well as a classically trained cellist, singer, dancer and actor. She is an adjunct faculty member of Pacifica Graduate Institute in the Clinical Psychology PsyD and PhD Programs and an assistant Professor for the Clinical Psychology Program at Antioch University at Santa Barbara where she created and is founding faculty for the Somatic Psychotherapy Certification Program with a focus on Trauma Treatment.
She is also a founding faculty member of the California Institute of the Arts Teaching Artist Training Program. Her research specialty is the study of the development and inhibition of creativity in children and adults, with an emphasis on the relationship between creative thinking, neurobiology, emotional development, trauma, and affect regulation. She integrates her artistic experience with her expertise in psychology and pedagogical theory to develop innovative arts education curricula and assessments, teacher training programs and trainings for those who work with veterans, foster children and“at-risk” youth. She is an independent consultant for research, program development, and leadership for A Sense of Home which creates homes and community for former foster youth..She has been a peer reviewer for the Grammy Foundation for music and science research grants for 9 years, and a peer reviewer for the JumpStarts program for the California Arts Council. She has a private psychoanalytic psychotherapy in West Los Angeles. Dr. Stevens has consulted with Imagination Workshop’s work with homeless veterans at New Directions for seven years, taking part in one original play as an actress and conducting intake and exit interviews with participating veterans, and writing seven research papers on the benefits of this program for the veterans.
Jim McGrath
(Executive Director)
Jim McGrath is an OVATION AWARD winning playwright whose plays have appeared at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, the Passage Theater in Trenton, New Jersey, The Directors’ Company in New York City, and both the Met Theater and Actors Studio in Los Angeles. He also has had a long career as a television writer (SIMON & SIMON, MATLOCK, THE FATHER DOWLING MYSTERIES, QUANTUM LEAP, MIKE HAMMER PRIVATE EYE and many others) and screenwriter and producer (SILVER BELLS, JIU JITSU, KICKBOXER RETALIATION, GUNNER).
Christina Linhardt
(Senior Artist)
Christina Linhardt is an award-winning concert singer, actress, and filmmaker, with a versatile career spanning Southern California and Germany. A USC Vocal Arts graduate with theater studies at Oxford, she is renowned for her "Classics to Cabaret" act, her work with the Los Angeles Opera, and her solo cds "Circus Sancttuary" , "Voodoo Princess", "Come Again" and "Fairytale Fetish'.
Christina directed the award-winning documentary Guantanamo Circus which was selected by the Library of Congress for its permanent collection, and TROY! The Original Lady Boy , which opened the Heartland Film Festival's Pride Stride.
She performs regularly at the Hollywood Magic Castle, for the German Consulate, and for Los Angeles Women's Theater Festival.
Marnie Olsen
(Senior Artist)
MARNIE OLSON, an actor, playwright and novelist, began her theatrical career in San Antonio, Texas in 1990 at the Melodrama Playhouse & Saloon. In 1992, she relocated toAustin and co- founded the performance art troupe RoadKill Tamales. In 1993, she moved to Los Angeles and has been working in theatre and film nonstop since then. She is the co-founder of two children’s entertainment companies, Li’l People’s Theatre, which produced nearly twenty shows for families from 1994 until 1999. In 2000, she started Open Window Entertainment and over the next fifteen years, presented over two thousand performances for Southern California schools. She was the Artistic Director of Psychic Visions Theatre, producing over fifty original plays. Three of Marnie’s plays were produced in Los Angeles in 2017, and another is scheduled to open March 2018. She has served as an Artist Leader with Imagination Workshop for over ten years, working specifically with homeless veterans at New Directions for seven years and has acted in and stage managed two original plays, written and acted by themhomeless veterans at New Directions.
Gerald James
(Senior Artist)
GERALD JAMES (Artist Leader) is a Los Angeles based actor, director, dancer, choreographer, and acting teacher. Gerald is a senior member of the Los Angeles based, touring company, We Tell Stories. He has choreographed dancers in Las Vegas, acted in theater in Los Angeles and 2 Chicago, directed plays in Los Angeles, and has been awarded the coveted lifetime membership in Actors Studio.
Gerald is a published writer and has written and directed a number of short stories and plays presented in theaters and clubs in Los Angeles. For ten years he has taught acting in Egypt and has taught acting at the Lee Strasberg School in West Hollywood for twenty years. During his time teaching at Strasberg, he created a movement technique that has become the basis of the acting method he teaches internationally. A trained artist leader who has been with Imagination Workshop since 2008, Gerald has worked with homeless veterans at New Directions for over seven years and directed the vets in an original play (THE WANDERING KNIGHT), written and acted by the homeless veterans.
Kathryn Taylor Smith
(Senior Artist)
KATHRYN TAYLOR SMITH (Artist Leader) has been acting and modeling for the past 15 years. She has most recently been seen in the plays For Colored Girls & Jesus Hopped The A Train, the TV shows Criminal Minds, Black-ISH, Grey’s Anatomy, Hawaii Five-0, Shameless, Better Things, Future Man, The Rookie, Fuller House as well as a national commercial for Ford & Microsoft and a national print ad for T-Mobile. She has been featured in Black Enterprise and Savoy Magazines. She has also written and produced independent projects such as Homeless Destiny, The Marriage Lottery, Kai and Mouthpiece. Kathryn’s upcoming project’s includes the play, Platinum Club, the web series Taylor Made and a short film on Alzheimer’s disease entitled Forget-Me-Knot. She is currently on a national tour performing her award winning solo show A Mile In My Shoes. In this poetic dramedy she portrays 19 characters based on personal interviews and research with past and present members of the homeless community and those who advocate for them. “A Mile In My Shoes” has won the Hollywood Fringe Festival Encore award, Atlanta Black Theatre Festival’s Best of the Fest Award - Best Actor and was nominated for a 2020 NAACP Theatre Award for Best Solo Show - 99 seat theatre. Kathryn is a member of Toastmasters International, The Organization of Black Screenwriters, Mocha Moms, Inc. and Delta Sigma Sorority, Inc. Kathryn is a lifetime member of the prestigious Actors Studio – West, where she has studied for over 13 years.