Playwright
Russell Lees

Director
Jim Simpson

Cast
Gerry Bamman (Richard M. Nixon)
Steve Mellor (Henry Kissinger)

RUSSELL LEES (Playwright) Russell Lees was born into a theatrical family in Salt Lake City where two theaters are named after close relatives. He set aside a career as an engineer to study playwriting under the tutelage of Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott. He considers himself very fortunate to have subsequently interested MCC Theater in Nixon's Nixon, which has gone on to play across America as well as in London's West End and internationally. His most recent play, Monticel', explores the complicated relationships of Thomas Jefferson and the Hemings family.

JIM SIMPSON (Director) Jim directed the original production of NIXON'S NIXON for MCC. Jim started as a child actor in his native Honolulu, received degrees in theater at Boston University and the Yale School of Drama and studied with Grotowski in Wroclaw, Poland in the 1970's. Mr. Simpson also assisted Mr. Lloyd Richards and Mr. Nikos Psacharopoulos and is grateful for the influence that these two gentlemen had upon him. Jim is a founder and Artistic Director of the Flea Theater in Tribeca where he has been working for the last 10 years. This season, in addition to NIXON'S NIXON, Jim will be directing two plays by A.R. Gurney- POSTMORTEM at the Flea, CRAZY MARY for Playwrights Horizons, also LIMONADE by Charles Mee and works by Mac Wellman, Roger Rosenblatt, Christopher Durang, Elizabeth Swados this holiday season at the Flea.

GERRY BAMMAN (Richard M. Nixon) received Obie and Drama League awards and a Drama Desk nomination for Best Featured Actor for his performance as Richard Nixon in the 1996 production of Nixon's Nixon. He was a founding member of the Manhattan Project, one of the foremost experimental theatre companies of the 1970s, directed by Andre Gregory. Their production of Alice in Wonderland received an Obie award and was performed over 500 times in New York and around the world. He has appeared in many regional and New York theaters, on Broadway and off. His most recent work was in the American premiere of Bartleby the Scrivener, Jean-Claude Carriere's Encounter at Vallodolid, the title role in Ward Just's Lowell Limpet, Robert Moses in Shakespeare, Moses and Joe Papp, which won the Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play- and A. R. Gurney's Mrs. Farnsworth. Films: Runaway Jury, Two Family House, Passion of Mind, Home Alone 1 and 2, Lorenzo's Oil, Secret of my Success, Bodyguard, True Believer, Pink Cadillac. Many appearances on "Law and Order."

STEVE MELLOR (Henry Kissinger) has appeared in films including Celebrity, Mickey Blue Eyes and Sleepless in Seattle and on television shows including "The High Life," "Law and Order," "Ed," and "The Sopranos." In the theater, he has appeared on Broadway in Big River, Off-Broadway in Nixon's Nixon and has worked at such regional theaters as Arena Stage, Long Wharf, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Stage, Wilma Theatre and Yale Rep. He received his first Village Voice Obie Award in 1990 for his performance of Mac Wellman's Terminal Hip at P.S. 122 and performed the piece in London and at the Dionysia Festival conference in Tuscany. He received his second Obie in 2003 for his portrayal of Ambrose Bierce in Mr. Wellman's Bitter Bierce, also at P.S. 122. He has been a member of the outlaw lounge act The Dream Express since they appeared in Len Jenkin's Careless Love at Soho Rep.