Randy Cheramie (Sugar). Randy Cheramie’s most recent stage appearance was as Teyve in the Jefferson
Performing Arts Society’s production of Fiddler on the Roof. Other JPAS musical roles include Buffalo Bill
in Annie Get Your Gun and Caiaphas in Jesus Christ Superstar. Tulane Summer Lyric performances include Victor/Victoria,
Wonderful Town, Pippin and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. Non-Musical performances include All
My Sons, The Playboy of the Western World and Spinning into Butter at Southern Rep, Spiritual Gifts
and Two in the Bush at Le Chat Noir, and A Walk in the Woods (Big Easy Entertainment Awards Best Actor)
and The Glass Mendacity at the True Brew Playhouse. Film & Television appearances include A Gathering of
Old Men, Love & Curses, Hard Target, Orleans, and Big Easy. Randy has performed voice over work in commercials,
industrial films and audio books for a client list that includes Disney where he recently voiced a character in the animated
feature film, The Frog & the Princess due for release in December 2009. Randy is a professional chef and is the
Associate Dean at the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute at Nicholls State University.
John Biguenet is the
author of Oyster, a novel, and The Torturer's Apprentice: Stories, published by Ecco/HarperCollins in
the U.S. and by Orion Books in the U.K. Both books will be published in Hebrew translation by Matar Publishing Company in
Tel Aviv and in French translation by Éditions Albin Michel in Paris. Among his other books are Foreign
Fictions (Random House) and two volumes on literary translation (The University of Chicago Press). Biguenet’s
radio play Wundmale, which premiered on Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Germany's largest radio network, was
rebroadcast by Österreichischer Rundfunk, the Austrian national radio and television network. Two of his stories
have been featured in Selected Shorts at Symphony Space on Broadway. The Vulgar Soul won the 2004
Southern New Plays Festival and was a featured production in 2005 at Southern Rep Theatre; he and the play were profiled
in American Theatre magazine. His new play, Rising Water, was the winner
of the 2006 National New Play Network Commission Award, a 2006 National Showcase of New Plays selection, and a 2007 recipient
of an Access to Artistic Excellence development and production grant from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the
Big Easy Theatre Award for Best Original Play; it was nominated for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in drama. Shotgun, the
second play in his Rising Water cycle, will premiere in 2009. He was awarded a 2007 Marquette Fellowship
for the writing of his next play, Night Train, which he then developed on a Studio Attachment at the National Theatre
in London. Biguenet was named 2008 Theatre Person of the Year at the Big Easy Theatre Awards. His work has received
an O. Henry Award and a Harper's Magazine Writing Award among other distinctions, and his stories and essays
have been reprinted or cited in The Best American Mystery Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The
Best American Short Stories, and Best Music Writing. Having served twice as president of the American Literary
Translators Association and as writer-in-residence at various universities, he is currently the Robert Hunter Distinguished
Professor at Loyola University in New Orleans. Named its first guest columnist by The New York Times, Biguenet has
chronicled in both columns and videos his return to New Orleans after its catastrophic flooding and the efforts to
rebuild the city. His fiction and drama have won wide acclaim.
