Our Artists

Kermit Dunkelberg ( Actor/Singer/Co-Creator) is Managing Director and co-founder, with Kim Mancuso, of Pilgrim Theatre Research and Performance Collaborative, with whom he has performed in the US, Latin America, and Eastern and Western Europe. His work with Pilgrim includes the original production of Moon Over Dark Street in 1998, Letters from Sarajevo, Faust 2002, and Laura Harrington’s N (Bonaparte), as “N”, with Belle Linda Halpern as Josephine. He has also performed with Serious Play! in the title role of Milan Dragecevich’s Milosevic at the Hague on tour in Serbia, where he was the first actor to portray the former Serbian dictator onstage. He also recently played Clov in Serious Play!’s production of Endgame, by Samuel Beckett.  He has a PhD in Performance Studies from New York University, and works in a leadership role at Holyoke Community College.

Belle Linda Halpern (Actor/Singer/Co-Creator) has performed as a cabaret singer in New York at Town Hall and the Ballroom; in Boston at the Copley Plaza and Club Cabaret; and in clubs and theatres in San Francisco, Paris, Munich, Jerusalem, and Bombay, with pianist Ron Roy. Belle’s theatre credits include work with Robert Wilson and Andre Serban at the American Repertory Theatre.  Each summer she sings cabaret concerts in the villas and castles of northern Italy. A graduate of Harvard/Radcliffe, she performs in French and Italian and she has created and performed her own Yiddish cabaret. Her roles include Esther in Elizabeth Swados’ rock opera Esther and Alice in her Alice in Concert and Josephine in Laura Harrington’s N(Bonaparte) with Kermit Dunkelberg and Kim Mancuso. As a cabaret singer she has been hailed as “Boston’s best singing actor.” With her theater background, she teaches Leadership and Authentic Presence to low income school leaders through Inspiring Educators, a non-profit she founded (www.inspiringeducators.org) She teaches singing and performance regularly in Italy through the Tuscany Project. (www.tuscanyproject.com).Her work is inspired by the generous spirit of her teacher, Martha Schlamme, to whom she dedicates her work on this production.

Kim Mancuso (Director/Co-Creator) is a director, writer, actor training specialist and the artistic director of Pilgrim Theatre Research and Performance Collaborative, which she co-founded with American artist Kermit Dunkelberg in Poland in 1986. Previously she served as director of the International Company of the Second Studio (at the site of the former Teatr Laboratorum of Jerzy Grotowski) of Wroclaw, Poland. Most recently she co-developed, produced and directed Unforgettable: Letters from Korea with Susan Thompson, which was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Defense (Korean War Committee) for the 60th Commemoration of the Korean War Armistice and performed at Arena Stage, and the National Mall at the Korean War Memorial site in Washington D.C. She also collaborated with SeriousPlay! in Milosevic at the Hague in Northampton, MA and Kragujevac, Serbia, performing the role of Mira Markovic, the wife of dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Pilgrim Theatre was named one of four Resident Companies at the Boston Center for the Arts and remained there for eight years, where they created a body of work and continued to develop their training style. They have received many awards including support from the NEA and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.  The company has toured productions in Europe and Peru at international festivals. Her work with Pilgrim Theatre and Jean-Claude van Itallie is featured in Susan Letzler Cole’s book, Playwright in Rehearsal: The Seduction of Company (Routledge 2001). Kim has a taught at Smith College and Emerson University and currently Mancuso both teaches and directs at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Theatre Arts program.(MFA Yale School of Drama; MA, New York University),

Ron Roy (Pianist/Musical Director/Co-Creator) has worked as accompanist and teaching partner for the past 25 years with cabaret artist Belle Linda Halpern. He coaches beginners, amateurs and professionals, helping them to develop their own unique musical voice and style. Ron has traveled internationally as musical director and accompanist for a wide variety of shows and performers including Disappearing Act, Forbidden Hollywood at Steve McGraw's and for the Chicago and Tokyo productions of Forbidden Hollywood; pianist and assistant conductor for the Gershwin musical Crazy for You (National Tour and Berlin, Germany); and pianist and musical director for Boston's long running hits Forever Plaid and Forbidden Broadway.  He brings his ‘joie de vivre’, his exceptional talent and passion for music and song in working on a broad range of styles, from classical and opera, to pop, jazz and cabaret. Ron is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee and on the faculty of The Tuscany Project, an annual voice workshop which takes place annually in Italy. In an earlier life, he toured with his own band Oasis, for which he was both musical director and arranger.