Featured Performer and Speaker

About Our Performers: Taro Alexander and Our Time Theatre

Taro Alexander founded Our Time Theatre in 2001 as an artistic home for young people who stutter. An actor who has appeared on stage, screen and television, Taro has stuttered since age five. “At Our Time you enter this whole new world where the idea of time is not the same as it is for normal people,” Alexander has said, “You know that no one is going to interrupt you and finish your sentence for you.” Citing actors James Earl Jones and Bruce Willis among performers who stutter, Alexander directs a theater company of young people ages 8-19 that has performed from New York's famed Cherry Lane Theatre to venues in San Francisco and points across the nation in between.

In 2009 Our Time Theatre released a CD “Listen,” with songs written by children in the company and recorded by performing artists such as Carly Simon, Mandy Patinkin and Daryl Hall and John Oates. Selections will be performed by the children.

About our Featured Speaker: Tom Luckey

Tom Luckey is an artist/sculptor and Yale-educated architect who is the world's foremost designer of sculptural playscapes. His projects adorn sites in major cities in North America, including Boston, Chicago, St. Louis and Mexico City among many others. He is the subject of “Luckey,” a documentary film aired recently on the Sundance Channel that portrays his life and work after an accident at the height of his career resulted in quadriplegia. Tom continues to design and examples of his art can be viewed at www.luckeyclimbers.com.

Tom has described the artistic process as, “...going for the big high – the plateau where I will know what I am doing – where the pieces will zing together and the energy will explode.”

A witty, candid, eloquent speaker, Tom is filled with exuberance, artistry and life!