Located in San Francisco and founded in 2013 by Artistic Director Joseph T. Hege and Executive Director Fritz Lambandrake, Circle of Life Theatre is the West Coast’s ONLY theatre company intentionally casting and reasonably accommodating physically, emotionally/psychologically, cerebrally, and developmentally disabled actors, singers, and performers of all kinds – to interact harmoniously and seamlessly with fully able performers on the same stage. Circle of Life Theatre breaks down barriers and opens minds by revealing to the able world that, when reasonably and effectively accommodated, disabled talent can deliver moving, authentic performances at least as well as any fully able performer.

With the ultimate, uncompromising goal of producing consistently excellent live theatre, Circle of Life offers to audience members, artists, staff, and volunteers alike a harmonious, respectful, dignified place where the seeds of creativity may take root, unfurl, and inspire.

Disability is a characteristic, but it does not define the entire identity of an actor (or a person), nor is it a reason for automatically disqualifying an actor from a role. However, neither is it cause for casting an actor when someone else is better for the part. In other words, at Circle of Life Theatre, the playing field is leveled, so the best actor wins the role, regardless of ability/disability status.

Mission Statement

CIRCLE of LIFE THEATRE • c/o ILRC, 649 Mission Street- 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 • 415.385.5055

In March, 2014, Fractured Atlas, a well-established and highly respected New York City fiscal sponsor of tens of thousands of arts organizations, granted Circle of Life Theatre’s application for non-profit sponsorship. Fractured Atlas is located at 248 W. 35th Street 10th Floor, New York, New York, 10001; the company may be reached by telephone at 212.277.8020. The Fractured Atlas non-profit IRS EIN # is 11-3451703, which may be viewed on the company’s most recently filed IRS form 990, found on the “About Us” page of the Fractured Atlas website: www.fracturedatlas.org. Circle of Life Theatre’s specific, active-and-approved status may be seen here: http://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/fiscal/profile?id=9992. If further confirmation is required, written verification will be provided quickly and happily and upon request.

ALL DONATIONS ARE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE TO THE EXTENT ALLOWED BY LAW!

Circle of Life Theatre’s 501(c )3-Non-Profit Status –Courtesy of NYC Fiscal Sponsor Fractured Atlas – EIN #11-

3451703

Artistic Director & Founder/President Joseph T. Hege

B.A. Communications - James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA; emphasis in theatre, broadcasting, radio, television, and film.

Lifelong actor/singer.

Experienced theatre director.

Post-graduate work-study in occupational therapy & health sciences:

- Volunteered at California Pacific Medical Center.- Worked directly with patients with dementia and PTSD - Post Traumatic

Stress Disorder. - Trained in the feeding, bathing, and grooming of adults and children.

Long-term caretaker for family member.

Personally experienced with the spectrum of disabilities, including hip dysplasia and replacement, learning disability. 

Executive Director & Founder/Secretary & Treasurer: Fritz Lambandrake

B.S. Marketing Management, Western Governors University, Salt Lake City, Utah; emphasis in event production.

Founder & Executive Producer, Runway Couturier – Fashion-ONLY Event Production, San Francisco.

Post-graduate studies, 2010-2014: Fashion Design & Merchandise Marketing, FiDM/The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising; San Francisco, CA.

Other studies: Theatre Arts, Columbus State University; Elementary and Special Education, Shippensburg University, Shippensburg, PA & Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA.

Lifelong actor/singer. Experienced director of theatre and children’s theatre, intentionally casting learning-disabled youth at the Springer Opera House Studio Theatre, Columbus, GA.

Special Education Experience: - Volunteer Teacher’s Aide in classroom of learning-disabled junior high students, The Achievement Academy, Columbus, Georgia. - C.A.R.E./Camp Area Resource Enabler & Counselor, Lutheridge; Arden, NC. Worked with intellectually disabled (from profound to educable), autistic, and behavior-disordered as well as physically, emotionally, psychologically, cerebrally, and/or developmentally disabled campers of all ages, including senior citizens and children of all ages.

Personally experienced with disability: PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Anxiety, Depression, Chronic Migraines, chronic pain, limited range of motion/spinal fusion.

Eighteen years’ experience in residential and commercial real estate finance.

Musical Director/Vice President: Rick Roberts

M.A. Drama, San Francisco State University; emphasis in Musical Theatre.

B.A. Communication Studies, University of San Francisco; emphasis in Theatre.

Doctoral coursework in Education and Psychology.

Adjunct Professor, Performing Arts & Social Justice, University of San Francisco, 2004-present.

Adjunct Professor, Rhetoric & Language, University of San Francisco, 1993 – present.

Advisor, USF Voices Executive Board, 2003-present. Formerly, Advisor, USF College Players and Director, ASUSF Performing Arts.

Musical Director/Conductor, various companies, 1981 - present.

Executive Board Member, The Andrew Ziegler Foundation, an AIDS service and education organization.

Personally experienced with disability: AIDS (full AIDS diagnosis 1988), Diabetes, Asthma, Depression, Chronic Fatigue.

Accommodations Advisor for students with disabilities at University of San Francisco.

Ground Zero:SFGMC’s Spirit Team & Leukemia Patient

Mark H.

Artistic Director Joseph T. Hege and Executive Director Fritz Lambandrake met as singers with the world-renowned San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, while serving on its Spirit Team – an internally organized group that offers almost any kind of help, free of charge, to any sick , injured, or disabled SFGMC member. When it was announced to the Chorus in 2012 that fellow singer Mark H. was terminally ill with leukemia, Joe and Fritz sprang into action.

Mark H. and Joseph T. Hege, October, 2012

After realizing that the largest obstacle to Mark’s potentially life-saving bone marrow transplant was proof of the advance creation of a team of caregivers, Joe and Fritz organized a thirty-two-member caregiver team, scheduled those volunteers around the clock, sometimes with triple-shift-coverage, over two months, and provided that schedule to Mark’s doctors. With just a few weeks left to live, his bone marrow transplant was approved and took place in early 2012. Mark is still alive today and now serves on the advisory board of Circle of Life Theatre.Other than their incredible, personal satisfaction with having made a difference in someone’s life, the serendipitous fringe benefit of caring for Mark was Joe and Fritz’s discovery of their mutual passion for the theatre and their overlapping, extensive experience with disability. Not long afterward, discussions began about a theatre company that eventually would come to be known as Circle of Life Theatre, officially formed in July, 2013.

Timeline

C.O.L

.T. F

ound

ed ,

Inco

rpor

ated

in

the

Stat

e

of C

alifo

rnia

.

July , 2013

2014

– 1

5 Th

eatr

e Se

ason

Prelim

inar

ily C

hose

n.

September, 2013

Four

Gen

eral

Aud

ition

s & C

allb

acks

Held.

October – N

ovember, 2013

Castin

g co

mpl

ete

/ Sea

rch

for V

enue

s

Begin

s.

Novem

ber, 2013

Venu

e id

entifi

ed fo

r “W

ait U

ntil

Dark”

.

February – March 2014

501(

c )3

Non

-pro

fit Fisca

l

Spon

sors

hip

Grant

ed!

March, 2014

2014

– 1

5 Th

eatr

e Se

ason

Fin

alized

.

Novem

ber, 2013

We Are Here!

THE

VICTO

RIA T

HEATR

E CO

NTRACTE

D for “

WAIT

UNTIL

DARK”!!!

March – A

pril, 2014April - M

ay, 2014

1st F

undr

aise

r/“B

OOST

ERS”

Par

ty /

Choos

e 20

15 -

16 S

easo

n.

May 31

st, 2014June, 2014July 28

th, 2014Septem

ber 4th – 21

st, 2014

“WAIT

UNTI

L DARK”

– Th

e Vic

toria

The

atre

,

San

Fran

cisc

o

“TH

E EL

EPHANT

MAN”

Holid

ay F

undr

aise

r – A

nnou

nce

2015

-

16 S

easo

n.

Decem

ber, 2015

March, 2015

Decem

ber, 2013

2ND B

OOST

ERS

PART

Y: M

AY 3

1ST

MIL

LENNIU

M T

OW

ER

– D

EBUT

OF

PARADOX A

CAPPELLA

!

Rehea

rsal

s Beg

in fo

r “W

ait U

ntil

Dark”

.

PARADOX A

CAPPEL

LA v

ocal

gro

up fo

rmed

&

rehe

arsing

.

“A C

.O.L

.T. F

ollo

win

g” W

eekl

y Rov

ing

Cockt

ail P

arty

Fund

raiser

Beg

ins!

March, 2015

“BIG

RIVER

”

2014-15 Season

In Frederick Knott’s 1960’s thriller, Susy, a young, married Greenwich Village artist who has recently lost her eyesight, finds herself accidentally entrapped in a murderous plot devised by ruthless drug traffickers. The question is… are Susy’s ingenuity and her other four senses enough to help her get the best of the cold-as-ice criminals, even though she can’t see them? Is her blindness really a disability, or is it an advantage? Who’s really in control… in the dark?

2014-15 Season

THE

ELEPHANTMAN

In Jonathan Pomerance’s heartbreaking and dramatic account of the real-life Joseph “John” Merrick, a Victorian-age sideshow “freak,” afflicted with an undiagnosable, horribly disfiguring disease, is assumed to be prof0undly intellectually disabled and emotionless. When, by a stroke of good luck, he ends up in the care of a London doctor’s hospital, Merrick is revealed to be a brilliant, acutely sensitive soul capable of the most sweetly moving human expression.

2014-15 Season

In legendary American songwriter Roger Miller’s Tony-award-winning musical, based on Mark Twain’s classic novel, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, a white, runaway juvenile delinquent and an African-American runaway slave travel down the Mississippi, become unlikely best friends, and discover that human hearts love and ache just the same, no matter how different people may appear to be on the outside.

Performance Venues

Centrally located in San Francisco and convenient to public transportation (BART/MUNI), ADA-accessible & compliant with wheelchair seating that is as well-located and comfortable as regular seating.

Circle of Life Theatre has toured many theater venues in San Francisco and recently contracted the ADA-compliant, 491-seat proscenium Victoria Theatre for “Wait Until Dark”. Victoria Theatre is located at 16th & Mission, right across the street from the 16th Street BART station. “Big River” also may be produced at this same venue, which has a large stage, fly system, and a warm, welcoming, supportive attitude about C.O.L.T.’s disability-oriented mission.

Complete theatrical lighting grid, sound system , and fly space.

Cross-promotional opportunities; ability for C.O.L.T. to sell concessions and merchandise.

A smaller, more intimate venue is sought for “The Elephant Man”. Ideal theaters include the best combination of features and benefits for optimal performance quality and maximum comfort and convenience for audience, cast, and crew members:

WHAT’S in a VARIETY SHOW?

Proudly presenting Circle of Life Theatre’s fresh, new, able/disabled, pop-rock vocal group, PARADOX A CAPPELLA! Offering playlist-worthy original songs as well as innovative covers and mash-ups, PARADOX mixes the hottest music from the TOP 100 with past and present influences from a wide variety of musical genres, including jazz, R&B, rap, Broadway, opera, country, and the American songbook of standards written by the likes of Cole Porter and Duke Ellington.

PARADOX A CAPPELLA

Contact

Would you like to audition or be considered as a potential board member or another type of volunteer? Perhaps you’d enjoy becoming a C.O.L.T. Booster and be invited to private, ultra-exclusive, high-end events throughout the year?

If you have talent, influence, resources, effective door-opening and fundraising skills, grant-writing ability, marketing expertise, direct theatre and/or disability experience – or the financial ability simply to underwrite some, most, or all of our frugal, yet ambitious budget… … and if you feel strongly that you can support our theatre’s unique, mixed-ability mission, we would love to hear from you. Kindly contact :

Fritz LambandrakeExecutive Director

415.385.5055Fritz@CircleofLifeTheatre.org

THANK YOU!