ABOUT THE PROJECT DIRECTORS


The Beckermans discuss their musical theater and language edu-tainment programs in a television interview.

HOWARD BECKERMAN is President of Heartworks International, the arts, entertainment, and language education product development company. He received a 2006 artist’s grant from JPMorgan Chase to develop a multicultural collaborative musical through a community theater and language workshop. The show, entitled Let’s Dream Together, previewed on November 12, 2006 at the Town of Brookhaven’s Anti-Bias Task Force “Celebrating Diversity” event. Howard is also the creator of the bilingual children’s musical Bullies and Bananas, touring Long Island schools in 2007 with Airport Playhouse of Bohemia. He received a 2001 New York State Council on the Arts grant for the development of the musical Married in the Suburbs and served as Project Director for the Long Island New Play Contest and Development Workshop, another NYSCA grant-supported program. He is the composer and lyricist of the children’s musical Halloween at Belvedere, commissioned by the Central Park Conservancy. Also a linguist, language educator, and author with an M.A. in Applied Linguistics, Howard’s bilingual Rush Hour musical CDs are Berlitz best sellers, available for learning five languages, and his Baby Talk & Tunes and DJ Spanish are both 2005 iParenting Media Award winners. Howard has produced and directed two international English-teaching radio series for Voice of America and served as Senior Writer for Family Album, USA, the American language and culture television series broadcast in over 50 nations. He has taught English and theater to international students at Hunter College and lectured in the U.S. and abroad on the use of music, theater, and media in language education.
LINDA BECKERMAN is Executive Director of Worldwide Voices, the not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to unite neighborhoods through multicultural and multilingual community collaborations in the arts. Linda is an artist and writer who served in 2001 and 2002 as Managing Director of the New York State Council on the Arts grant-supported Long Island New Play Contest and Development Workshop for Long Island Playwrights. For both theater and media projects, she has also worked as a script supervisor, production manager, stage manager, and scene painter, and she received an M.F.A. in Painting from Rochester Institute of Technology. Ms. Beckerman has been project editor and manager of many publications and media programs for teaching ESL and foreign languages. She was a founding board member of Teatro Experimental Yerbabruja, a theater company that serves Long Island's Latin American community.

The Beckermans are both members of The Dramatists Guild of America, the professional association of playwrights, composers and lyricists, and TESOL, the global education association of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. They are co-founders of the not-for-profit Worldwide Voices, Inc. (www.worldwidevoices.org)