Author of the play
Rob Brisk is a lifelong educator, having run schools in New Jersey, Oregon, and Ohio. He is the co-founder of The Wellington Initiative, a non-profit working with schools to measure and increase the degree to which students find their work challenging and love it. After writing for the theater in college, around the time of the Revolution, Rob came out of retirement to write Polly — drawn by his dedication to the learning process of children, his love of history, and the implacable charm of Rick Wiggin and Kim Lajoie.
Collaborator
Kim Lajoie has worked on and backstage in a career spanning over 40 years. She is an actress, performing in professional, semi-professional, summer stock, community theatre, staged readings, world premieres, and children's theatre, with experience in directing, choreographing, and costuming. Her roles have included Miss Tweed in Something's Afoot, the Art Dealer in Bakersfield Mist, Sonia in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Love Loss and What I Wore, City of Angels, Almost Maine, and countless others. She joined this project for her love of children, of American history and its role in education and our shared heritage, and for the chance to collaborate with the genius of Rick Wiggin and Rob Brisk.
Author of the book
Richard C. Wiggin is a historian, former Executive Director of The Bostonian Society (now Revolutionary Spaces), and former Captain and Historian of the Lincoln Minute Men. His award-winning book, Embattled Farmers: Campaigns and Profiles of Revolutionary Soldiers from Lincoln, Massachusetts, 1775–1783 (Lincoln Historical Society, 2013), chronicles the American Revolution through the experiences of 256 soldiers from a single New England farming community. As a living historian and battlefield volunteer at Minute Man National Historical Park, Mr. Wiggin appears regularly in school classrooms and enjoys speaking before civic and historical groups.