Staged Reading: Perfecting the Kiss Creative

Company Director

David Lee

David Lee has served as the Artistic Director at Avenue Arts Marketplace and Theatre since the conception of the theatre company in 2017. He has had the pleasure of working with a diverse group of actors including youngsters as the Director of the young actors workshop each fall and spring. Some of his favorite shows with the the Junior class are “Annie JR”, “Willy Wonka JR”and “Shrek JR”. David also understands the importance in the development of new works and has formed a company of actors called “Underground” that preforms staged readings of new works. He invites you to check out the season of new works at AvenueArts.org. David is a Canton, Ohio native and attended Malone University where he was trained in the Michael Chekhov Technique of acting and revived and B.A. in Communication, Visual and Preforming Arts.

Company Manager

Emily Hisey

Emily Hisey has loved theatre since she was chosen to play the coveted role of Twinkle the Christmas Angel at age nine - she’s been escaping reality ever since. Past stage credits include Jane Eyre, Dancing at Lughnasa, Doubt, and A Year With Frog and Toad. Emily is grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with such talented and hardworking artists. “Enjoy the show and thank you for supporting live theatre!”

Original Creative Team

Scott Sickles (Playright)

SCOTT C. SICKLES is an LGBT playwright of Asian decent. He won the 2016 Dayton Playhouse FutureFest for Shepherd's Bush (since retitled Nonsense and Beauty), his biographical play about E.M. Forster, and the New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Original Full-Length Script for his drama Composure. He has received five consecutive Writers Guild of America Awards for the daytime serial General Hospital, as well as multiple Emmy nominations for that series and One Life to Live. His plays have been performed in New York City, his native Pittsburgh, across the United States, as well as internationally in Canada, Australia, the UK, Singapore, and Lebanon.

His acclaimed comedy Intellectuals is included in Smith & Kraus’ New Playwrights: Best Plays of 2007. He received the 1999 Beverly Hills Theater Guild/Julie Harris Playwriting Award for Lightning from Heaven, a biographical piece about Boris Pasternak, his muse Olga Ivinskaya, and the creation of Doctor Zhivago. His intense romantic drama Moonlight & Love Songs was the inaugural production of GayFestNYC 2013, benefiting students of the Harvey Milk High School.

Sickles was named Outstanding Playwright of the 1996 Pittsburgh New Works Festival for his one-act drama The Harmonic Convergence. Published short plays include murmurs (Samuel French Festival Plays #21), and Beautiful Noises (S&K's 2009: Best 10-Minute Plays...).

He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and the New Play Exchange.