Bev DeMello, who reluctantly removed her cowboy boots and slipped on flip-flops for life in Tallahassee, grew up in Houston, Texas. She received her undergraduate degrees in journalism and English from Baylor University (Waco, Texas) and her master’s degree in drama from the University of North Texas (Denton, Texas). She also earned a master’s degree in public administration from Florida State University.

She worked as a staff writer at The Methodist Hospital and as a writer/editor at Tenneco, Inc., in Houston, as well as a writer/editor at the Halliburton Corporation in Dallas, before moving to Florida. At present, she is Assistant Director of the Office of Public Information for Florida’s Public Service Commission, which regulates the state’s utilities.

Bev acted in and directed numerous productions with local theatres in Houston and at the University of North Texas. She has also directed local community theatre productions in Tallahassee, including the Southern premiere of Rust and Ruin, originally produced at the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference and later at Yale Repertory Theatre, and Talking With… and Boy Gets Girl, both of which received “Most Enjoyed Play” Award of the Coffeehouse season at the Tallahassee Little Theatre’s Annual Awards.

A member of the Dramatists Guild, Bev has been recognized for writing achievements in business and communications and was a featured Tallahassee Democrat columnist. She’s won some playwriting contests and has also had several of her plays produced. Her short play, The Baby in Christmas, was published by Eldridge Publishing.

Rod Durham moved to Tallahassee from Fort Washington, Maryland, when he was seventeen. Now in his 44th year, he knows Tallahassee to be his home (better late than never). Rod is a graduate of the high school where he now teaches, Leon, and also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from The University of Central Florida. He has been teaching for twenty years, the last eleven of those at Leon High School, and the last nine of those as the head of the Theatre Arts division of Leon High School’s Performing Arts. He is especially proud of his work with the young artists he gets to learn from daily, as Leon’s Drama department has grown from the two classes he taught back in 2000, to the six he teaches daily now. The program is recognized as one of the best in the state of Florida by the International Thespian Society and the Florida State Thespians.

Though he started his theater training at The Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C., Rod began his life on the stage here at TLT in 1996’s coffeehouse production of Ariel Dorfman’s Death & the Maiden. Twenty-one performances later, he feels as though he’s finally breaking through. Favorite past roles include Gaston in Picasso at the Lapin Agile (FSU’s Lab Theatre); Richard the Nice Nurse in A New Brain (Theatre a La Carte); Detective Cole in Stop, Kiss (FSU’s Lab Theatre); and Lucien P. Smith in The Boys Next Door (FSU’s Conradi Theatre). He has directed over 20 plays, but Rod has a special love for TLT’s Coffeehouse series, where he loved directing Anne Nelson’s “The Guys” (2004) and Lyn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel (2007). He is a huge admirer of Bev DeMello, and is thrilled to be working with her on this project.