RON RUSSELL (Director, The Winning Side; Executive Director of Epic Theatre Ensemble) has co-founded four theatres that still produce today: the nationally-acclaimed Summer Theatre Enrichment Project at El Centro in Lorain, OH (1992); Swine Palace Productions in Louisiana, while receiving his MFA-Directing from the RSC’s Barry Kyle (1992-1994); UBI Rep Theatre in San Diego (1995); and Epic Theatre Ensemble (2001-present). With Epic, he has directed 16 award-winning Off-Broadway productions, including Premieres of Kate Fodor’s Hannah and Martin, Vern Thiessen’s Einstein’s Gift, Shakespeare’s Richard III, Born with Teeth, and Nilaja Sun’s Pike St., which he is currently touring across the nation and world, where it has won Helen Hayes and FringeFirst Awards. He has won an OBIE Award for Epic’s adaptation of Antigone and the International Ibsen Award for Pillars of Society. He has also designed sound for award-winning productions of Nilaja Sun’s No Child… (OBIE Award) and Judith Thompson’s Palace of The End. His teaching experience includes over 50 public schools, reaching over 18,000 youth, and his work as an educator in NYC has been recognized by citations from the Municipal Arts Society and Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg.