The Kreisau Project

Marc P. Smith,
Executive Producer, co-founder

Playwright/film writer/producer and director, Marc died on March 23, 2011 at the age of 77. Marc co-founded the award-winning Worcester (MA) Foothills Theatre Company in 1974 and served at the helm of this Equity company for 25 years. Marc has had close to two dozen of his plays professionally produced in New York, Los Angeles, Waterford, CT (the O'Neill Theater Center), Boston, Lenox, and Worcester, Massachusetts and more recently, in several cities in Germany and in Poland.

During his U.S. Army service, Marc served as chief writer of the American Forces Korea Network, developing radio and television programs that presented Korean history and customs. Later, in New York City, he was post-production liaison and then film audition liaison for CBS Films, Inc. and was NY coordinator for the first 3 years of the O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights’ Conference which he co-founded. He taught courses and/or guest-lectured in film and theatre at Clark University (his alma mater), College of the Holy Cross, Assumption, Bennington, Worcester State and Nichols Colleges and for various organizations and associations.

For the past nine years, he was engaged in a creative project centering on resistance to the Nazis, and reconciliation between Germans, Jews, and Poles. As a cornerstone of this endeavor, he wrote two plays. One, “A Journey to Kreisau,” focuses on a remarkable couple at the center of German resistance: Helmuth James and Freya von Moltke. The other, “Karski,” tells the little known story of a Polish hero of the resistance, Jan Karski, often referred to as the man who tried to stop the Holocaust.

Susan L. Smith,
Associate Producer, Director of PR and Marketing, co-founder

Co-founder of both Blue Pumpkin Productions (1998) and Worcester Foothills Theatre (1974), Susan has had responsibility for all communications and marketing efforts for both organizations. She has guest lectured at Assumption College and, since 2002, has been an adjunct faculty member of Clark University's COPACE division where she is Internship Coordinator for students in the Master's degree programs in Professional Communication and Public Administration. She also teaches a course at Clark in Audience Development, Event Planning, and Promotion.

In the mid-1980s she was special projects coordinator for Mechanics Hall in Worcester where she developed, marketed and implemented a new speakers series, "In Celebrated Company". Over two years, speakers included: N.Y. Gov. Mario Cuomo, Sen. William Proxmire, writers Dith Pran and Nora Ephron, and 60 Minutes' Ed Bradley. She presently offers consulting services in audience development for performing arts organizations.