Member Reviewers

 

 

Roy Berko- is an award winning writer and educator, a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and the Dance Critics Association. He is a college professor, life coach and entertainment reviewer. His love of theatre started when he appeared on stage at age 4 and has proceeded as he performed as an actor, director and producer at professional, community and college theatres, including Berkshire Center for the Arts (Berkshire, MA), Cherry County Playhouse, (Traverse City, MI), Theatre International (Leysin, Switzerland), Kent State University, and The University of Michigan.  Locally, he has been affiliated with Dobama, Elyria Summer Theatre, Jewish Community Center, The Ohio New Play Festival, Beck Center, and Cassidy Theatre.  He started the drama programs at Lorain County Community College and Beachwood High School.   His reviews appear in ArtsAmerica.com, BroadwayWorld.com, Neohiopal.com, and coolcleveland.com, as well as www.royberko.info.  He is the author of 27 books.  For more information go to www.royberko.info

Howard Gollop - Winner of the Cleveland Press Club prize for entertainment writing, Howard Gollop has been covering theater in Northeast Ohio for more than three decades -- first as arts/entertainment editor of The Morning Journal in Lorain and recently as Accent Editor of The Chronicle-Telegram in Elyria and The Gazette in Medina. He has served as a contributor for Mademoiselle magazine and a guest dramaturg for Cleveland Play House.

 

 

 

Sheri Gross has joined the Cleveland Jewish News as interim arts reviewer. She had been writing guest reviews for the CJN.

Gross is a performer, director and freelance writer from Solon. She was the director of the Mandel JCC Playmakers Youth Theatre and Pilloff Performing Arts Camp for over 20 years and is the director of creative programs at Gross Schechter Day School in Pepper Pike. 

She came to Cleveland from New York in 1995 to appear in a four- week run of “Groucho: A Life in Revue,” and never went home. She had appeared in the off-Broadway production of “One Man Band” as well as in regional productions, including “A Chorus Line” as Sheila, “Gypsy” as Louise, “Nunsense” as Sister Robert Anne, “Godspell” as Sonia and “The Rocky Horror Show” as Janet. 

Locally, Gross performed at the Halle Theatre in “Fiddler on the Roof” as Tzeitel and Fruma Sara, “Funny Girl” as Fanny Brice and “The Rothschilds” as Hanna. She also wrote and performed for The Musical Theater Project, and several solo cabaret acts. 

She lives in Solon with her husband, David, and their children; Alexis 21, Aidan 20, and Ava, 13.

Christine Howey was been named Best Critic in Ohio by both the Press Club of Cleveland and the Society of Professional Journalists City Pages and Cleveland Scene, The Plain Dealer, Cleveland Free Times, , premiered at Cleveland Public Theatre, had a three-week run at Playhouse Square in Cleveland, and was an official selection of the 2015 New York International Fringe Festival. She then adapted the play into a film, which was an official selection of the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival in 2018. Christine (then Richard) was an actor and director at Dobama Theatre from 1968 to 1985. For 20 years beginning in 1998, Christine was a theater critic for Exact Change in the past, she has been a performance poet, playwright, actor, director, and theater critic. Her one-person stage play of poetry about her transgender journey, is currently executive director of Literary Cleveland, a nonprofit organization supporting writers and readers in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio.

 

Awarded a Creative Workforce Fellowship in 2014 from the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, and an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council in 2016, which also granted her a 13-week residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. was Christine has had four books of poetry published. She was the Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights, Ohio for 2016-2018. She is also a slam poet and competed in the National Poetry Slams, in 2013 and 2017, as a member of the four-person Cleveland team. 

 

She was honored to receive the Illumination Award as the transgender leader of the year in northeast Ohio for 2015, and the Torch Award for leadership on transgender issues from the Cleveland chapter of the Human Rights Campaign in 2017.  For 40 years, Christine was an award-winning copywriter and creative director for ad agencies in Cleveland and Minneapolis, MN.

  

Mark Horning is a professional photographer and writer who resides with his family in Berea, Ohio.  He currently writes for AXS Sports and Entertainment as well as Examiner.com and On Topics (a CBS Web Affiliate).  He covers a wide range of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio topics that include The Fine Arts, Rock and Roll, Outdoor Recreation, The Cleveland Browns and The Canton Charge Development League Basketball Team.  Mark has been doing critical reviews of local theater since November of 2011.  A majority of Mark’s reviews and articles can be found at: http://www.axs.com/tag/cleveland.

 

 

 

Laura Kennelly is a freelance journalist and arts reviewer in the Cleveland area. She has served as Arts Editor for the Morning Journal in Lorain and written about the arts in print for Northern Ohio Live, Scene Magazine, and other publications. She also did music reviews for WCLV's "Considered Opinions." In 2005 she was awarded a fellowship for the NEA Institute for Classical Music and Opera held in NYC at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. A member of the North​ American Music Critics Association. She has also served as ​associate editor of BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute (at Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music). Before moving to Ohio some twenty years ago, she taught literature and  creative writing at the University of North Texas (where she received a PhD in English literature). To see her full reviews, read Laura's posts at Cool Cleveland.

  

 

Kate Klotzbach -  Kate Klotzbach is a local actress, stage manager, volunteer, and theatre writer. Previous performance writing includes content for Examiner.com, The News Herald, and The Morning Journal. She majored in Communications (Public Relations / Musical Theatre) at Ohio Northern University and holds a master’s in Nonprofit Administration and Leadership from Cleveland State University’s Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs. She currently works with Cleveland State University’s Department of Theatre and Dance as an Administrative Coordinator, and sees herself not as much as a “reviewer” as she does a “cheerleader” for local talent. Blog:  https://kateklotzbach.com/

 

Yuko Kurahashi is a tenured full professor of theatre at Kent State University. Kurahashi has a BA in English (Keio University, Tokyo), MA in English (Waseda University, Tokyo) and Theatre (Indiana University), and Ph.D. in Theatre (Indiana University). Kurahashi is the author of Asian American Culture on Stage: The History of the East West Players (Garland, now Taylor & Francis, 1999), Multicultural Theatre (Kendall/Hunt, 2004 & 2006), and The Interdisciplinary Theatre of Ping Chong (McFarland,2020). Kurahashi spent two years in New York City when she was 5-7 when her father was a Fulbright scholar. It was during that time when she became attracted to theatre; she still remembers attending, with her family, The Sound of Music and Fiddler on the Roof, both of which were on Broadway in the 1960s. To this day, Kurahashi is a passionate theatergoer and she writes reviews and articles for scholarly journals and other venues; she is an official contributing writer for PlayShakespeare.com.

 

Joey Morana - Joey Morona joined cleveland.com as a digital producer in 1998. A lifelong Clevelander, he currently serves as a life and culture reporter for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer with an emphasis on movies, television and theater. 

 

You can find his theater coverage at http://www.cleveland.com/onstage