Tom Stoppard After working as a British journalist and drama critic, Sir Tom Stoppard became a playwright. After successfully showing at the 1966 Edinburgh Festival, his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead opened at the Old Vic and made Stoppard an overnight success. He has written prolifically for radio, TV, film and stage, including co-writing the screenplay for the film Shakespeare in Love.

Paul Braverman is a Bay Area playwright and actor, whose work has received dozens of readings and productions in Bay Area venues, as well as nationally and internationally.

He's had eleven short plays produced as part of Pear Avenue Theatre Slices including The Alpha Bindleman, which was a finalist for the 2009 Heideman Award for the best American short play of the year.

Paul's first full length play, No Good Deed, introduced the ginsoaked detective Frankie Payne during a successful world premiere at The Pear in 2011. For the past two years, he's been working on the next chapter in Payne's story, The Apple Never Falls, which premieres at The Pear in February, 2013.

As an actor Paul has been seen in many productions throughout the area. Most recently he was in 2012 Pear Slices. Favorite roles over the years include Roberts in Mister Roberts, Moon in The Real Inspector Hound, and The Greek Chorus in The Measures Taken (The Decision). Paul is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America and The Pear Avenue Theatre Playwright Guild.

Sharmon Hilfinger has been writing plays for twenty-six years and has been produced by Pear Avenue Theatre, TheatreFirst , Heartland Theater, Menlo Player’s Guild, and BootStrap Theater Foundation. Hanging Georgia is her seventh full-length play to be produced, and three of her short plays have been included in the Pear Avenue Theatre Pear Slices program. She is a founding member of the Pear Avenue Theatre Playwright’s Guild, a playwriting peer group. She studied playwriting with Rick Foster, Ellen McLaughlin and Oskar Eustis. Hanging Georgia  is her fourth play  with music written in collaboration with composer Joan McMillen.  Their play about Emily Dickinson, Tell It Slant, sold-out at the Pear Avenue Theater (2009) and was remounted at the Southside Theater, Fort Mason in San Francisco (2010). Imaginal Disks: A Tale of Transformation premiered in 2001 at the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts. In 2003, Hilfinger and McMillen’s environmental activist play for high school actors, got water?, premiered at the San Francisco Fringe Festival. Sharmon’s other full-length plays include An Ideal Mother, A History of Things that Never Happened, and Deuce (Pear 2006). In 1998, she founded BootStrap Theater Foundation, a nomad theater development and production company dedicated to helping artists bootstrap their way to visibility.  BootStrap has developed, produced independently or co-produced nine world premieres.