Ben Bontempo received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Theater Performance from Simon’s Rock College in the Spring of 2007.  His senior thesis combined theoretical and conceptual writing and an experimental performance piece.  While in school, he performed in Sunsets and Glories, a movement piece based on Peter Barnes’s stage play, and Joan Ackermann’s The Batting Cage, which was directed by Karen Allen.

Since graduating, Ben has worked with the Castle Hill Theatre Company, and performed in Susan Lori-Parks’s 365 Project at the Berkshire Fringe Theater Festival.  Ben also creates visual art; his printmaking work will soon be on display at JWS on Railroad Street in downtown Great Barrington.  His band, Mile Long Tangle, plays raucous experimental punk music. Ben wants to thank Karen Beaumont and everyone else in the Theater Department at Simon’s Rock for facilitating his more challenging work during college, and all the local theater folk for thinking of him when interesting roles need to be filled.

Ken De Loreto is thrilled to breathe life into the ghost in Castle Hill Theatre Company's version of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Feathertop.  As a transplant to The Berkshires, he has become inspired to pursue his love of performing; balancing theater with his own corporate consulting business.

Over the past three years on the boards, Ken has appeared at Triarts in Sharon, CT as the Emcee in Chicago, Buffalo Bill in Annie Get Your Gun, General Harrison Howell in Kiss Me Kate, and Ernst Ludwig in Cabaret. He has also appeared at The Ghent Playhouse in Ghent, NY as Joey Evans in Pal Joey, and as Dracula in the Stephen Dietz version of the Bram Stoker classic. Most recently he has appeared as The King in Castle Hill Theatre Company's own version of Rumpelstiltskin, and as Schroeder in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown directed by Joan Ackermann.  Ken thanks the talented Feathertop cast and crew, Director Nicki Wilson, and his partner Ritch for their creativity, humor, and support.

Daniel Osman was an actor, director, producer and theater maker for more than 30 years, working all over the world and enjoying a remarkable career that went virtually unnoticed by all but the most intrepid theater junkies. Ten years ago Daniel stopped all that and found himself on a mountaintop in Becket at the somewhat infamous Dream Away Lodge, where he now lives and works. 

Daniel was dragged back onto the stage last year in a beautiful monologue called The Big Picture written for him by Joan Ackermann and is rather flattered to have been asked to be part of this elite ensemble.

Judith Pieschel was most recently seen at Main Street Stage in North Adams in the role of Mrs. Alving in Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts. She previously performed there in the role of Evie in Ellen McLaughlin’s Tongue of a Bird and as Chris Collins in Michael Brady’s Hard Time. This is Judy’s second role with Castle Hill Theatre Company, having created the part of The Duchess in Puss In Boots at Mixed Company and The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.

Other selected stage credits include the roles of:  Yentl in An Afternoon with Isaac Bashevis Singer at Anshe Emeth; Sharon in The Philadelphia, and Kafka in Words, Words, Words by David Ives at The Workshop Playhouse; Anna Trumbull in A.R. Gurney’s What I Did Last Summer at The Actors Center, and Women Creating Women Creating, a women’s collaboration of solo works in St. Louis.

Carrie Saldo eagerly entered autumn as a child knowing her mother would craft a handmade Halloween costume just for her. That tradition inadvertently instilled a lasting affinity for the season, which she spiritedly celebrates this year as Polly Gookin in Castle Hill’s adaptation of Hawthorne’s Feathertop!

Carrie graduated from Manhattanville College, a double major in theatre and English, and completed an internship with Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York City before returning to her Berkshire County roots. Her local production credits include the Berkshire Fringe Festival; Talking With at the Aglet Theatre Company; In Season at Mixed Company; and Speed the Plow at the Workshop Playhouse. Off stage, Carrie is WAMC’s Berkshire Bureau Chief and a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in Berkshire Living Magazine and the Berkshire Eagle, among other publications.