Following its success with Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Robert Michael Oliver, Yitna Firdyiwek, Aashish Edakadampil, and Doug Fraser have decided to combine their collective talents on Poe’s most ambitious project: Eureka: a prose poem.
Aashish Edakadampil – Cinematographer and Audiovisual Editor
Perhaps due to my journey between the Old and the New World, I find myself seeking to blend disciplines and unearth nuance. Somewhere in that intersection of science and art, oral histories and digital binaries, collective consciousness and individual ingenuity… I find home.
Yitna Firdyiwek – Director and Producer
I am an Instructional Designer. My expertise is in Instructional Technology. I work with others in collaborative design and implementation of intentional approaches to learning. As a technologist, I am fascinated by electronic portfolios. It is an interest which has led me to the limitless possibilities of multi-modal representations of the self-in-learning. My friendship with Doug, Michael, and Aashish, and our collaboration in the Performing Knowledge project, has allowed me to explore the boundaries between my professional and communitarian worlds in the context of self-knowledge, creativity, and lifelong learning. The Raven and Eureka are the initial products of that experience….
Doug Fraser – Composer/Design Team
A composer and musician, I am also an architect, currently serving as the Building Official for the City Of Falls Church, Virginia. A guitar enthusiast and amateur astronomer, I, like Michael and Yitna, am a 1977 graduate of Virginia Tech. Born in Washington, DC, I describe myself as an invasive species to northern Virginia where I live with my wife, architect and environmentalist Judy Fraser, and my two sons, Brian and John.
Robert Michael Oliver in EMBODYING POE
Robert Michael Oliver – Actor and Screenwriter/Creator
Robert Michael Oliver is a poet, playwright, theatre artist, and educator living in Washington, DC. Co-Director of the Performing Knowledge Project, Michael also performs two solo poetry-in-performance pieces: Embodying Poe and “Song of Myself”: the WHITMAN Project.