Helen Borgers
Although best known as a 30-year veteran jazz disc jockey at KKJZ (formerly KLON), Helen has been Artistic Director of The Long Beach Shakespeare Company since 1997. Born in Kansas City, Mo., Helen moved to Long Beach, CA in 1958. She majored in Dramatic Literature and History at California State University Long Beach. She taught drama and Shakespeare workshops at Poly High School in the '70s, and at Cabrillo High School from 1999 to 2003. She has directed and performed in a diverse repertoire, from Euripides to Shakespeare to Tennessee Williams to Steve Allen's Meeting of Minds. In 2007, the Long Beach Arts Council presented Helen with their Distinguished Arts Professional award. In 2009, Helen invited Denis McCourt to be Co-Artistic Director of the company, to expand the company's repertoire to include contemporary productions.
Credits include adapting and directing the world premiere stage performance of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, endorsed by the Hammett family and their literary agents for school, community and small theatre performances across the nation.
Other credits include adapting for the stage and directing Dracula, The War of the Worlds, The Pickwick Papers, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and A Christmas Carol.
Shakespeare directing credits include Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Part 1 of Henry IV, Henry V, Cymbeline, Antony and Cleopatra, King Lear, Hamlet, The Comedy of Errors, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Love's Labour's Lost, and As You Like It.
Non-Shakespearean directing credits include: The Mandragola, The Birth of Merlin, The Importance of Being Earnest, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Bacchae, and The Miser.