Kathie deNobriga & Melanie Hammet
March 28, 2013 // The Lyric Theatre
Kathie deNobriga
KATHIE DENOBRIGA is the Mayor of Pine Lake, Georgia. Born in Atlanta and raised in Kingsport, Tennessee, Kathie holds a Master’s degree in Theatre and a Bachelor’s degree (Phi Beta Kappa) in Speech Communications/Theatre Arts from Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC. Kathie’s early careers include managing/artistic director of the Footlight Players (adult and youth community theatre) at the Temple Theatre in Sanford, NC; Visiting Artist for the North Carolina Arts Council in Smithfield, NC, where she founded a community theatre; and an acting ensemble member with The Road Company of Johnson City, TN. A founding member of Alternate ROOTS, a regional service organization for arts and activism, Kathie served as ROOTS’ executive director for 10 years. During that time, she co-edited one of the first anthologies of new plays from the southern theatre and initiated a consortium to create a Community Arts Training Directory.
She is now a consultant, working both nationally and locally, specializing in strategic planning, building organizational capacity, staff/board retreats, and creative conflict engagement. She is a certified mediator. A Fellow in the Rockefeller Foundation’s Next Generation Leadership program, Kathie has been a member of the first cohort of national arts leaders in the Rockwood Leadership Institute. deNobriga has served as an elected official of the City of Pine Lake since 2002 and has been an advocate and practitioner for arts and community development.
Kathie and her partner Alice Teeter enjoy traveling, and together have visited Argentina, Greece, Scotland, Spain, Yellowstone Park, WY, and Maine. A native of Winter Haven, Florida, Alice is a published poet, graphic designer, and identical twin.
Melanie Hammet
MELANIE HAMMET is a strange mixture.
A musician and composer with a long history of performance and musical
theater, Hammet is also a two-term city council person in her hometown of Pine Lake, Georgia and currently serves as Mayor ProTem.
Over the years, Melanie has performed alongside many Atlanta music luminaries including Shawn Mullins, Indigo Girls, and Kristian Bush. Her theatre work has teamed her with Kenny Leon and Marjorie Bradley Kellogg. “Coming Of Age,” an early musical theatre collaboration with writer Ann Goette, was performed across the country—Sarah Silverman was a former cast member early in her career.
Hammet has written and produced more than a dozen recordings, including her last release, Crooked Spoke.
In the last several years, Hammet has refocused her songwriting on a new genre she calls “documentary songmaking.” The first collection in the new series, Edifice Complex (and other urban plans), is an EP of songs exploring elements of urban design.
Hammet is currently collaborating with TuneWelder music’s Ben Holst and the Georgia Innocence Project on a project entitled “Life Sentence: I Am An Innocent Man.”
Elected official and musician? It turns out that imagination, collaboration, creative friction, and optimism—the operating principles of an artist—are an easy fit into the world of community service and small-town politics.