Founding Members

Founding Members

Misti Boland

Misti Boland is an accomplished motion picture production designer and writer/director. As a production designer, she has overseen art department on dozens of film projects, and
as a director, her films have both screened and won awards in festivals across the country. Her short script was a finalist in the 2013 Kansas City Women in Film screenplay competition.

Christie Scanlin Dobson

Christie Scanlin Dobson is a registered drama therapist and theater artist who transplanted back to her college town of Lawrence, KS, having started her career in Seattle, Washington in 1992. Christie worked in Seattle’s nonprofit sector for Seattle Opera, Open Circle Theatre and Seattle Children’s Theatre, as well as homeless shelters and domestic violence programs as an artist, administrator and advocate closely aligning with organizations providing arts outreach to the community. With her Master’s degree in drama therapy from Kansas State University, Christie has continued to shape her professional work around the use of expressive arts, especially theater and film, for healing and social awareness with youth. Christie acts in Lawrence, Topeka and in Kansas City, and appeared in the local feature film, Earthwork. Christie also sings for special projects and occasions, most recently with the Topeka Symphony with friends from the Americana Music Academy.

Marlo Angell

Marlo has a B.A. degree in Film/Video Production from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television. Her short film, Cigar By Car, was screened in festivals across the country including the AFI Los Angeles Film Festival. She wrote and directed the feature film Waiting For The Son, starring Lupe Ontiveros and Brian Aldiss and she produced and edited the documentaries Mariachi Estrella and From Football to Futbol. She is currently developing a full length play called His and Hers which was recently workshopped as part as the Fire Your Muse New Play Festival. Marlo works as a freelance videographer, provides media services for the Lawrence Arts Center and curates the Free State Film Festival.

Laura Kirk

Laura Kirk is an award winning filmmaker with credits as a producer and actor in many films including Andrea Arnold’s American Honey: Cannes 2016, The Sublime and Beautiful : Slamdance 2014. A veteran on the independent film festival circuit, Kirk co-wrote and starred one of the first digital films: Lisa Picard is Famous: Cannes 2000. It is included in John Gaspard’s book “Fast, Cheap and Under Control …Lessons Learned from the Greatest Low Budget Movies of All Time.” Kirk began her career on stage in New York off-Broadway and regionally where she was also a teaching artist in homeless shelters and in schools for Dreamyard Drama Project. Major training in Meisner was with Wynn Handman and Suzanne Esper and improvisation with Alan Arkin. Commercials include national campaigns for Block Advisors, Verizon, Wrangler Jeans, Jeep and Dr. Pepper. Laura is a co-founder of the mentoring group “Women of Lawrence Film” where she puts into practice her interests in remedying gender inequity in film. Her research on Eve Unsell will be published in the upcoming “When Women Wrote Hollywood” (Forthcoming McFarland).