Rhys Southan Co-Writer, Co-Director, Hutchins Hopgood, Charles Carrol of Carrolton, Step Hopkins, Monsieur Bleach, The Judge

Rhys Southan was born on April 23, 1979 at 5:46 p.m. in Dallas, Texas. For most of his teenage years, Rhys had at least one debilitating headache every week. A social failure, he sublimated his frustrated energies into more "productive" activities: incessantly jotting down ideas in tiny handwriting, reading books at dance parties, listening to nothing but classical music, attending screenwriter meetings every Friday night with people three times his age, and decrying compulsory school attendance while wondering how life would be if he'd been born in France. For a while, Rhys believed that life was a movie, and he was the main character. This empowered him, but alienated his friends who didn't like hanging around someone who thought they weren't real. Rhys became obsessed with tape-recording his life; carrying that micro-cassette recorder everywhere finally paid off when he captured an unprovoked screaming fit from one of his nicer high school teachers: "You all have sassed me long enough! You all can just rot! I have tried harder than some of you ever dreamed of! And I have a degree. I'm not a whiner. I'm not a quitter. I can't take this anymore! Am I understood?!" In high school, Rhys directed Good-bye to the Clown, a sappy children's play about a girl who befriends a mischievous imaginary clown as a replacement for her dead father. Rhys' mother cried after reading the play, and was shocked when he re-wrote it into a cynical dark comedy about a girl who befriends a mischievous imaginary clown as a replacement for her father who is on vacation in Kentucky for two weeks. Not a fan of high school, Rhys took off his graduation cap before walking across the stage to get his diploma, and intentionally told the announcer the wrong pronunciation for his name. His mother cried after hearing her graduating son's name pronounced as "Rice Soothen." Rhys was recently diagnosed with Wolff Parkinson White Syndrome, a potentially fatal heart disease. Though the doctors assure Rhys that he is an asymptomatic Wolff, he has become acutely concerned with his legacy. And thus, he eagerly embarked on the Who is Jim Holt? project with Joe et al., even dropping out of UT mid-semester so he could sit around and think about the musical more. A very special thanks goes to everyone Rhys likes, everyone Rhys likes a lot, and especially everyone Rhys loves. You know who you are. Though you may not know exactly where you fall on the hierarchy.