Ms. Rita Herman

Keyboard Town PALS™, LLC is guided by CEO Ms. Rita Herman, who has developed a method to teach children to type in one hour using puppets, music, humor, association and memory techniques.

Ms. Herman is a professional educator with over three decades of teaching experience specializing in reading and creative drama.

She is an expert in the Purposeful Associative Learning System (PALS) which serves as the pedagogical foundation for Keyboard Town PALS™.

Ms. Donna Katz

The President of Keyboard Town PALS™, Ms. Donna Katz, has years of experience as a school administrator in Pittsburgh PA, and did private consulting to non-profit educational organizations.

Ms. Katz has been the moving force for the production of the video and its distribution throughout the world. Donna expanded the product line to include a Spanish and French version, a preschool slide show and a values-based leadership program.

Together, Rita and Donna put together an outstanding creative team to produce the typing video. These professionals come on board with years of experience in children’s educational programming. Several members of our crew were part of the Emmy-Award winning ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.’

Jeff Bergman, Voice Actor Our most famous artist, Jeff Bergman, does the voice of 18 puppets in the Keyboard Town video including voices inspired by Groucho Marx, Woody Allen, Walter Cronkite, William F. Buckley, Cary Grant, John F. Kennedy, Larry David and Jimmy Durante. He also does regional accents for the show: Southern, New Jersey, Brooklyn, European and British. Bergman is best known as the voices of the classic Warner Brothers’ Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbera characters. He provides voice work for the Fox show, The Family Guy. His level of expertise and talent greatly increased the entertainment value of our program.

Adrienne Wehr, Producer Adrienne Wehr spent 10 years as Associate Producer of the Emmy-award winning Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. She has served as producer, writer & art director for such companies as Family Communications, HBM/Creamer, and Gateway Studios, and is an educator. As a performer she works in film, television, stage, radio & and print. Recent film performance credits include Disney’s Inspector Gadget, Kevin Smith’s Dogma, The Bread, My Sweet and the Unstoppable with Danzel Washington.

Melissa Martin, Director Melissa Martin has written and directed plays produced in New York, Chicago, Toronto and at home in Pittsburgh. Her plays include The Shriveled Arm of Uma Kimball, The Last Bridge, and The Convalescence of Marge among others. Martin is a university professor and has begun to direct commercials.

Amy Marsalis, Associate Producer, Voice Actress Amy Marsalis is an actress and served as Associate Producer of Keyboard Town PALS and provided the voices of Dora, Helen and Emma. Amy is a film and stage actress, and has acted in commercial, industrial and print work for Fisher-Price, DelMonte Foods, and Pampers among many others. She is a member of The Screen Actors Guild and The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

Mark Knobil, Director of Photography For more than 20 years, Mark Knobil has worked with 16mm, 35mm, & video formats. As a documentarian he has over two dozen credits as DP for National Geographic, Nova, other PBS specials and the Discovery Channel. Credits include: Volcanoes of the Deep (Nova, PBS); TITANIC: Anatomy of a Disaster (Discovery Channel); The Shape of Life, Cats: Caressing the Tiger, and Bali: Masterpiece of the Gods (all National Geographic). Other projects range from Mister Rogers Visits the USSR (Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood) to I Ain Cha Hoe (music video for The Missfits/Saturn). Two of his projects have been Emmy-nominated. His corporate clients include USAirways, IBM, Westinghouse and PPG Industries.

Leah Blackwood, Scenic Artist Leah Blackwood painted Mister Rogers’ sets for over a decade.

John Friedman, Set Designer John Friedman is presently designing and building sets for Pittsburgh City Theater.

Batpack Studios Batpack Studios’ state-of-the-art facility and its professional staff made the production process run smoothly.

Capezzuti Studios Our puppet Sunny was designed by Capezzuti Studios. The head puppeteer Sam Turich, brought years of puppeteering experience to the production.

Foreign Language Series Talent – Spanish

Sergi Robles- Voice Actor

Sergi is an actor with a BFA in Acting from Carnegie Mellon University. He has been cast in productions with the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, South Colorado Rep, Tamarac Theatre, New London Barn in addition to special project work with Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, Carnegie Mellon University, and, yes, Keyboard Town PALS.

Kenya Dworkin- Spanish Transaltor
Co- Chairman of the Modern Language Department, Carnegie Mellon University

Kenya Dworkin’s current research involves an analysis of the cultural and sociolinguistic survival of a unique Latin community in Ybor City, Florida through its tradition of Spanish-language and particularly Cuban theater. More specifically, the project also involves an analysis of the U.S. government’s WPA Federal Theater Project during the 1930s and 1940s and its assimilatory goals with respect to the Spanish-speaking community in Ybor City.

Other projects she is involved with include 1) a sociolinguistic, ethnographic study of the circumstances surrounding the emigration of Puerto Ricans to Hawaii in the early twentieth century, 2) a psycholinguistic and cultural analysis of the literary production of Latino monolingual, bicultural writers, with particular attention to their strategies for conveying culture-specific concepts and realities that defy translation, and 3) an analysis of the self- contradicting discourse of identity and independence in late nineteenth- century and early twentieth-century Cuba as seen through literary, journalistic, artistic and epistolary forms of production, and their role in nation-building.

Foreign Language Series Talent – French

G. Clara Kessous- Voice Actress
Professor in the Fine Arts Department, Harvard University 

Recipient of the State Diploma of Performing Arts among other acting awards, Guila Clara Kessous has acted, directed and produced performances in Paris, Avignon, New York and Boston. After completing an MBA in cultural business and a Master’s degree in comparative dramatic literature, she focused her study on contemporary French literature, drama, and sacred texts under Professor T.J. Kline’s mentorship at Boston University. She has taught at Boston University, Harvard University and at the French Library Alliance Française of Boston. Combining drama theory and practice, she has explored topics such as modern slavery (Director, “Hilda” by M. Ndiaye, sponsored by UNESCO); the meaning of “intellect” (Director, “Culture.com,” a tribute to J. Malkovich); and God’s culpability (Director, “The Trial of God,” and “Once upon a time” by E. Wiesel).

Christine Fréchard- French Translator
Founder of the Institute Of International Art and Languages 

Christine Fréchard is a native of Champagne, France and has a Master’s and an ABD in Linguistics. She is passionate about visual art, music and languages. Christine was the owner of the Europ’ART gallery in Pittsburgh for eight years. She is fluent in English, French and Italian and conversational in three other languages and she is the founder of The Institute of International Art and Language (IIAL).