User:TheWriteGuy2

Professionally I make my living as a writer, media consultant, and a television director. Prior to this I was a teacher; and a marketing director for a midsized company. I am also a burgeoning historian who really enjoys contributing from time to time to Wikipedia on subjects that I feel I have a special insight into.

Focus on Wikipedia
My focus on Wikipedia is primarily History; covering mainly theater in Chicago, improvisation in Chicago, fringe theatrical events such as Renaissance Faires and haunted houses, a limited corner of the B-Movie world, and the history of a few European aristocratic bloodlines (mostly English & Swedish).

Credentials
I attended the BFA program at Tufts University where my focus was theater, film, and art history. My early graduate level work at The Chicago Art Institute, and later Roosevelt University, focused on ancient history, Nazi Europe, and the Italian Renaissance, after which I began a study of American Renaissance Faires and reenactment groups. This led me to a later exploration of other subjects including alternative religions, sectarian Christianity, Pre-Columbian/Native American societies, shamanism, the occult, and metaphysics. I am presently working again towards a graduate degree in history with a focus this time on American Culture and Consciousness.

I am a Illinois native with a strong interest in, and knowledge of Chicago theater history. I have also been a film and theatre critic for numerous publications in Chicago and Los Angeles with a special focus on improvisation, off-beat comedy, B-movie camp, and anything experimental or avant-garde. I have been an instructor & motivational speaker focusing on team building and creative thinking; giving me a slight specialization in non-mainstream training programs. I am the associate-historian for two theater/film archives in the US: one at The Chicago Public Library/Theater Collections, and the other at The Oak Park Historical Society. Future contributions are slated to be made to the UCLA Film Archive and the Northwestern University Theater Archive.

I am a frequent visitor to Sweden where my focus is research on the lineage of my ancestors, Joran Person Tegel, Peter Estenberg, and the Swedish descendants of Catherine Somerset. My interest in them stems from both my personal connection to the line and a deep interest in the Somerset's history: they vied for the throne of England a number of times (and lost), and they were Catholics in the face of the Protestant Reformation and the branch springing from Catherine eventually fled to Sweden where they married into the bloodline of the notorious Joran Person Tegel. I have maintained a personal archive gathered in Sweden, of historic articles, family trees, and letters from these trips and hopefully in the future, I will write a book on the subject.

For most of my specializations on Wikipedia I have conducted personal interviews with primary and secondary sources, and in many cases I have been there and worked in those fields myself during the periods that I am chronicling. I am passionate about both the accuracy and the thoroughness of my work, making an extra effort to include those important figures that have been for one reason or another left out. My "handle" is TheWriteGuy2 - and I contribute to a number of sites under this name. --TheWriteGuy2 (talk) 20:27, 19 August 2012 (UTC)