Christopher Vened is originally from Poland where he had an illustrious career as an actor in an internationally renowned theatre company, the Wroclaw Pantomime Theatre of Henryk Tomaszewski. When martial law was declared in Poland in the end of 1981, Christopher defected to the West for political reasons. First, he stayed in West Berlin, where he worked in Transformtheater and founded his own company, Impuls. Then, in 1984, he permanently moved to the USA, where he rebuilt his career teaching acting, choreographing, directing, and writing plays. He wrote the acting book, In Character: An Actor's Workbook for Character Development, which is published by Heinemann Drama since 2000. His writing credits include a one-man show Human Identity; a play Infidel; and A Theatrical Memoir: An Interview with Myself. Recently, he wrote The Theater Manifesto of an Old Man, where he talks about his own philosophy of theatre. He leans towards the theater of meaning, and believes that in modern, postmodern culture, meaning has been relativized, or distorted, or lost, and needs to be restored or rediscovered. His most delightful project was the theatre production of Three Stories, which consists of three plays based on classical fairy tales: The Emperor's New Clothes, The Maiden Without Hands, and Psyche. He was commissioned to write the plays by the Acting Conservatory of OCSA, where he also directed their premieres.