Gifford Elliott
Besides serving as Co-Producer, and/or Technical Manager for many of Knowledge Workings Theater’s plays and video projects since 2018, Gifford has played many other parts in the productions that informed his co-authoring of 13 Ways of Looking at Self-Producing: maker of publicity Instagram reels, mover of massive sets, magician with sound design, and mender of props. He directed KWT’s Scenes from Alms films and is directing Retrospective as part of the Broadway Bound Theatre Festival at AMT Theatre in August 2025.
Besides this wide and wizardly work, Giff served in recent years as a post-production coordinator on such hit series as Bupkis (the Pete Davidson comedy), The Best Man — The Final Chapters, Queens Gambit, and Divorce (Season 3). Prior to those assignments, he was a manager at LightIron, one of the premier firms in the movie and television industry specializing in post-production workflows. A graduate of the Cal Arts acting program, Gifford is also a director of a variety of theatrical events including Srivia, the weekly fun trivia extravaganza at Singers in Brooklyn.
T.J. Elliott
T.J. Elliott co-wrote 2019’s Alms with Joe Queenan, which was staged Off-Broadway at TheaterLab in NYC. That production ended T.J.’s 35-year hiatus from Off-Broadway. In those lost years, he produced, directed, and performed among casts of thousands in a mélange of corporate telenovelas and tragic, comic, melodramatic, and semi-absurd organizational performance art.
In 2020, T.J. directed live on Zoom the dark comedy, Grudges, also co-written with Queenan —In November 2020, he directed Within The Context of No Context celebrating the 40th anniversary of that momentous New Yorker essay by the late George W.S. Trow. In December 2020, Knowledge Workings Theater premiered also on Zoom his solo mostly fake Swedish screwball comedy Keeping Right. Returning to live in-person theater in November 2021, Genealogy by Queenan and Elliott premiered in Madison Wisconsin at Broom Street Theater. T.J. then directed another Queenan co-authored play, The Oracle, at Theater for the New City in May 2022. Elliott’s then write and directed Off-Broadway The Jester’s Wife, September 2023 at The Chain Theater and HONOR at The Gene Frankel Theatre.
Earlier stage-works included Lazy Eye at Warren Robertson’s Studio Theatre (1982 and 1983) , and two Off-Off Broadway runs of the Captive Audiences revues (1981 and 1982). He also appeared regionally as an actor in The Devil’s Disciple (Reverend Anthony Anderson), Sexual Perversity in Chicago (Bernie), and The Dumbwaiter (Ben). In the early 1980s, T.J. studied with Alan Brody, Terry Schreiber, and Jill Andre.
Born in the Bronx, T.J. now lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife, Marjorie Phillips Elliott, with whom he co-founded Knowledge Workings Theater He also writes the Substack Testing: A Personal History
