Stan Zack photograph of Robert Panara and other performers

Stan Zack is a photographer and retired pharmacist born in Brooklyn, NY. He is a member of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at RIT, a reporter and photographer for the Osher News and Events newsletter, and a member of The Photographic Historical Society of Webster, NY. His wife Elaine Zack also attends the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and contributes to the Osher News and Events newsletter as a reporter. Their daughter, Paula Zack, is a computer technician at NTID and writer for RIT's University News publication.

Robert Panara (1920-2014) was a scholar in the field of deaf studies, a writer and poet, and a professor at institutions including Gallaudet University in Washington and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, NY. In the 1960s, he helped found the Connecticut-based National Theatre of the Deaf, where he helped translate into sign language Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Hamlet and Othello, among other dramatic works. Panara retired from NTID in 1987, and is credited with helping to compile the book The Silent Muse: An Anthology of Prose and Poetry by the Deaf (1960).