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CO L UM B IA UNI VERS I T Y S CHOO L OF TH E ARTS
T H E AT R E A R T S
M FA P R O G R A M FA C U LT Y L I S T
DANIEL ADAMIAN (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is the general manager and counsel of Jujamcyn
Theaters, the owner and operator of five Broadway theatres, namely, the St. James, Al Hirschfeld,
Eugene O’Neill, Virginia/August Wilson, and Walter Kerr theatres. Prior to joining Jujamcyn, he
worked with the prolific Broadway producing team of Barry and Fran Weissler and with the late great
Broadway general manager Marvin A. Krauss. Adamian is a graduate of Harvard College and holds
both a J.D. and an M.B.A. from Boston University. He has taught at the New York University Tisch
School of the Arts and in the apprentice program of the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and
Managers (ATPAM). He is a member of ATPAM, the American Bar Association, the New York Bar
Association, the Massachusetts Bar Association and the League of American Theaters and
Producers, currently serving on its Board of Governors, as well as its Labor and Marketing
Committees. Adamian is also on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Armenian
Studies and Research.
ARNOLD ARONSON (Chair, Professor) is a theatre historian and has taught at Columbia since
1991. He is the author of Exhibition on the Stage: Reflections on the 2007 Prague Quadrennial; Looking
into the Abyss: Essays on Scenography (2005); American Avant-Garde Theatre: A History (2001);
Architect of Dreams: The Theatrical Vision of Joseph Urban (2001); American Set Design (1985); and The
History and Theory of Environmental Scenography (1981), as well as chapters in several anthologies. In
2007 he served as the first non-Czech General Commissioner of the Prague Quadrennial of Stage
Design and Theatre Architecture. Prof. Aronson served as the editor of Theatre Design & Technology
from 1978 to 1988. His articles have appeared in The Cambridge History of American Theatre,
Cambridge Guide to World Theatre, The Drama Review, American Theatre, Theatre Forum, Theatre
Research International, and the New York Times Book Review, among many others. Prior to coming to
Columbia in 1991, he chaired the theatre departments at Hunter College and the University of
Michigan and has also taught at Cornell University and the University of Virginia.
Prof. Aronson regularly teaches classes in theatre history, as well as seminars in such topics as the
History of Stage Design; the Theory of Comedy; and American Avant-Garde Theatre.
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DAVID AUSTER (Adjunct Assistant Professor) received his BA from the University of Toronto.
Auster has served as associate general manager for 101 Productions, Ltd., since 1999. Assignments
during recent seasons include the Broadway productions of Curtains, Frost/Nixon, Radio Golf, Monty
Python’s Spamalot (also in London, Las Vegas, Australia, and on tour), The History Boys, Fiddler on the
Roof, Noises Off, Topdog/Underdog, and The Real Thing; touring productions of Kiss Me, Kate, Peter Pan,
and Fiddler on the Roof; and the Off-Broadway production of De La Guarda. Prior to joining 101, he
worked as associate general manager to legendary producer/general manager George MacPherson
on the national tours of The Who’s Tommy, Angels in America (Parts I & II), Guys & Dolls, The Secret
Garden, Annie Get Your Gun, and Once on This Island. Company management credits include the
Broadway productions of The Civil War, Triumph of Love, Crazy for You, Red Buttons on Broadway and
the national tours of Carousel and Cats. Auster is a member of the Association of Theatrical Press
Agents and Managers, the League of American Theatres and Producers, and also serves on the
board of The Living Room for Artists, which produces Off-Broadway’s annual Summer Play Festival.
LESLIE AYVAZIAN (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is the author of eight full-length plays and seven
one-act plays. They have been produced at the Intiman Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, Mark
Taper Forum, Trinity Repertory Theatre, Cleveland Playhouse, the Denver Theatre Center, the
Vineyard Theatre, the Manhattan Class Company, the Long Wharf, the American Conservatory
Theatre in San Francisco, City Theatre in Pittsburgh, City Theatre in Miami, the Ensemble Studio
Theatre and others. Several of her plays have been published by Samuel French and Dramatists Play
Service, and have also been included in several anthologies of best plays. Her play Nine Armenians
won the John Gassner/Outer Critics Award for best new play, The Roger L. Stevens Award and
second place for Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Rosemary and I received an honorable mention from
Susan Smith Blackburn, and her one act, Rosemary and Elizabeth was a finalist for the Heideman
Award from the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville. Her short film Every Three Minutes was produced by
Showtime and won a Telly Award. Leslie is co-creator of Voices of Earth with Olympia Dukakis—an
investigation/performance of ancient feminine mythology. She is a member of the Vineyard Theatre
of Artists and the Ensemble Studio Theatre. Her credits as an actress include a recurring role on Law
& Order: SVU.
VICTORIA BAILEY (Adjunct Professor) is executive director of Theatre Development Fund (TDF),
the largest not-for-profit service organization for the performing arts in the country. Previous to this
appointment in 2001, she had a nearly 20-year association with the Manhattan Theatre Club, first as
business manager, then as general manager. While at MTC, Ms. Bailey managed close to 200 plays,
both on and Off Broadway, including the Tony Award-winning Love! Valor! Compassion!; extended
engagements of Sylvia; Lips Together, Teeth Apart; Four Dogs and a Bone; and The Tale of the Allergist’s
Wife. Prior to her employment at MTC, she worked at the Yale Repertory Theatre. Additionally, she
has worked as a consultant for a range of Off-Broadway and regional theatres and has served as a
member of the Executive Board of the League of Off-Broadway Theatres and Producers. Bailey
received a B.A. in history from Yale College.
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ANNE BOGART (Professor; Concentration Head, Directing) is the Artistic Director of the SITI
Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is the recipient of
two Obie Awards, a Bessie Award, a USA Fellowship, a Rockefeller Fellowship, and a Guggenheim
Fellowship. Recent works with SITI include Under Construction; Who Do You Think You Are; Radio
Macbeth; Hotel Cassiopeia; Death and the Ploughman; La Dispute; Score; bobrauschenbergamerica; Room;
War of the Worlds; Cabin Pressure; The Radio Play; Alice’s Adventures; Culture of Desire; Bob; Going,
Going, Gone; Small Lives/Big Dreams; The Medium; Noel Coward’s Hay Fever and Private Lives; August
Strindberg’s Miss Julie; and Charles Mee’s Orestes 2.0. Operas include Nicholas and Alexandra (Los
Angeles Opera), Marina: A Captive Spirit (American Opera Projects), and Lilith and Seven Deadly Sins
(New York City Opera). Bogart is the author of three books: A Director Prepares, The Viewpoints Book
and And Then, You Act.
GIGI BOLT (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is a theatre and musical theatre program and
philanthropy consultant. In 2006-2007, she served as the interim executive director of Theatre
Communications Group. Ms. Bolt was director of theater and musical theater at the National
Endowment for the Arts from 1995-2006. Prior to joining the NEA, she served as director of the
Theater Program at the New York State Council on the Arts. Her tenure at the Council was preceded
by work as an actor including five seasons as a member of the company of the Cleveland Play House.
She serves as the interim board chair of SITI Company and a member of the board of the William
Inge Festival Foundation.
CHRIS BONEAU (Adjunct Professor) Chris Boneau was born in Port Arthur, Texas. He moved to
Gretna, LA (a suburb of New Orleans) and graduated from West Jefferson High School. He attended
Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA and graduated with a BS in Speech Theatre. His
primary interest was acting, though there was no degree or special program at the time, and he
studied with Bill Harbin and Gresdna Doty. Shortly after graduating, Chris taught high school speech
and theatre at Tara High in Baton Rouge (and directed plays for the Drama Club). Chris returned to
LSU in 1980 to begin work on a Master's Degree in Acting (MA) with John Dennis (formerly of the
Mark Taper Forum) and continued to study with Harbin and Doty. Before completing his masters,
Chris accepted an internship in the Public Relations and Marketing Department at Actors Theatre of
Louisville (Kentucky). This subsequently resulted in a staff position and he remained at Actors
Theatre for three years. In 1985, Chris moved to New York and had a handful of freelance jobs-including working for a singing clown, extra work on "The Guiding Light" and PR for a record
company housed in a Manhattan lumber yard--until forming Chris Boneau Public Relations in 1986
(with three employees in a ten by ten space). Chris spent three years working in a Broadway
publicity office with his current business partner, Adrian Bryan-Brown, until he formed Chris Boneau
and Associates and one year later, Boneau/Bryan-Brown in 1991. Chris serves on the Steering
Committee for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, is an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s
Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies, and is on the board of the Atlantic Theater
Company.
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DEBORAH BREVOORT (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is the author of numerous plays and
musicals, including The Women of Lockerbie, which is currently being produced all over the United
States and the world after winning the silver medal in the Onassis competition. Other plays include
Blue Moon over Memphis, a Noh drama about Elvis Presley, The Poetry of Pizza, The Blue-Sky Boys, Into
the Fire, and Signs of Life. She is a two-time winner of the Frederick Loewe Award for Musical Theatre,
first for King Island Christmas, an oratorio written with composer David Friedman, and then for Coyote
Goes Salmon Fishing, with composer Scott Richards. (Deborah wrote the book and lyrics). She also
wrote the book and lyrics for Goodbye My Island, with music by David Friedman. Dramatists Play
Service, Samuel French, Applause Books, and others have published her work. Deborah was one of
the original company members with Perseverance Theatre in Alaska.
CHRISTOPHER BURNEY (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is the associate artistic director of Second
Stage Theatre, where he has also served as the literary manager and dramaturg. He is also the
curator of "Second Stage: Uptown," an annual series of plays by emerging writers. At Second Stage,
he has worked with artists including Edward Albee, Theresa Rebeck, Adam Bock, Rajiv Joseph, Eric
Bogosian, Paul Weitz, Craig Lucas, William Finn, Sam Shepard, Kenneth Lonergan, Martin Sherman,
August Wilson, Michael John LaChiusa, Jo Bonney, Trip Cullman, Gary Hines, Mark Brokaw, and
Kathleen Marshall, among others. Recent productions at Second Stage include Animals Out of Paper,
Next To Normal, Edward Albee's Peter and Jerry, and Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo. Previously, he
worked at Lincoln Center Theater developing musicals including Hello Again, Chronicle of a Death
Foretold, Carousel, and Violet. He worked on the inaugural season of Encores at City Center, helping to
produce concert versions of Fiorello and Allegro. He served as the New York theatrical consultant for
Dreamworks, SKG. He has consulted with various foundations including the Philadelphia Theatre
Initiative, the Kesselring Prize, the Kurt Weill Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the
Playwrights Center/Jerome Fellowship. In addition to his work in theatre, he has taught at Barnard
College and Columbia University, and lectured at New York University, Bard College and The Boston
School of Music. He holds a BA from Brandeis University and an MFA from Columbia University
School of the Arts.
CAROLYN J. CASSELMAN (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is an attorney in the Entertainment
Department of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, LLP, where she represents a variety of
clients in the media and entertainment industries. Her practice ranges from counseling Broadway
producers and not-for-profit theaters to negotiating license agreements in connection with film, new
media and other entertainment-related ventures. She also assists clients with copyright and
trademark registration and portfolio maintenance. Prior to joining the firm, Carrie served as a law
clerk to the Hon. Frank M. Coffin, United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. She is a
graduate of Stanford University, Columbia Law School and Columbia University School of the Arts.
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STEVEN CHAIKELSON (Associate Professor; Concentration Head, Theatre Management &
Producing) began teaching at Columbia in 1998 and, since 2002, has been serving as the Director of
the Theatre Management and Producing Concentration. In addition to his responsibilities in the
School of the Arts, he is on the faculty and teaches both at Columbia Law School and in the Barnard/
Columbia College Theatre Department. He is also Fellowship Director of the T Fellowship for
Creative Producers, founded by Harold Prince. The first graduate of Columbia University's joint
degree JD/MFA program in Law and Theatre Management, Steven is a member of the New York
State Bar, The Broadway League and The League of Off-Broadway Theatres and Producers. Through
his company, Snug Harbor Productions, Inc., Steven serves as general manager and producer of
productions on and off-Broadway and around the country. General Management credits include the
Broadway productions of Ring of Fire, Elaine Stritch At Liberty (Tony Award), George Gershwin Alone, A
Moon for the Misbegotten, The Price, Death of a Salesman (Tony Award), Freak, Fool Moon (Tony
Award) and Julia Sweeney’s God Said Ha!; the Off-Broadway productions of Slipping, Too Much
Memory, Make Me A Song: The Music of William Finn, Evil Dead The Musical, Bush Is Bad, John Cariani’s
Almost Maine, Oren Safdie’s Private Jokes, Public Places; the tour of Trumbo, starring Brian Dennehy;
regional productions of Art (Chicago), Fully Committed (Los Angeles), The Vagina Monologues (Los
Angeles) and Fool Moon (Washington, DC); and the world premiere of the rock opera Where
Elephants Weep in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. For Walt Disney Theatrical Productions, Steven managed
The Lion King from its out-of-town tryout in Minneapolis through its first year on Broadway. For the
past ten years, Steven has provided business affairs services to New York Stage & Film Company. He
has also advised and provided management services to other not-for-profit theatre organizations,
including the Apollo Theatre Foundation, The Barrow Group and Cambodian Living Arts. For
Columbia University, Steven was Executive Producer of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children at the
Apollo Theatre, in conjunction with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the University of Michigan,
and was general manager of Peter Brook’s North American Premiere of Tierno Bokar. Other producing
credits include Private Jokes, Public Places in New York and London, the Off-Broadway premiere of
Criss Angel Mindfreak, Lee Blessing’s Chesapeake, starring Mark Linn-Baker, and the holiday revue
That Time of the Year. Steven is a co-Author of Theatre Law: Cases and Materials, the first ever law
school textbook specifically devoted to theatre law published by Carolina Academic Press.
NANCY COYNE (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is the CEO of Serino Coyne Inc., the largest
theatrical advertising agency in America, recently acquired by OMNICOM. Currently, she represents
the Broadway and touring productions of Beauty and the Beast, A Chorus Line, Company, Curtains,
Hairspray, Jersey Boys, Legally Blonde, Les Misérables, Mamma Mia!, Mary Poppins, Monty Python’s
Spamalot, Spring Awakening, The Lion King, The Phantom of the Opera, The Producers, The 25th Annual
Putnam County Spelling Bee, Tarzan, Wicked, as well as Lincoln Center Theatre, and American Express
Gold Card Events. Upcoming projects include Spider-Man. In 2004 Ms. Coyne was the recipient of
the Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre.
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JOHN DIAS (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is the Artistic Producer of Altamont Productions in New
York City. He is a Tony Award nominator and panelist for the New York State Council for the Arts and
the Pew Charitable Trusts. He was a producer on the Broadway production of Lisa Kron’s Well. For
twelve years, he worked at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Joseph Papp Public Theater, variously
as Associate Artistic Director, Associate Producer, Literary Director, Director of the Shakespeare Lab,
and Dramaturg. As Associate Artistic Director and Associate Producer, he oversaw all aspects of
play production on the six stages of the Public Theater and the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. As
Literary Director he supervised all play development activities of the four-person literary
department. As Dramaturg, he collaborated on all workshops and productions of Shakespeare’s
plays and other classics, working with directors George C. Wolfe, Mark Wing-Davey, James Lapine,
Karin Coonrod, Mark Brokaw, Leigh Silverman, Andrei Serban, Vanessa Redgrave, Jo Bonney, Brian
Kulick, Doug Hughes, Joe Mantello and Mary Zimmerman, among others. He has commissioned
and/or developed the work of contemporary writers including Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, Han
Ong, Steve Martin, Nilo Cruz, Martin McDonough, Diana Son, Adam Rapp, Suzan-Lori Parks, Jos
Rivera, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Alice Tuan, Richard Greenberg, and Lisa Kron among many others.
Before coming to New York, John was on the artistic staff at the Hartford Stage Company where, as
Dramaturg, he contributed to the development of new plays and collaborated with many directors on
productions of Shakespeare and other classics. He has directed and consulted for New Dramatists,
New York University Tisch School of the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York
State Council for the Arts, the Connecticut Commission for the Arts, the Hartford Arts Council, and
the Drama League of New York; and taught playwrights, dramaturgs and actors at New York
University, Yale University, Columbia University, and the Public Theater’s Shakespeare Lab. He holds
bachelor degrees in biology and theater from George Washington University in Washington, DC and
a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
PETER ENTIN (Adjunct Associate Professor) currently serves as Vice President, Theatre
Operations for The Shubert Organization, where he has worked for 35 years. In that position, he
supervises the operation of 20 theatres in New York, Washington, and Philadelphia and is involved
with booking, contracting, labor relations, ticketing, technical production, and facilities. He is a
member of the Executive Committee of The Broadway League and also serves on its Labor, and Intraindustry committees. He has taught theatre management at the Columbia University School of the
Arts and The New School. At the beginning of his career, he was General Manager of The New York
Pro Musica Antiqua, a medieval and renaissance music and theatre group. He received his A.B.,
Cornell University, and his M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama.
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JOHN ERMAN (Adjunct Assistant Professor) was born in Chicago and raised in Southern
California. He became a Theater Arts Major at UCLA and, after acting for five years, channeled his
energies into casting. At 24 he became Head of Television Casting at 20th Century Fox. The turning
point in his career came when he was asked to direct the first Off-Broadway production of One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at the Player's Ring Theater in West Hollywood. It was while directing
television comedies such as My Favorite Martian and That Girl that he was hired to direct the series
Peyton Place. John then went on to direct Marcus Welby, M.D. Next came Green Eyes, a film which
starred Paul Winfield and Rita Tushingham. This earned him the Humanitas Prize and the
opportunity to direct Roots, for which he won an Emmy nomination as Best Director, and the first of
his Director's Guild Awards. Who Will Love My Children, starring Ann-Margret, earned him an Emmy
for Best Director as well as the first of his Christopher Awards and also won its star a Golden Globe
together with an Emmy nomination. After that, the two went on to do many more films together,
including A Streetcar Named Desire, which won him yet another Emmy nomination as Best Director
and Ann-Margret another Golden Globe; The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, which was nominated for an Emmy
in the Best Picture category; Our Sons, his second movie tackling AIDS, in which Ann-Margret's costars were Julie Andrews and Hugh Grant; Queen, with Halle Berry and Danny Glover; and Scarlett, an
8 hour mini-series for CBS. An Early Frost with Gena Rowlands and Sylvia Sidney won John his second
Director's Guild Award and his fourth Emmy nomination for Best Director. It also received an Emmy
nomination for Best Picture. The Attic, which was also nominated for an Emmy as Best Picture,
earned its director the Peabody Award, together with his second Christopher Award. Since then,
John Erman has gone on to direct Bernadette Peters in David; Bette Midler and John Goodman in
Stella; Mary Tyler Moore and Bernadette Peters in The Last Best Year; Tyne Daly in The Last To Go; and
Louis Gossett Jr. and Bruce Dern in Carolina Skeletons. He directed Joanne Woodward and James
Garner in the Hallmark Hall of Fame adaption of Anne Tyler's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Breathing
Lessons, and recently, also for Hallmark, The Boys Next Door with Nathan Lane, Mare Winningham
and Tony Goldwyn. In recent seasons, he has done 3 mini-series for CBS. Mr. Erman completed his
fourth film for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, The Blackwater Lightship. It stars Angela Lansbury and
Dianne Wiest. He also teaches in the film departments of Columbia University and at Fordham.
ROBERT FRIED (Adjunct Assistant Professor) A certified public accountant (New York, 1986) who
received his B.A. at City University of New York in 1984, Robert Fried is a founding partner of Fried
and Kowgios Partners CPA’s LLP. He is responsible for running the firm’s practice in accounting and
tax services for Broadway, Off-Broadway, touring theatrical, and live musical and dramatic
presentations. He has provided accounting services to hundreds of theatrical productions, both in
the United States and abroad. In addition to his work within the theatrical industry, Fried renders a
full range of accounting services to numerous not-for-profit performing and presenting arts
organizations. Fried is a frequent speaker on tax planning issues for performing arts and other
entertainment organizations. He serves as a trustee of TDF and is a member of the AICPA, the
NYSSCPA, New York State Society Tax Division, and an affiliate member of the League of American
Theatres and Producers.
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SUE FROST (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is a founding member of Junkyard Dog Productions
(with Randy Adams and Kenny and Marleen Alhadeff) which is dedicated to developing and
producing new musicals. Current projects include Memphis, by Joe DiPietro and David Bryan, which
opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre October 19, 2009 and won the 2010 Tony®, Drama
Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Musical. Since its inception in 2006 Junkyard Dog
has also produced Vanities, A New Musical, off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre in New York
(summer 2009) and Pasadena Playhouse (summer 2008), Make Me A Song, The Music of William
Finn (Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk noms.) Off-Broadway at New World Stages and New Players
Theatre in London, and Party Come Here by David Kirshenbaum and Daniel Goldfarb at NYMF and
The Williamstown Theatre Festival. Sue was the Associate Producer at Goodspeed Musicals for 20
years, where she produced more than 50 new musicals at both the Goodspeed Opera House and the
Norma Terris Theatre. She is proud to have established, in conjunction with the NYU Graduate
Musical Theatre Writing Program, an annual residency for composers, lyricists and librettists at the
Goodspeed as well as the pilot program for Goodspeed’s Musical Theatre Institute. Prior to
Goodspeed she worked as a company manager on several Broadway shows and tours including A
Chorus Line, Dancin’ and The Rink. In addition to chairing two New American Works panels for the
late Opera-Music Theatre Program of the National Endowment for the Arts, Sue has served as a
panelist and/or site evaluator for the NEA, the Philadelphia Theatre Institute, the Connecticut
Commission for the Arts and Tourism, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the TCG/Pew
National Theatre Artist Residency Program. Sue lectures regularly at Yale University and is a
member of adjunct faculty at Columbia University. A graduate of Smith College, Sue is past
president of the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, and recently served as a Tony nominator.
BERNARD GERSTEN (Adjunct Professor) has been the Executive Producer of Lincoln Center Theater
since its reestablishment in 1985. Notable among LCT’s 114 productions have been Tom Stoppard’s
The Coast of Utopia, Dying City, A Clean House, The Light in the Piazza, Henry IV, Dessa Rose, The
Invention of Love, Contact, The Sisters Rosensweig, A Delicate Balance, Racing Demon, Arcadia, The
Heiress, Anything Goes, Sarafina!, Speed the Plow, The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation,
Carousel, andTwelfth Night. He was the producer of the NBC documentary film Voices of Sarafina! and
Executive Producer of Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart and Abel Gance’s Napoleon. From
1960 to 1972, he was associate producer of the New York Shakespeare Festival. Notable productions
of the NYSF included Hair, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much Ado About Nothing, and A Chorus Line.
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BARRY GROVE (Adjunct Professor) is in his 32nd year as the Executive Producer of the Manhattan
Theatre Club, where, in partnership with Artistic Director Lynne Meadow, he has produced over 380
American and World Premieres. Since its founding in 1970, MTC productions have earned sixteen
Tony Awards, five Pulitzer Prizes, forty-five Obie Awards, and twenty-nine Drama Desk Awards, as
well as numerous Outer Critics Circle, Theatre World Awards and, in 2001, the prestigious Jujamcyn
Award. Among the numerous plays developed at MTC are Doubt; The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife;
Proof; Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune; Ain’t Misbehavin’; Crimes of the Heart; and The Piano
Lesson. Mr. Grove, a member of the Tony Administration Committee, the League of American
Theatres and Producers Board of Governors and the Equity-League Pension and Health Trust Funds,
has served as President of the Off-Broadway League and the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New
York, as Treasurer of TCG, and as a Board Member of BC/EFA. He served on numerous panels,
including a term as Chairman of the theatre panel for both the NEA and the NYSCA. He received the
2000 Edith Oliver Award for sustained Excellence Off-Broadway, the Arts and Business Council’s
1997 Arts Management Excellence Award, and a citation from the New York City Council, which
declared June 4, 1990, “Barry Grove Day.” A Dartmouth graduate, he is a past Chairman of the Board
of Overseers of the Hopkins Center/Hood Museum of Art.
ANDREA HARING (Lecturer). A director, actress and voice teacher, Andrea Haring is the associate
director of The Linklater Center for Voice and Language and the coordinator for Linklater Teacher
Training. Haring is currently on faculty at Columbia University School of the Arts, Circle in the Square
Theatre School, and Fordham University. She previously taught at Yale School of Drama, The New
Actor's Workshop, New York University Tisch Undergraduate Drama, and Dartmouth College. She
regularly teaches at theater schools and companies in Spain, Italy, Finland, Germany and Iceland. As
vocal coach and member of The LAByrinth Theater Company, Haring has worked on The Little Flower
of East Orange, Jack Goes Boating, School of the Americas, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Our Lady of
121st Street, Jesus Hopped the "A" Train, and Guinea Pig Solo. Haring coaches extensively on and offBroadway, including for Reasons To Be Pretty, Suddenly Last Summer, and Bridge and Tunnel.
ROY HARRIS (Adjunct Assistant Professor) Broadway credits include: Rabbit Hole, After the Night
and the Music, Brooklyn Boy, Sight Unseen, The Retreat from Moscow, Morning’s at Seven, Wendy
Wasserstein’s An American Daughter and The Sisters Rosensweig, and O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness!, all
directed by Daniel Sullivan and the last four produced by Lincoln Center Theater; Twelve Angry Men
directed by Scott Ellis and An Almost Holy Picture directed by Michael Mayer (Roundabout); A Moon
for the Misbegotten and The Heidi Chronicles. Off-Broadway credits include: Gurney’s Sylvia and
Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain (MTC); Wendy Wasserstein’s Third, Jon Robin Baitz’s Ten Unknowns
(LCT); and many more. Author of Conversations in the Wings, Eight Women of the American Stage, and
most recently More Recipes & Reminiscence, a Celebration of My Friends in the Theatre.
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ALLI HOUSEWORTH (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is the Director of Marketing and
Communications at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC. A graduate of
Columbia University’s Masters Degree program in Producing and Theatre Management, Alli spent
five years in New York City where she worked in several press and advertising agencies, including
Dodger Theatricals where she conceived of the Jersey Boys mobile rush program, managed the Jersey
Boys Facebook Page, and developed the social media communications strategy for the Broadway
production. Alli is the founder of the TDF-run TKTS Patron Service Representative Program, and in
2009 Alli presented a session at the Theatre Communications Group conference called “Can a Ping
Feed a Blog to a Tweet?”, a hands-on lesson on how to effectively use social media to engage and
build audiences.
HUGH HYSELL (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is president of HHC Marketing, an integrated
marketing and promotions company specializing in “Live Culture” and Broadway marketing. HHC’s
current and prior clients include Monty Python’s Spamalot, Jersey Boys, The History Boys, Lt. of
Inishmore, Altar Boyz, Chicago, The Phantom of the Opera, The Pillowman, Xanadu, Drumstruck, Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Les Misérables, Democracy, Jumpers, The Boy from Oz, The Royal Shakespeare
Company, Lincoln Center’s American Songbook, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Year With Frog and Toad,
Zanna Don’t, Miss Saigon, Smokey Joe’s Café, Sound of Music, Oklahoma!, Matt & Ben, Joy, Naked Boys
Singing, and Death of a Salesman. Non-theatrical clients include TNT’s miniseries Nightmares and
Dreamscapes, fashion designer Gianluca Isaia, BroadwayBox.com, Hotnycdeals.com,
BroadwayInsider.com, TheMenEvent.com, and Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market. Hysell also serves on the
marketing advisory boards of the Times Square Alliance, and the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus.
www.HHCMarketing.com
JESSICA R. JENEN (Adjunct Assistant Professor) has been the Executive Director of Classic Stage
Company (CSC) for the past five years. Producing credits at CSC include Chekhov's Uncle Vanya
starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Denis O'Hare, and Peter Sarsgaard, directed by Austin Pendleton; The
Seagull starring Dianne Wiest and Alan Cumming; David Ives' New Jerusalem, directed by Walter
Bobbie; Yasmina Reza's A Spanish Play, directed by John Turturro, starring Zoe Caldwell; and Hamlet,
Richard II and Richard III starring Michael Cumpsty and The Tempest starring Mandy Patinkin, all
directed by Brian Kulick. In 2008 Ms. Jenen produced the sold out concert "Mandy Patinkin on
Broadway" at the Schoenfeld Theatre, as a fundraising benefit for CSC. She worked as Associate
General Manager at Jujamcyn Theaters, overseeing Nine at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre starring
Antonio Banderas. General Manager: the original Off-Broadway (Zipper Theatre) and Chicago
(Lakeshore Theater) productions of Betty Rules; among other projects. Broadway management
credits include: Smokey Joe's Café, Swing! and Jane Eyre. Jessica is proud to have worked with the late
impresario Alexander H. Cohen on the productions of Sacrilege, Chinese Coffee, Salome with Al
Pacino, Comedy Tonight starring Joy Behar, and on various benefits and television specials. She
received a B.A. from Brandeis University and an M.F.A. in Theatre Management from Columbia
University's School of the Arts, where she currently serves as Adjunct Assistant Professor.
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AMY KAISSAR (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is the Managing Director of the Bristol Riverside
Theatre in Bristol, PA. She recently joined BRT from The Foundry Theatre in New York City where she
produced such shows as last season's Telephone and The Provenance of Beauty. Kaissar was the CoFounder of the Epiphany Theater Company, a company dedicated to supporting the work of early
career theatre artists in New York City. She holds a B.F.A. in Directing from Carnegie Mellon
University and an M.F.A. in Theatre Management from Columbia University.
TOM KELLY (Adjunct Assistant Professor) has been a professional stage manager for more than
thirty years, calling shows on Broadway and at Lincoln Center, at the Lyric Opera in Chicago and at
the Houston Grand Opera, at the New York City and Milwaukee ballets, and at major media and
cultural events around the country. He is the General/Production Manager for Center Line Studios, a
production services company, and teaches stage management at Rutgers University and Columbia
University. He lives in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.
RUTH KRESHKA (Director of Production and Concentration Head, Stage Management) has
helped bring the words and works of Sam Shepard, Joseph Chaikin, Eugene Lee, Beth Henley, George
Walker, John Patrick Shanley, David Henry Hwang, Reinaldo Povod, Adrian Hall, Truman Capote,
Samuel Beckett and many others to the New York community. Since 1998, she has served as Director
of Production for the Theatre Arts Program and Columbia Stages.
BRIAN KULICK (Associate Professor) is Artistic Director of Classic Stage Company where he has
directed Richard II, Hamlet, The False Servant, The Mysteries and Amphityron. He has also been
instrumental in bringing other companies to CSC and has presented Big Dance Theatre’s production
of Antigone, SITI Company’s production of Death and the Ploughman and Target Margin’s two-part
production of Faust. From 1996 to 2001 he was the Artistic Associate at The Public Theater, and
from 1993 to 1996 he was associate artistic director for Trinity Repertory Theatre. He has directed
premieres of noted playwrights such as Tony Kushner, Charles Mee, Nilo Cruz, Han Ong and David
Grimm, as well as developed new work at The Sundance Institute and The Playwrights Center in
Minnesota. Awards include the National Endowment for the Arts/Theater Communications Group
Directing Fellowship, a Pew Residency Grant, and a Princess Grace Fellowship.
PETER LAWRENCE (Adjunct Assistant Professor) has been Associate Director or Production
Supervisor for Shrek, Spamalot, Sunset Boulevard and for the Broadway revivals of Gypsy, Annie Get
Your Gun and Man of La Mancha. Mr. Lawrence was the Executive Producer for Miss Saigon and Les
Miserables, and has directed or re-staged the U.S. Tours of Spamalot, Social Security, Broadway Bound,
Rumors, Lost in Yonkers, Sunset Boulevard, Spamalot London, and the Asian tour of Miss Saigon. He has
originated twenty Broadway productions as Production Stage Manager, and has taught in the Drama
Departments of Transylvania College, The University of Hawaii and Columbia University.
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GIDEON LESTER (Assistant Professor) directs the new Arts Collaboration Lab at Columbia
University’s School of the Arts, where he teaches interdisciplinary courses on adaptation and project
development. As a curator, dramaturg, and artistic director he has collaborated with leading
American and international artists including Neil Bartlett, Chen Shi-Zheng, Martha Clarke, Rinde
Eckert, Krystian Lupa, Peter Sellars, Anna Deavere Smith, Robert Woodruff, Anne Washburn, and
The Dresden Dolls. He worked at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts
from 1997 to 2009, as Resident Dramaturg, Associate Artistic Director, and for three seasons as
Acting Artistic Director. His work has been presented at theatres and festivals throughout the world
including Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Edinburgh International Festival, Toneelgroep Amsterdam,
Festival d’Automne, and the Taipei Arts Festival. Gideon’s numerous translations include plays by
Marivaux, Büchner, and Brecht, and his stage adaptations include Kafka’s Amerika and Wenders’
Wings of Desire. He directed the MFA program in Dramaturgy at the A.R.T./Moscow Art Theatre
Institute for Advanced Theatre Training, and taught playwriting, dramaturgy, and dramatic arts at
Harvard University. He studied English Literature at Oxford University and Dramaturgy at Harvard,
where he was a Fulbright and Frank Knox Scholar.
PAUL LIBIN (Adjunct Professor) received his BFA from Columbia in 1956. During the past 50 years
he has produced and managed more than 250 productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway and on Tour.
From 1958 to 1988 he was president of the League of Off-Broadway Theaters and Producers. Mr.
Libin served as producing director of Circle in the Square Theatre from 1963 to 1995, and today with
Theodore Mann, is co-owner of Circle in the Square Theatre and president of Circle in the Square
Theatre School. He is the winner of seven Tony Awards. Currently, he is executive officer of the
League of American Theatres and Producers. He is a member of the Tony Award Management and
Administration Committees, a trustee of the Actors’ Equity League Pension Fund, president of
Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and trustee of The Actors’ Fund. In 2003 he was awarded the
Eugene O’Neill Medallion and in 2004 he received the Eugene O’Neill Foundation Tao House Award,
both for having produced twelve Eugene O’Neill plays. At present he is vice president, producing
director and part owner of Jujamcyn Theatres.
KRISTIN LINKLATER (Professor) trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. She
was the Master Teacher of Voice at New York University from 1965 to 1977, while also working with
the Open Theater; the Negro Ensemble Company, Stratford, Ontario; the Guthrie Theatre; and
Broadway shows. She was cofounder of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts, in 1977.
She has received major grants from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Mellon
Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is also a 1981 Guggenheim Fellow and a
lecturer, writer, and actor, playing the title role in King Lear, produced by The Company of Women,
her all-women Shakespeare company co-directed with Carol Gilligan. She is the author of Freeing the
Natural Voice (1976)—the revised and expanded edition of which was published in 2006—and
Freeing Shakespeare's Voice (1992). She taught at Emerson College in Boston from 1991 to 1997.
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RAYMOND MENARD (Adjunct Assistant Professor) attended the New England Conservatory of
Music, Rutgers University and received a B.F.A. from the Pratt Institute. Early in his career he worked
as a Music Supervisor for NBC, on the staff of the Sarasota Opera and the Washington Opera and as
Staff Director and later, Artistic Administrator for the New York City Opera where he received the
Julius Rudel Award. Since 1987 he has been employed as Stage Manager with the Metropolitan
Opera and now holds the title of Production Stage Manager. Ray has helped shepherd projects to
the opera stage directed by Franco Zeffirelli, Hal Prince, Jack O’Brien, Frank Corsaro, Andrei Serban,
Bart Sher, Robert Lepage and John Dexter among others. Among the noted conductors with whom
Ray has worked are James Levine, Valery Gergiev, Colin Davis, Seiji Ozawa, Herbert von Karajan,
Pierre Boulez and Carlos Kleiber.
ANSON MOUNT (Adjunct Assistant Professor) Anson Mount received his BA from the University
of the South (1995) and his MFA from Columbia University (1998). He began his professional career
at Manhattan Theater Club playing the leading role in Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi for which he
was honored by The Drama League in 1998. Shortly after this, Anson made his feature film debut in
the starring role as “Tully Coats” in the independent film Tully, for which he received critical praise. The film itself won several Film Festival awards as well as several nominations for Independent Spirit
Awards, including Best Picture. Following his debut, Mount was next seen starring opposite Britney
Spears in Paramount Pictures Crossroads, followed closely by his opportunity to act opposite Robert
DeNiro in the Warner Bros. film City By the Sea, directed by Michael Caton-Jones. His other film
credits include the independent film Poolhall Junkies opposite Christopher Walken, Curtis Hanson’s In
Her Shoes, and Urban Legends: Final Cut for Columbia Pictures. He also co-starred in the Miramax film
Battle of Shaker Heights as seen on the HBO series Project Greenlight. Recently, Anson produced and
starred in an independent film called Cook County which has earned awards at several major film
festivals including South By Southwest, Hollywood, AFI Dallas, Nashville, and others. Anson also just
completed shooting three independent features: Burning Palms with Dylon McDermott and Zoe
Saldana; Last Night starring Keira Knightley; and the Screen Gems feature Straw Dogs directed by Rod
Lurie and starring Kate Bosworth and James Woods. Mount’s television credits include series
regular roles on Conviction for NBC and Line of Fire for ABC (also directed by Rod Lurie). Although
Mount is best known for his film work, he continues to build his theatre career, most recently with
The New Group and their production of Mourning Becomes Electra directed by Scott Elliot. He also
performed opposite Alan Cumming and Steven Spinella in the first English-speaking production of
Jean Genet’s Elle. He is a member of the Actors Centre Workshop Company. 13
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CHUCK MEE (Professor; Concentration Head, Playwriting) has written Big Love, True Love and First
Love; bobrauschenbergamerica and Hotel Cassiopeia; Orestes 2.0 and Trojan Women: A Love Story; and
Summertime and Wintertime, among other plays—all of them available on the Internet at
www.charlesmee.org and as a free iPhone app. His plays have been performed at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music, American Repertory Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, the Public Theatre,
Lincoln Center, the Humana Festival, Steppenwolf, and other places in the United States as well as in
Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Brussels, Vienna, Istanbul and elsewhere. Among other awards, he
is the recipient of the gold medal for lifetime achievement in drama from the American Academy of
Arts and Letters, and of the Richard B. Fisher Award. He is also the author of a number of books of
history, and the former editor-in-chief of Horizon magazine, a magazine of history, art, literature, and
the fine arts. His work is made possible by the support of Jeanne Donovan Fisher and Richard B.
Fisher.
IRA MONT (Adjunct Assistant Professor) has been stage-managing since 1987. His other
Broadway credits include the entire run of The Producers, Young Frankenstein, Jesus Christ Superstar,
Smokey Joe’s, The Sound of Music, Beauty & the Beast, Sacrilege, Love! Valour! Compassion! and CyranoThe Musical. His national tours include M. Butterfly, Catskills on Broadway, Fame-The Musical (the first
time), MOMIX, and the Boys Choir of Harlem. He has stage managed Off-Broadway at MTC,
Playwrights Horizons, and Vineyard; regionally at Pittsburgh Public, Cambridge Theatre Company,
Theater Factory St. Louis, and Westport, Cape, and Ogunquit Playhouses. Mont has directed Full
Gallop at the Philadelphia Theatre Company, been the production consultant for The Sound of Music
in Australia, and was production supervisor for MCC for seven years. In addition to being a vice
president of BC/EFA, he has served as chair of the Stage Managers’ Association. Mont has been a
councilor of AEA since 1996 and is currently third vice president (office held by a stage manager).
He is a native of Brooklyn, New York, where he still lives with his wife, Jill Cordle (also a Broadway
stage manager), 10-year-old daughter, and 6-year-old son. He has appeared on HBO’s Curb Your
Enthusiasm and he made his feature film debut in The Producers, the Mel Brooks movie musical.
GREGORY MOSHER (Professor) has directed and produced nearly 200 stage productions at
Lincoln Center and the Goodman Theatre, on and off Broadway, at the Royal National Theatre and in
London’s West End. Among these are John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of
Separation, David Rabe’s Hurly-Burly, the South African township musical Sarafina!, Richard Nelson’s
musical adaptation of James Joyce’s The Dead, David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, and John
Leguizamo’s Freak. Mosher’s collaboration with Mamet began with American Buffalo in 1975 and
continued for over two decades and more than twenty works. He has produced or directed new work
by such theatre artists as Samuel Beckett, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Leonard Bernstein,
Jerome Robbins, Elaine May, Spalding Gray, and Nobel Prize–winners Wole Soyinka and Derek
Walcott. He has received every major American theatre award, including two Tonys. He has directed
the Columbia University Arts Initiative since its inception in 2004; in addition to creating its ongoing
programming, he orchestrated the special residencies of both Václav Havel and director Peter Brook
at Columbia.
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MICHAEL NAUMANN (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is the Finance Director for Richard Frankel
Productions (RFP). RFP produces and general manages plays and musicals and acts as general
manager and/or executive producer for other producers. Some of RFP’s current productions include
Burn the Floor, Rock of Ages, and Stomp. Prior to joining RFP, Michael was the Director of Finance and
Administration for the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) for 20 years. As Director of Finance, he was
responsible for all accounting, budgeting, and financial reporting of the theatre’s $18 million budget.
He has been teaching budgeting and cash flow workshops for the Alliance of Resident Theatres/
New York since 1995 and has been a financial consultant for the New Professional Theatre, a
company dedicated to promoting new African-American playwrights. Prior to joining the MTC staff,
Mike worked in the box office of Pepsico Summerfare and served as the business manager for
Sander Gossard and Associates, a Broadway set construction company. He has sung in Carnegie
Hall (with about 150 others) with the Oratorio Society of New York and continues to sing with the
First Presbyterian Church of Stamford.
QUI NGUYEN (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is originally from Arkansas and is now a Brooklynbased writer and fight director. His scripts include the critically acclaimed Vampire Cowboys
productions of Fight Girl Battle World; Men of Steel (published by Broadway Play Publishing); Living
Dead in Denmark; Stained Glass Ugly; A Beginner’s Guide to Deicide; Vampire Cowboy Trilogy (published
in Plays And Playwrights 2005); and the upcoming Soul Samurai. Other scripts include Bike Wreck
(Youngblood; Metropolitan Playhouse) and the Off-Broadway production of Trial By Water directed
by John Gould Rubin (Ma-Yi Theater/Queens Theatre in the Park; published in Savage Stage). Qui is
an Advanced Actor/Combatant with the Society of American Fight Directors and has worked as an
instructor & fight director for such places as LAByrinth Theater, Ma-Yi Theater, Ensemble Studio
Theatre, The Public, HERE Arts Center, Partial Comfort Productions, The Brick, Nosedive
Productions, Katharsis Theater, City Lights Youth Theatre, and The Rabid Vamps Fight Studio.
Honors include The New Dramatists Playwriting Fellowship, NYTheatre.com’s 2004 People of the
Year, nomination as Best Choreographer by the 2007 & 2005 NY Innovative Theatre Awards, and
featured as a “Playwright to Watch” by Time Out New York. He is a co-director of the Ma-Yi Writers
Lab and an alumnus of Youngblood.
EUGENE O’DONOVAN (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is the president of Aurora Productions in
New York City. Aurora is a production management company for the entertainment industry. Recent
projects include Shrek, Rock and Roll, 39 Steps, Spamalot (Broadway, Tour, London, Las Vegas,
Australia), Doubt (Broadway, Tour), Frost/Nixon, Year of Magical Thinking, and Deuce. Over the past
thirteen years, Gene has been the production manager for more than 100 Broadway productions and
associated tours as well as numerous Off-Broadway and corporate theatre events. He was the
founder and president of Hudson Scenic Studio.
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BARNEY O’HANLON (Adjunct Assistant Professor) has been collaborating with Anne Bogart since
1986. As a member of SITI Company, he has performed nationally and internationally with
productions of Hotel Cassiopeia, Intimations for Saxophone, Midsummer Night’s Dream, La Dispute,
Hayfever, bobrauschenbergamerica, War of the Worlds, War of the Worlds—the Radio Play, Cabin
Pressure, Culture of Desire and Small Lives/Big Dreams. He most recently directed and choreographed
the world premiere of Systems/Layers, a dance-theatre collaboration with SITI Company and
Kentucky-based band Rachel’s. He has also choreographed and appeared in the world premiere of
Nicholas and Alexandra with Placido Domingo at Los Angeles Opera, and Lilith and The Seven Deadly
Sins at New York City Opera, as well as additional Bogart productions at the Alley Theatre, Trinity
Repertory, River Arts Repertory, and Opera/Omaha. Other regional credits include Tina Landau’s
1969 for the Humana Festival at ATL, Stonewall for En Garde Arts, Deadly Virtues and Hamlet, also for
ATL, and Jon Robin Baitz’s A Fair Country for Steppenwolf. His choreography has appeared at BAM’s
Harvey Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, New York City Opera, Los Angeles Opera, and the
Prince Music Theatre.
CHRISTIAN PARKER (Assistant Professor and Concentration Head, Dramaturgy) is the Associate
Artistic Director at the HYPERLINK "http://www.atlantictheater.org/"Atlantic Theater Company,
where he has worked since the fall of 2001. Most recently at Atlantic, he directed the world premiere
of Leslie Ayvazian’s Make Me and the New York premiere of Tina Howe’s play Birth and After Birth. He
produced, directed, and acted in 10X20, a festival of newly commissioned ten minute plays by
writers previously produced at Atlantic, to inaugurate their new Stage 2 and celebrate the 20th
anniversary of the company. Also at Atlantic, he directed Ken Weitzman’s Arrangements and Jeff
Whitty’s The Hiding Place. Prior to his tenure at the Atlantic, he spent several seasons as the Literary
Manager at Manhattan Theatre Club. Christian has also produced or dramaturged over fifty
premieres of new American and British plays on, off and off-off Broadway. He is fluent in Russian and
is part of the national artistic advisory board for the CITD New Russian Plays initiative. He has
worked as well with Sundance Theatre Labs, The Lark Play Development Center, Bread Loaf, and at
Perry-Mansfield developing new plays. He holds a BA from Middlebury College and an MFA from
Columbia.
GREGOR PASLAWSKY (Adjunct Assistant Professor) has worked in New York as an actor, teacher
& designer since 1985. He received an MFA in acting from Temple University and has studied at the
Ecole Philippe Gaulier in London. He specializes in teaching acting styles such as Melodrama and
Clown, leading workshops at numerous universities and theater companies. He has taught at
Columbia University School of the Arts, Barnard College, and the University of the Arts in
Philadelphia. He has worked with Peter Brook, Jacques Le Coq, Billie Whitelaw, Priscilla Smith, Anne
Bogart, and Andrei Serban. He has acted with the London Shakespeare Company and at various
regional theaters and New York venues such as Lincoln Center Institute, La Mama, Soho Rep, and
PS122. He also worked with Bill Irwin on the workshop for his Broadway show Largely New York.
Recent acting credits include: The Skin of Our Teeth, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Hot L
Baltimore (Williamstown Theatre Festival); Hotel Universe, Princess Turandot (Blue Light Theatre). His
design work includes The Sadness of Others at LaMama Etc., Bad Science at Dance Theater Workshop,
and If I Were You at The Kitchen with 3-Legged Dog.
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FRANK PUGLIESE (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is a graduate of Cornell University where he won
the Forbes Herman award for playwriting and was artistic director of the Whistling Shrimp Theatre
Co. His plays for the New York stage include Aven’U Boys (Off-Broadway, Obie Award), The King of
Connecticut, The Talk, The Alarm (all with Naked Angels); The Summer Winds (NY Stage and Film);
Hope is the Thing with Feathers (The Drama Dept.). Regional productions include The Talk (One Act
Festival in L.A., New York Stage and Film, Williamstown, Mass.). His screenplays include 29th Street
(for Paramount and produced by Fox); Born to Run (produced by Fox); Dion (based on Dion and the
Belmonts); Infamous (produced by Hart-Sharp); Shot in the Heart (directed by Agnieszka Holland,
produced by Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana); Italian (Greenstreet producing). Directing credits
include Some Voices (by Joe Penhall, with the New Group); Betrayed by Everyone by Kenneth Lonergan
(The Met Theatre, L.A.); Four by Christopher Shinn (Kaufman Theatre); and The Passion Play (by
Pippin Parker, Naked Angels). He also produced and directed the critically acclaimed Hesh (by
Matthew Weiss, Malaparte Theatre Company, Naked Angels). Pugliese won the WGA award for his
work on the television series Homicide. He is a proud member of Naked Angels and Drama Dept. and
co-founder of both The Writer’s Group and The Screenwriter’s Collective. As one of Naked Angels’
former co-artistic directors, he helped develop The Issues Project, Tuesdays @9, and Angels in Progress.
He is a consultant for the Cherry Lane/Alternative Mentor program for young playwrights.
CAROL ROCAMORA (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is a teacher, playwright, translator and critic.
Her three volumes of Anton Chekhov’s complete translated dramatic works have been published by
Smith & Kraus. Her new play, I take your hand in mine...., based on the correspondence of Chekhov
and Olga Knipper, premiered in September 2001 at the Almeida Theatre in London starring Paul
Scofield and Irene Worth, and opened in Paris in October 2003 at Peter Brook’s Théâtre des Bouffes
du Nord, under his direction, starring Michel Piccoli and Natasha Parry. Dr. Rocamora has been the
recipient of the David Payne Carter Award for Teaching in Excellence at the Tisch School of the Arts.
Formerly, she was the founder and artistic director of the Philadelphia Festival Plays at Annenberg
Center. Dr. Rocamora’s biography, Acts of Courage: Václav Havel’s Life in the Theatre, was published in
2005. She has written about theatre for The Nation and the New York Times, and currently
contributes to The Guardian and American Theatre. She has recently completed Rubles, a collection of
original plays inspired by Chekhov’s short stories. She is currently working on a biography of
Chekhov.
WILLIAM RUSSO (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is the managing director of the New York Theatre
Workshop. Prior to that, he was general manager at Playwrights Horizons and associate general
manager at Manhattan Theatre Club. London credits include associate producer on the original
productions of Yasmina Reza’s Art (with Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay and Ken Stott), Kay Mellor’s
A Passionate Woman and Michael Palin’s The Weekend. He is a vice-president of the League of OffBroadway Theatres and Producers. He is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
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ANDREI SERBAN (Professor, Director, Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies) studied
at the Theatre Institute in Romania. At La MaMa Experimental Theatre Center, he directed
Fragments of a Greek Trilogy, which won several Obie and international awards and has been
performed at more than 20 international festivals. He worked with Peter Brook at Brook's
International Theatre Institute in both Paris and Persepolis. At New York's Lincoln Center he directed
Aeschylus' Agamemnon and Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, the latter of which won a Tony Award
for Best Revival. He has directed at the Public Theatre, Yale Repertory, the Guthrie, Circle in the
Square, Delacorte, San Francisco's A.C.T., the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, the Royal
National Theatre in London, Schauspielhaus Bochum, and the Comedie Francaise in Paris, among
others. He acted as general director of the Romanian National Theatre and has staged opera
productions all over the world.
THOMAS SCHUMACHER (Adjunct Assistant Professor) Since 1988, Thomas Schumacher has
worked with The Walt Disney Company setting new standards of excellence in film, television, and
theatre. Currently he serves as president of Disney Theatrical Group, whose Broadway and touring
productions have included Beauty and the Beast, King David, The Lion King, Der Glockner von Notre
Dame, Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida, Mary Poppins and The Little Mermaid. Mr. Schumacher also
supervises Disney Live Family Entertainment, including Feld Entertainment productions of Disney On
Ice and Disney Live! His career at Disney began in Walt Disney Feature Animation, where he
supervised 21 animated features including The Lion King, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Lilo &
Stitch. Prior to joining Disney, Mr. Schumacher was associate director of the 1987 Los Angeles
Festival, presenting the American premiere of Cirque du Soleil and the English-language premiere of
Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata. Previously, he spent five years on staff at the Mark Taper Forum,
worked on the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, and served as assistant general manager of the Los
Angeles Ballet. A graduate of UCLA, he is a member of the Executive Committee for Broadway
Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, the Tony® Administration Committee and the Advisory Committee of the
American Theatre Wing.
LARRY SINGER (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is one of the leading acting teachers of his
generation. It is with 20 years of teaching experience that Larry has established the Larry Singer
Studios, where he continues the rich traditions of Actors’ Training, while exploring new methods to
support every actor’s endeavor to prosper as an artist. Larry teaches classes in Acting Technique &
Scene Study for working actors and those committed to pursuing professional careers. Additionally,
Larry is frequently hired by actors to prepare for their auditions and works as a coach in theatre and
on films and television, working with such rising young stars as Kerry Washington, Anson Mount
(Acting M.F.A., ’98), Teresa Palmer and Hayden Christiansen. He has also directed many
productions for various conservatories, staging plays by Shakespeare, Odets, Shaw, Inge, Shanley,
Shepard, as well as original works. As an actor, Larry made his Broadway debut in the comedy
Gemini; worked Off-Broadway as the lead in Andora, by Max Frisch; and had various roles at
Ensemble Studio Theatre and Circle Rep Lab. Larry’s acting career also included work in regional
theatres, on commercials and television, and in film.
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ROCCO SISTO (Adjunct Professor) holds a BA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an MFA
from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Graduate Acting Program. He has worked in theatre, film and
television in New York, Los Angeles, Canada and Europe. He has also worked in Regional Theater
throughout the United States. He is founding member of Shakespeare and Company of Lenox, MA,
where he taught acting and text for their intensive Shakespeare workshops from 1979 through 1995.
Considered a master teacher of text, he has acted and directed for the company in over two dozen
projects. In addition to his Shakespeare and Co. teaching credits, he has taught acting at Columbia
University, The Actor’s Center NY, Fordham University, and the California Institute of Arts (CAL
ARTS). Broadway: Amadeus, A Month in the Country, The Comedy of Errors. Recent Off-Broadway:
Ipheginia 2.0, Signature Theatre; Kaos, New York Theatre Workshop; Souls of Naples, Theatre For A
New Audience; and many plays for the New York Shakespeare Festival and other theatres in New
York. Regional theatre credits include ACT-Seattle and Seattle Rep., Mark Taper-LA, The Guthrie,
Dallas Theatre Center, Center Stage Baltimore, among others. Films include Donnie Brasco,
Frequency, Illuminata, Eraser, Carlito’s Way and the cult hit The American Astronaut. Television: The
Sopranos, Law & Order, also Law & Order: CI, Homicide, CSI, Close to Home, Star Trek The Next
Generation, Alias, N.P.Y.D. Blue, and J.A.G.
KELLY STUART (Lecturer) is a playwright and video artist. Her Los Angeles productions include The
Interpreter of Horror at the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival, The Square Root of Terrible at the Mark
Taper Forum, and Mayhem and Homewrecker at the Evidence Room. Her plays The Peacock Screams
When the Lights Go Out and Furious Blood were produced in San Diego at Sledgehammer Theatre.
New York productions include Demonology at Playwrights Horizons, The Life of Spiders at the Culture
Project downstairs, and Mayhem at the Summer Play Festival. Internationally, Mayhem was produced
in Manchester, United Kingdom; at Theatre Ariel in Târgu-Mures, Romania; at Theatre Odeon in
Bucharest; and at the Tokyo International Arts Festival. Homewrecker was produced in Berlin at the
Schaubuehne. Her most recent play, Shadow Language (originally commissioned by the Guthrie
Theatre), was produced at Theatre 503 in London. Her video work has been seen at Alwan for the
Arts, Chris Well’s Secret City and Jeff Jones’ Little Theatre. Stuart is the recipient of a Whiting
Foundation Fellowship and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the New York
State Council on the Arts, among other awards and commissions.
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LUCY THURBER (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is the author of seven plays: Where We’re Born,
Ashville, Scarcity, Killers and Other Family, Stay, Bottom of The World and Monstrosity. Rattlestick
Playwrights Theater has produced three of her plays, Where We’re Born, Killers and Other Family and
Stay. The Atlantic Theater Company opened its 2007/08 season with Scarcity. Bottom of The World
was commissioned and workshopped by WET (Women’s Expressive Theater, Inc.) at the Eugene
O’Neill, the first Tribeca Theater Festival and The Public Theater. Monstrosity was workshopped at
Encore Theatre Company (San Francisco). She was the recipient of the 2000-01 Manhattan Theatre
Club Playwriting Fellowship and has been a guest artist at Alaska’s Perseverance Theatre twice,
where she helped to adapt both Desire Under The Elms and Moby Dick. She has had readings and
workshops at Manhattan Theatre Club, The New Group, Primary Stages, MCC Theater, Encore
Theatre Company, PlayPenn, Williamstown Theatre Festival, New River Dramatists and Soho Rep.
She was one of three playwrights in residence at The Orchard Project, summer 2007. Her 10-minute
play Dinner is published in Not So Sweet, a collection of plays from Soho Rep’s 10 minute play festival.
Scarcity was published in the December 2007 issue of American Theatre. Her produced plays are
published by Dramatists Play Service. Thurber is a member of New Dramatists, 13P, MCC
Playwrights Coalition and Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group at Primary Stages. She is
currently writing a new play under commission from Playwrights Horizons.
LIVIA VANAVER (Adjunct Assistant Professor) is Artistic Director of The Vanaver Caravan
Dancers and Musicians. Over the past 33 years, she has toured with her Company throughout the
U.S. and abroad, collecting and performing dance and music. From the Bienale in Lyon, France to
touring for the US State Department in Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Tunisia, to the Jacob’s Pillow Dance
Festival to the Redlands Bowl, California, The Vanaver Caravan has been delighting audiences of all
ages. Livia is a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She is best known for her work in the field
of multi-cultural dance and using traditional forms, rhythms and styles as springboards for original
work. Livia brings her vast knowledge and love of the dance treasures of the world to students of all
ages and is a pioneer in the arts in education movement.
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DONNA WALKER-KUHNE (Adjunct Assistant Professor) Acknowledged as the nation’s foremost
expert on audience development by the Arts & Business Council, Donna Walker-Kuhne has devoted
her professional career to increasing the love and understanding of the arts for our nation’s rapidly
growing multicultural population. As the former director of marketing and audience development at
The Public Theater, she originated a range of audience development activities for children, students,
and adults throughout New York City. In 1997-98, she completed a national 32-city tour of Bring in
’Da Noise, Bring in ’Da Funk as The Public Theater’s National Coordinator for Community Outreach,
effectively increasing audiences by more than 20 percent with her community-based marketing
campaigns. Prior to The Public Theater, she was director of Marketing for Dance Theater of Harlem,
where her audience development efforts increased box office income by 45 percent. Presently, she is
CEO and president of Walker International Communications Group, a marketing and audience
development consulting company for not-for-profit and commercial productions in the performing
and visual arts. She was an associate producer for George C. Wolfe’s Harlem Song at the Apollo
Theater. She was nominated for the Ford Foundation’s 2001 Leadership for a Changing World
Fellowship. Her first book, Invitation to the Party: Building Bridges to Arts, Culture and Community, was
published in Summer 2005.
DIANNE WIEST (Adjunct Professor) was most recently seen in The Forest at Classic Stage
Company and before that, Arthur Miller's All My Sons on Broadway. Other New York theatre
appearances include The Seagull at Classic Stage Company, Wendy Wasserstein's Third, Memory
House by Kathleen Tolan, Salome, Oedipus, The Shawl, Hunting Cockroaches, After the Fall, Beyond
Therapy, and The Art of Dining. Film credits include The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters
(Oscar), Radio Days, September and Bullets over Broadway (Oscar), all by Woody Allen. She also
appeared in Parenthood (Oscar Nomination), Edward Scissorhands and The Birdcage. She was last
seen on screen in Charlie Kaufman's movie Synecdoche, New York and the HBO series In Treatment
(Emmy) and will next be seen in John Cameron Mitchell's Rabbit Hole.
LINDA WINER (Adjunct Associate Professor) received her BA with honors, from Northeastern
Illinois in 1968 and did additional study in musicology at University of Southern California. She is
chief theatre critic of Newsday, where she also served as arts columnist from 1987 to 2004. She has
been the host of the “Women in Theatre” series on CUNY-TV since 2002 and is host of the “Women
in Theatre” DVD (available through Theater Communications Catalog, 2006). Her writing has been
published in the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Lear’s, The Nation, and American
Theatre. She has won the Rockefeller Fellowship for the Training of Music Critics, the New York
Newspaper Guild’s Page One Award for commentary and reviews, two New York Newswomen’s Club
Front Page Awards, two Long Island Press Club Awards, the Society of the Silurians Award, and first
prize in both criticism and commentary from the American Society of Sunday and Features Editors.
She has judged the Obie Awards, the Astaire Awards, and the Lucille Lortel Awards, has served on
the board of the Burns Mantle theatre yearbook, Best Plays, since 2001, and been a member of the
New York Drama Critics Circle since 1983. She teaches at the Eugene O’Neill Center, has served on
the Pulitzer Prize nominating juries, and has judged the Pulitzer Prize for drama six times, four times
as panel chair.
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NIKY WOLCZ (Associate Professor) studied at the Theater Universitat in Bucharest. For decades,
he has been in high demand as an actor, teacher, and director throughout Europe. He has been on
the faculty at Columbia since 1996, where his productions have included Twelfth Night, The Caucasian
Chalk Circle (directed with Andrei Serban), Ionesco's Bald Soprano and The Lesson, and Turandot
(directed with Ursula Wolcz). European directing credits include La Dispute, The Birds, Scapin,
L'Adororation, The Shadow, Cyrano de Bergerac, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Waiting for
Godot, and The Temptation of St. Anthony. In opera, he has directed productions of Don Giovanni, The
Magic Flute, Il Campiello, La Boheme, Roberto Devereaux (with Andrei Serban), Prince Igor, Contes
d'Hoffman, The Merry Widow, L'Italiana, and Pagliacci. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in
December 2003 with his choreography for the company premiere of Benvenuto Cellini.
ULLA WOLCZ (Lecturer) attended the Theatre Academy in Bucharest. She has performed in
Frankfurt, Essen, Berlin, Stuttgart, Bochum and Berna and at theatre festivals in Holland, Venice, Paris
and Verbier. Her important roles include Rosalind, Lady Macbeth, Luisa, Anja and Nina from works as
varied as those of Shakespeare, Chekhov, Brecht, Gozzi, Goldoni, Lorca, Buchner, Calderon and Gorki.
She previously taught acting at the Musik-Hochschule Frankfurt. Since 1996, she has taught acting at
Columbia University.
W. B. WORTHEN (Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre, Barnard College) is the
author of several books, including The Idea of the Actor, Modern Drama and the Rhetoric of Theater,
Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance, Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance, and
Print and the Poetics of Modern Drama. He is the editor of the Wadsworth Anthology of Drama, and of
the award-winning Modern Drama: Plays, Criticism, Theory, and past editor of Theatre Journal and
Modern Drama. His most recent book, Drama: Between Poetry and Performance, is published by
Blackwell. Worthen is the Alice Brady Pels Professor in the Arts at Barnard College.
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