John Dillon

Director, Theatre Program

Courses: Acting Shakespeare, Directing Shakespeare, Graduate Seminar, Theatre Forum

B.A., M.A., Northwestern University. M.F.A., Columbia University (Danforth and Woodrow Wilson Fellow). Associate director, Tokyo’s Institute of Dramatic Arts (where his productions have twice won Japan’s highest theatre award). Chair, College and University Committee, Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers (SSDC); member, editorial board, Kennedy Center’s Opening Stages magazine. Former artistic director of the Milwaukee Rep (during his sixteen-year tenure launched innovative exchanges with theatre companies in Mexico, Russia, Ireland, Chile, Japan, and England). Former board member of the Theatre Communications Group and the Executive Committee of SSDC; former panelist for the NEA and the U.S.-Mexico Fund for Culture. Former senior contributor to American Theatre magazine and, for seven years, artist-in-residence at the North Carolina School of the Arts. Staged productions at leading theatres in England, Russia, Japan, and Egypt and has directed new works by such noted playwrights as David Mamet, Romulus Linney, Larry Shue, Y York, Anthony Clarvoe, Joanna Glass, Ariel Dorfman, David Rambo, and Amlin Gray. Staged productions at over two dozen of the country’s leading regional theatres, including Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, D.C.’s Arena Stage, Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, New Haven’s Long Wharf, the Missouri Rep, Seattle’s ACT Theatre, Chapel Hill’s PlayMakers Rep, Syracuse Stage, the Georgia Shakespeare Festival, the Seattle Children’s Theatre, the Berkeley Rep, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (where his staging of Wit won him a BackstageWest Garland Award). SLC, 2004-

Ernest H. Abuba

Courses: Creating a Role

Recipient of an OBIE Award, five New York State Council on the Arts fellowships for playwriting and directing, a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, Creative Artist Public Service Award (CAPS), Best Actor Focus Press Award. Broadway: Pacific Overtures, Shimada, Loose Ends, The King and I, Zoya’s Apartment, director Boris Morozov; Maly Theatre. Regional/ off-Broadway roles: King Lear, Macbeth, Oberon, King Arthur, Autolycus, Chebutykin, James Tyrone, Lysander, Mishima, The Singer in Caucasian Chalk Circle, director Fritz Bennewitz; Berlin Ensemble. Author of Kwatz! The Tibetan Project, Leir Rex, The Dowager Empress of China, An American Story, Eat a Bowl of Tea, Night Stalker, opera Cambodia Agonistes, all produced off-Broadway; national tours to the Cairo Experimental Theatre and Johannesburg, South Africa. Collaborated/performed Butoh with Shigeko Suga in Spleen, Accade Domani by Dario Fo, and Sotoba Komachi. Film/TV: 12 Monkeys (director Terry Gilliam), King of New York, Call Me, New York Undercover, Bill Cosby Show, Kung Fu. Director/ screenwriter: Mariana Bracetti, Arthur A. Schomburg, Asian American Railroad Strike, Iroquois Confederacy, Lilac Chen-Asian American Suffragette, and Osceola produced by PBS/CBS. Voice of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the audiobook The Art of Happiness. SLC, 1995-

Matthew Acheson

Courses: Puppet Central

Art Institute of Chicago. Designed and built sets and puppets for film, TV, and stage for companies in New York. Created musical scores for dance and film in New York and Chicago. Performances in New York at St. Ann’s Warehouse, P.S. 122, HERE Arts Center, and Galapagos Art Space. Audience Choice Awards in Copenhagen, New York, and Austin for film, In the House of the Sin Eater. Artist-in-residence, MANCC Florida State University. Puppetry master classes in Florida, New York, Ukraine, Illinois, Tennessee. Co-director, St. Ann’s Puppet Labapalooza. Toured and performed extensively with Basil Twist, Dan Hurlin, Mabou Mines, Lee Breuer, New York Metropolitan Opera, Paula Vogel, and Nami Yamamoto. SLC, 2008-

Laura Maria Censabella

Courses: The Playwright’s Voice

Yale University. Plays include Carla Cooks the War (formerly known as Three Italian Women), Abandoned in Queens, Posing, Jazz Wives Jazz Lives, Every Girl Should Know, The Actual Footage, and Some Girls. Three-time participant in the O’Neill Playwrights Conference. Recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts’ Geri Ashur Award in Screenwriting, two NYFA grants in playwriting, the Tennessee Chapbook Prize for Drama, and two Emmy Awards. Half-hour film Last Call has screened in festivals throughout the world and is available on Netflix as part of Cinequest’s Best-of DVD: Second Sight, Vol. 2. Teaching experience includes the New School for Drama, the Actors Studio Drama School, Columbia University’s School of the Arts, Columbia College’s Undergraduate Writing Program, City University’s M.F.A. Writing Program, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia. Currently directs the Playwrights Unit at Ensemble Studio Theatre, where she is a member. SLC, 2008-

Kevin Confoy

Courses: Breaking the Code, Collective Conscious: Actor, Director Ensemble, Collective Conscious: Actor, Director Ensemble, DownStage, The Play’s The Thing…Sarah Lawrence College Playwriting Summer Intensive

B.A., Rutgers College. Certificate, London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). Graduate, Conservatory Training Program, Classic Stage Company (CSC), Playwrights Horizons Theater School Directing Program. Director and producer of off-Broadway and regional productions. Producer/producing artistic director, SLC Theatre Program (1994-2008). Executive producer, Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York (1992-1994); associate artistic director, Elysium Theatre Company, New York (1990-1992); director, Development Program, Circle Repertory Company (Circle Rep). OBIE Award, Outstanding Achievement Off and off-off Broadway (producer, E.S.T. Marathon of New Plays); Sloan Foundation Award (director, Proof!); 2006 Drama Desk Nomination Best Revival of a Play (company, The Traveling Lady). Director, first (original) productions of eight published plays. SLC, 1984-

Michael Early

Courses: Acting the Poetic Text

B.F.A., New York University Tisch School of the Arts. M.F.A., Yale University School of Drama. Extensive experience off-Broadway and in regional theatre, television, and commercials; artist-in-residence, Oberlin College. SLC, 1998-

June Ekman

Courses: Alexander Technique, Breath and Speech

B.A., Goddard College, University of Illinois. A.C.A.T.-certified Alexander Technique Teacher, 1979. Inventor of an ergonomic chair, the Sit-a-Round; taught the Alexander Technique in many venues: the Santa Fe Opera, Riverside Studios in London, Utrecht, the Netherlands; dancer, Judson Dance Theater, Alwin Nikolais, Anna Halprin, and others; direction and choreography off-Broadway; appeared in Innovation (PBS), the Off-Off Broadway Review Award, 1995-1996. SLC, 1987-

Christine Farrell

Courses: Comedy Styles and Performance, Comedy Workshop

B.A., Marquette University. M.F.A., Columbia University. One-year Study Abroad—Oxford, England. Actress, playwright, director. Appeared for the last nine seasons as Pam Shrier, the ballistics detective on Law and Order. Acting credits include Saturday Night Live, One Life to Live; films: Ice Storm, Fatal Attraction; stage: Comedy of Errors, Uncle Vanya, Catholic School Girls, Division Street, The Dining Room. Two published plays: Mama Drama and The Once Attractive Woman. Directed in colleges as well as off-Broadway and was the artistic director and co-founder of the New York Team for TheaterSports. Performed in comedy improvisation throughout the world. SLC, 1991-

Peter Jay Fernandez

Courses: Contemporary Scene Study

BFA, Boston University, School for the Arts. Acting work: (Broadway),'The Merchant of Venice', 'Jelly's Last Jam', 'Henry IV', 'Julius Caesar'. (Off Broadway), more than twenty productions; Public Theatre, Second Stage, Playwright's Horizons, Classic Stage Co., New Federal, La Mama, B.A.M, Delacorte etc. (Regional), Long Wharf, Arena Stage, Seattle Rep, Old Globe, Milwaukee Rep, Alliance, Williamstown, Goodman, Cincinnati Playhouse, Cleveland Playhouse, ACT,Seattle, Hartford Stage and more. Numerous Independent, Feature and Episodic appearances. SLC, 2006-

Robert Gould

Courses: Sound and Music for the Theatre

Robert Gould has been active in performance art and theater since the mid 1980’s starting as technical director at The Franklin Furnace performance space. He co-founded DSR, a sound performance group, and toured Japan & Europe in the late 80’s early 90’s. He received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and was the Assistant Technical Director for the Theater Department prior to starting his own sound design company. Robert’s sound design credits include work for off-Broadway theater companies including Naked Angels, Clubbed Thumb, Cucaracha and Gabrielle Lansner. He was the in-house sound designer for Ensemble Studio Theater from 1999 to 2003 and designed most of their yearly Marathon series productions of one-act plays during those years. He also created sound for the following dance choreographers: Jeanine Durning, Hetty King, Lans Gries, & Lisa Race. Currently Robert is an audio engineer for CBS News. SLC, 2008-

Paul Griffin

Courses: The Performing Arts for Social Change

Paul Griffin founded City at Peace, Inc. in Washington, D.C. in 1994. He then founded and now leads City at Peace-National, a non-profit dedicated to using the performing arts to empower teenagers to transform their lives and communities across the U.S. Paul has directed the creation and performance of ten original musicals written from the real-life stories of diverse groups of teens and overseen the creation of thirty more. City at Peace now has programs in six U.S. cities, six communities in Israel and Cape Town, South Africa. Prior to his work with City at Peace, Paul was Co-director of the Theater of Youth, a company member of the No-Neck Monster Theater Co. in Washington, DC, a member of Impro-Etc., performing improvised Shakespeare classics in England and Scotland, and a student/performer with Ryszard Cieslak from Jerzy Grotowsky’s Polish Lab Theater. Paul was awarded as one of Tomorrow's Leaders Today by Public Allies, and received the Hamilton Fish Award for Service to Children and Families. Paul and City at Peace have appeared in numerous venues across the country, including the Arena Stage, The Public Theater, "Nightline" with Ted Koppel, and HBO in a documentary on the City at Peace program. SLC 2008-

Robert Hanlon

Courses: Advanced ProTools Editing

B.S, Mercy College. Pro Tools editor, sound operator, system tech and sound system designer for Sound Associates in Yonkers NY. Mr. Hanlon has worked with NBC and ABC on several live events. Some other shows include the Metropolitan Opera and Philharmonics Concerts in the Parks, Bryant Park Fashion week, the Cipriani Concert Series and many Broadway Musicals. SLC, 2007-

Dan Hurlin

on leave fall semester

Courses: Projects, Puppet Central, Strategies for Being Alone on Stage

B.A., Sarah Lawrence College. Performances in New York at Dance Theater Workshop, P.S. 122, La MaMa E.T.C., Danspace, The Kitchen, St. Ann’s Warehouse, and at alternative presenters throughout the U.S. and the U.K.; recipient of a Village Voice OBIE Award in 1990 for solo adaptation of Nathanael West’s A Cool Million and the 2000 New York Dance and Performance (a.k.a. “Bessie”) Award for Everyday Uses for Sight, Nos. 3 & 7; recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and of grants from Creative Capital, the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Mary Cary Flagler Charitable Trust, and the New England Foundation for the Arts; 2002-2003 Guggenheim fellowship. Recipient of the Alpert Award in the Arts for Theater, 2004. Former teacher at Bowdoin, Bennington, Barnard, and Princeton. SLC, 1997-

Shirley Kaplan

Director, Theatre Outreach

Courses: Acting Conference, Making New Work, Methods of Theatre Outreach, Singing Workshop

A.A., Briarcliff College. Diploma in Sculpture and Painting, Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, Paris. Playwright, director, and designer with productions throughout the U.S. and Europe; co-founder, OBIE Award-winning Paper Bag Players; founder, The Painters’ Theatre; directing credits include Ensemble Studio Theatre One-Act Marathons, Playwrights Horizons, UBU Repertory, La MaMa E.T.C., Ensemble Studio Theatre, Music Theatre Group, New York Performance Works, Zipper Theatre; guest director/playwright, Festival St. Archan-gelo, Italy; writer/lyricist, Rockabye (documentary for the March of Dimes); winner, Golden Camera Award, U.S. Industrial Film and Video Festival, 1990; directed new works by Richard Greenberg, Jane Willis, Stuart Spencer, Cassandra Medley, Leslie Lyles, Eduardo Machado, Denise Bonal, Keith Reddin, and Arthur Giron; finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for The Connecticut Cowboy; playwright, The Dream Box, Neon, Floating Cathedral, and many others; designer for all of Ben Bagley’s Cole Porter Shows, U.S. and European tours; created interactive theatre workshops for The Kitchen and New York City museums; arts educator with Connecticut Commission on the Arts Project Create; past faculty at Barnard College and guest artist at colleges throughout the U.S.; developed original ensembles on major arts grants; recipient of the Westchester Arts Council Award in Education 2003 and Excellence Award, the Ensemble Studio Theatre (2003); developed Theatre Outreach Programs within the Yonkers schools (1975); worked with senior centers teaching groups; was one of the designers of the Fairfield, Conn., Children’s Museum in 1986 and the Bronx Heritage Museum in 1988; has conducted workshops with teachers in media and curriculum throughout the U.S. and Europe training theatre artists for in-school residencies. SLC, 1975-

Woodie King

Courses: Global Theatre: Africa and the Black Diaspora in the Caribbean and America

Will-0-Way School of Theatre, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; Lehman College, New York; MFA in directing, Brooklyn College. He is the Founder and Producing Director of New Federal Theatre in New York City. New Federal Theatre (NFT) has presented over 225 productions in its 37-year history.

Mr. King has produced and directed Off-Broadway, on Broadway in regional Theatres, and in universities across the United States. He co-produced For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, What the Wine Sellers Buy, Reggae and The Taking of Miss Janie (Drama Critic Circle Award). His directional credits are extensive and include work in film as well as theater. He directed productions at the Cleveland Playhouse, Stage West, Virginia Museum Theatre, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse, North light Theatre, New Federal Theatre, The Ensemble Studio, Arena Stage, GeVa Theatre, American Place Theatre, Jomandi Theatre, Center Stage of Baltimore, Indiana Repertory Company, Studio Arena In Buffalo, New York Shakespeare Festival, and Crossroads Theatre Company.

He has received an Obie Award for Sustained Achievement and the Theatre Communications Group Peter Zeisler Memorial Award among other honors. He has taught at Oberlin College, Florida State University, Ohio State University, Yale, Penn State, North Carolina AT&T, Columbia, NYU, Hunter, and Brooklyn College School of Contemporary Studies. 2007-

Allen Lang

Courses: Methods of Theatre Outreach

University of Wisconsin; B.A. Empire State College, SUNY; M.F.A. Sarah Lawrence College. Published plays include Chimera and White Buffalo in the French Performance Journal Collages and Bricollages; Recipient of the Lipkin Playwright Award and Drury College Playwright Award; Plays produced in New York City at La Mama and other venues; Directed plays in New York and regionally; acted in New York City and regional theatre, on television and in the cult films by Michael DiPaolo: Artistic Director of the Water Street Theatre Company in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. Conducted theatre and creative writing workshops for participants of all ages in New York City, South America and throughout the United States.

Tom Lee

Courses: Design Techniques in Media and Puppetry, Scenic Design I, Scenic Design II, The Director/Designer Dialogue: From the Page to the Stage

B.F.A., Carnegie Mellon University. Designed sets, puppets, and video animation for dance, theatre, and new opera in New York and Europe; resident artist of La MaMa E.T.C.; worked with companies in Siberia, Ukraine, Poland, Italy, and Japan; received a Jim Henson Foundation grant for his puppet epic Hoplite Diary and grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer (with Yara Arts Group), and the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Designers. SLC, 2005-

Doug MacHugh

Courses: Acting for the Camera

B.A., New England College. M.F.A., Sarah Lawrence College. Actor, writer, director. Taught for two years at the Universidad Nacional in El Salvador. Staff writer for Jones Entertainment and Gates Productions. Has written PSAs, commercials, industrials, documentaries, and sixty hours of local and regional live television in Los Angeles. Film acting credits include Clean and Sober, Alien Nation, Come See the Paradise, Weird Science; television: Guiding Light, Law and Order, Cheers, Quantum Leap, LA Law, Night Court; stage: Holy Ghost, End Game, Falling Man, Platypus Rex. SLC, 2000-

Greg MacPherson

Courses: Lighting Design I, Lighting Design II, The Director/Designer Dialogue: From the Page to the Stage

Designed lighting for hundreds of plays and musicals in New York and around the United States, as well as in Europe, Australia, Japan, and the Caribbean. Designs have included original plays by Edward Allan Baker, Cassandra Medley, Stewart Spencer, Richard Greenberg, Warren Leight, Lanford Wilson, Romulus Linney, Arthur Miller, and David Mamet. Continues to design the Las Vegas production of Penn & Teller and to work as resident designer for the 52nd Street Project. Received an American Theatre Wing Maharam Award nomination for his lighting design of EST’s Marathon of One-Act Plays and has taught lighting design at Sarah Lawrence College since 1990. SLC, 1990-

Thomas Mandel

Courses: Singing Workshop

B.A., Bowdoin College. Songwriting with Paul Simon, 1969, NYU; SLC, 1971-1977: taught Singing Workshop with John Braswell. Scored musicals at SLC, Astor Place Theatre, and Cafe LaMaMa, New York City; composed, orchestrated, and musical directed three rock operas off-off Broadway and at SLC. The first, Joe’s Opera, was twice optioned for Broadway production; animated the second, The Sea of Simile, on a full-length DVD. Toured and recorded 1977-1998, Vietnam to Vienna, New York City to Sun City, with Dire Straits, Bryan Adams, Cyndi Lauper, Tina Turner, Bon Jovi, B-52’s, the Pretenders, Nils Lofgren, Little Steven, Peter Wolf, Ian Hunter/Mick Ronson, two former NY Dolls, Live at CBGB’s, the Spinners, Shannon, John Waite, and Pavarotti. Returned to SLC in 2000 to work with Shirley Kaplan, William McRee, and Thomas Young. Fields of expertise: Hammond organ, rock-and-roll piano, synthesizer programming and sequencing, piano accompaniment, popular and progressive music of the 1950’s-1990’s. CDs of songs and instrumentals available at iTunes Store and cdBaby.com. SLC, 2000-

Elena McGhee

Courses: Linklater Voice Training, Linklater Voice Training Into Text

B.A., University of Massachusetts. Actor, vocal coach, and Designated Linklater Voice Instructor. Recent teaching appointments include Fordham, Tepper Semester/ Syracuse, Shakespeare & Company, ACT, NYU, and CAL/ARTS. Her private clients appear on Broadway, film and television. Her acting credits include Classic Stage Company, Classical Theatre of Harlem, The Ontological Hysterical, Ensemble Studio Theatre, LA Women’s Shakespeare, The Odyssey/LA, Worcester Foothills, The Nora, and The New Rep/ Boston. SLC, 2007-

William D. McRee

Courses: Auditioning, Directing Workshop, Far Off, Off Off, Off, and On Broadway — Experiencing the 2008-2009 Theatre Season, The Director/Actor Dialogue

Faculty Web site

B.A., Jacksonville University. M.F.A., Sarah Lawrence College. Co-founder and artistic director for Jacksonville’s A Company of Players, Inc.; productions with The Actor’s Outlet, Playwrights Horizons, Summerfest, and the Ensemble Studio Theatre. SLC, 1981-

Cassandra Medley

on leave yearlong

Faculty Web site

University of Michigan. Playwright; co-author, A-My Name is Alice; author, terrain (nominated for Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), Womenswork/Ma Rose, Antaeus Plays in One Act, Mildred/13th Moon, Voices of Color/Rosalie; plays performed throughout the U.S. and Europe; recipient of an Outer Critics Drama Circle Desk Award, a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, a National Endow-ment for the Arts grant in playwriting, and a Walt Disney Screenwriting fellowship; staff writer for ABC Television daytime series; member, Ensemble Studio Theatre and Writer’s Guild of America, East. Most recently produced plays include Relativity, Kuntu Rep of Pittsburgh, Southern Rep of New Orleans, 2007; the Ensemble Studio Theatre, May 2006; the St. Louis Black Repertory Theatre, February 2006; and the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, June 2004. Relativity won the 2006 Audelco August Wilson Playwriting Award and was featured on Science Friday, National Public Radio. Published by Broadway Play Publishing. SLC, 1989-

Greta Minsky

Courses: Stage Management

B.A., University of Kansas. Stage manager of original productions of works by Tom Stoppard, Neil Simon, Laurence Fishburne, Doug Wright, Charles Busch, Larry L. King, Ernest Abuba, and Lillian Garrett-Groag, among others. Broadway, Off Broadway, touring, dance, opera, and concert work includes productions with Manhattan Theatre Club, Circle Rep, WPA, Pan Asian Rep, Vineyard Theatre, La MaMa E.T.C., The Women’s Project, Radio City Music Hall, Carnegie Hall, and New York City Opera. Co-founder of Modern Times Theater. SLC, 1998-

Ruth Moe

Production Manager

Courses: Conference for Internships

Production manager for the Sarah Lawrence College theatre program for the past seven years. Other production management work includes seven seasons with the Westport Country Playhouse, also Shakespeare and Company, Classic Stage Company, The Working Theater, The Colorado Festival of World Theater, East Coast Arts Theater, the Berkshire Public Theater, and The Jerash Festival in Amman, Jordan. Production stage management credits include productions with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Mabou Mines, New York Theater of the Deaf, and Fast Folk Musical Magazine. Member of AEA. SLC, 1999-

David Neumann

Courses: Creating Original Theatre Today

Artistic director of advanced beginner group. Work has been presented in New York at P.S. 122, Dance Theater Workshop, Central Park SummerStage (collaboration with John Giorno), Celebrate Brooklyn, Symphony Space (collaboration with Laurie Anderson), La MaMa E.T.C., the Downtown Art Co., and Mabou Mines. Recently completed a tour of own multidisciplinary dance-based work feedforward, which premiered at Dance Theater Workshop to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and to MASS MoCA. Featured dancer in the works of Susan Marshall, Jane Comfort, Sally Silvers, Irene Hultman, Cathy Weiss, Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar’s Big Dance Theater, and club legend Willi Ninja. Former member of Doug Varone and Dancers and an eight-year original member and collaborator with the Doug Elkins Dance Company, with whom he toured nationally and internationally. Recently completed a run of Beckett Shorts at New York Theater Workshop performing with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Worked in the theatre for many years choreographing or performing with directors Hal Hartley, Laurie Anderson, Daniel Aukin, Robert Woodruff, Lee Breuer, Peter Sellars, JoAnn Akalaitis, Chris Bayes, Mark Wing-Davey, and Les Waters at such venues as the Public Theater, Signature Theatre, Soho Rep., La MaMa E.T.C., Sundance, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Kennedy Center, the Archa Theater in Prague, and the Salzburg Festival in Austria. SLC, 2007-

Mark Olsen

Courses: The Theatre of Mask

Mark Olsen is an authority on mime, mask, stage combat, and theatrical movement. He specializes in ensemble and devised works. He has appeared on Broadway and toured internationally with the mime/mask group, Mummenschanz, and has acted in numerous regional theatre productions. He has directed over forty-five productions in both professional and university settings and has worked as movement coordinator and fight director for productions at the Houston Shakespeare Festival, Hartford Stage Company, Long Wharf Theatre, Theatreworks, The Alley Theatre, Houston Grand Opera, New York Shakespeare Festival, and New York’s Public Theatre. Currently a professor of acting and movement at the Penn State School of Theatre, Mr. Olsen has taught at Carnegie Mellon University, University of Houston, Ryerson Theatre School in Toronto and New York Public Theatre’s Shakespeare Lab. Mark’s approach to theatre and imagination incorporates classical and contemporary techniques developed through the comprehensive lens of modern acting techniques and Lecoq based movement work. Books by Mr. Olsen include, The Actor with a Thousand Faces, The Golden Buddha Changing Masks and Acting: Scene One, co-authored with Steve Broadnax. SLC, 2008-

Dael Orlandersmith

Courses: Orlandersmith Workshop, Solo Performance Playwriting

OBIE Award for Beauty’s Daughter, which she wrote and starred in at American Place Theatre. Toured extensively with the Nuyorican Poets Cafe (Real Live Poetry) throughout the U.S., Europe, and Australia. Play, Monster, premiered at New York Theatre Workshop in November 1996. Attended Sundance Theatre Festival Lab for four summers developing new plays. The Gimmick, commissioned by the McCarter Theatre, premiered on its Second Stage on Stage and went on to the Long Wharf Theatre and New York Theatre Workshop. Yellowman was commissioned by and premiered at the McCarter in a co-production with the Wilma Theater and the Long Wharf Theatre. Vintage Books and Dramatists Play Service published Yellowman and a collection of earlier work. Pulitzer Prize Award finalist and Drama Desk Award nominee as an actress in Yellowman, which premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club in 2002. Susan Smith Blackburn Award finalist with The Gimmick in 1999 and won for Yellowman. Recipient of an NYFA grant, the Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award, a Guggenheim, and the 2005 Pen/ Laura Pels Foundation Award for a playwright in mid-career. Won a Lucille Lortel Playwrights Fellowship in 2006. In 2007, completed a new commission for the Mark Taper Forum called Bones and premiered a new work in collaboration with David Cale at Long Wharf, The Blue Album. Currently working on a play called Horsedreams and Dancefloors as well as a memoir, Character. SLC, 2008-

Carol Ann Pelletier

Courses: Costume Design I, Costume Design II, The Director/Designer Dialogue: From the Page to the Stage

B.A., Brandeis University. Costume designer for Ping Chong & Company; resident designer for UBU Repertory Theatre; founding member of Yara Arts Group; extensive work in off-Broadway and experimental theatre; venues include La MaMa E.T.C., Theatre for the New City, UBU Rep, and Theatre Row, along with festivals in Kiev, Lviv, and Kharkiv, Ukraine. SLC, 1993-

Shanti Pillai

Courses: Global Theatre: China, Japan, and India

B.A., Stanford University. M.A., University of California-Berkeley. Ph.D., New York University. Special interests include the performance practices of Asia and Latin America, globalization and culture, Western perceptions of India and practice of Indian “spirituality,” and performance theory; visiting professor at Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales in Ecuador, 1997-99; director of the South India Term Abroad (SITA) Program, 2003; recipient of American Institute of Indian Studies fellowship for dissertation research; Bhara-tanatyam performer and teacher; resident director of SLC in Cuba, 2006. SLC, 2003-

Fanchon Miller Scheier

Courses: Improvisation Laboratory, Improvisation Techniques

B.A., Adelphi University. M.F.A., Sarah Lawrence College. Film, television, and theatre actress; member, Robert Lewis Acting Company and Green Gate Theatre; director and actress, regional and educational theatre; University of Virginia Artist-in-Residence program; founder, In Stages theatre company; recipient of two grants from the New York State Council on the Arts; co-director of London Theatre Intersession ’88. SLC, 1985-

Edwin Sherin

Courses: An Intuitive and Impulsive Exploration of Text: A Useful Tool for Actors and Directors, An Intuitive and Impulsive Exploration of Text: A Useful Tool for Actors and Directors

Brown University. Began his professional career as an actor in five Broadway plays, a dozen roles for the American and New York Shakespeare Festivals, in regional theatres across the country, and in many filmed and live television dramas. He began directing on Broadway with “The Great White Hope,” which won the Pulitzer, the Tony, and the Drama Critics Award. Among his other Broadway credits are “Rex,” “Sweet Bird of Youth,” “The Visit,” “Of Mice And Men,” “An Evening With Richard Nixon and friends...,” “First Monday In October,” “6 Rms Riv Vu,” “Find Your Way Home,” “Eccentricities of a Nightingale,” “Do You Turn Somersaults,” and “Prymate”. He directed many Off Broadway productions, as well as the award-winning London production of “A Streetcar Named Desire” and the N.Y. City Opera’s Cosi Fan Tutti. Among his numerous regional theatre credits is his mostrecent, an adaptation of Ibsen’s “Ghosts” at The Shakespeare Theatre, Washington, D.C.. He was Artistic Director for the Hartman Theater, Stamford, Connecticut; Associate Producing Director,Arena Stage, Washington, D.C.; Director, Theater School, Boston University; and Artist-in-Residence, Florida State University. He has directed feature films, television movies and hour-long episodic dramas including Law and Order, where for nearly a decade he was Executive Producer. He currently serves as Vice-President, Directors Guild of America and is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. He is a fellow of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre. He has received an Emmy Award, a Tony nomination, New England Theatre Award, N.Y. Drama Critics Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Circle Award, L.A. Drama Circle Award, London Evening Standard Citation, Theatre World Award, The Producers Guild of America Award, The Robert Aldridge Award, and The Crystal Apple for distinguished service to the city of New York. He is married to the actress and activist Jane Alexander. SLC, 2007-

Stuart Spencer

Courses: Playwriting Techniques, Spencer Workshop

B.A., Lawrence University. Author of numerous plays performed in New York and around the country, including Resident Alien (Broadway Play Publishing). Other plays include In the Western Garden (Broadway Play Publishing), Blue Stars (Best American Short Plays of 1993-1994), and Sudden Devotion (Broadway Play Publishing). A playwriting textbook, The Playwright’s Guidebook, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2002. Recent plays are Alabaster City, commissioned by South Coast Rep, and Judy Garland Died for Your Sins. Former literary manager of Ensemble Studio Theatre; fellow, the Edward Albee Foundation; member, Dramatist Guild. SLC, 1991-

Sterling Swann

Courses: Advanced Stage Combat, Breathing Coordination for the Performer, Building a Vocal Technique, Introduction to Stage Combat

B.A., Vassar College. Postgraduate training at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), Sonia Moore Studio, and with David Kaplan (author, Five Approaches to Acting); president and artistic director, Cygnet Productions, national Equity Theatre for Young Audiences company; leading performer, Boston Shakespeare Company; guest faculty at Storm King School, Western Connecticut State University, Vassar College; advanced actor/combatant, Society of American Fight Directors (SAFD); winner of the Society of American Fight Directors’ 2006 Patrick Craen Award; designated practitioner, Stough Institute of Breathing Coordination; certified teacher, Alexander Technique. SLC, 1991-

Lucy Thurber

Courses: Face The Blank Page

Author of seven plays: Where We’re Born, Ashville, Scarcity, Killers and Other Family, Stay, Bottom of the World, and Monstrosity. The Atlantic Theater Company opened its 2007-08 season with Scarcity. Rattlestick Playwrights Theater produced Where We’re Born, Killers and Other Family, and Stay. Bottom of The World was commissioned by Women’s Expressive Theater, Inc. Monstrosity was workshopped by Encore Theatre Company (San Francisco) and Williamstown Theatre Festival. Recipient of the 2000-2001 Manhattan Theatre Club Playwriting Fellowship and was a guest artist at the Perseverance Theatre. Reading and workshops held at Manhattan Theatre Club, the New Group, Primary Stages, MCC Theater, PlayPenn, New River Dramatists, Tribeca Theater Festival, Eugene O’Neill, the Public Theater, and Soho Rep. Playwright in residence at the Orchard Project, summer 2007. Play Dinner is published in Not So Sweet, a collection of plays from Soho Rep’s Summer Camp. Scarcity was published in the December 2007 issue of American Theatre. A member of New Dramatists, 13P, MCC Playwrights Coalition, and Writers Group at Primary Stages. Published by Dramatists Play Service. Currently commissioned by Playwrights Horizons. SLC, 2008-