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New Members 2019

NTC is proud to introduce its newest members!

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ROBERT rAMIREZ
​(click here for bio)
Robert Ramirez has served as Voice and Text Director at the Guthrie Theatre, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Illinois Shakespeare Festival, American Players Theatre, Cleveland Playhouse, and will soon collaborate on a tri-production with Hartford Stage, the Huntington Theatre Company, and the Alley Theater. He has performed with the New York, Notre Dame, Utah, Illinois, Alabama, Great River, Baltimore, and Wisconsin Shakespeare Festivals, and Actors Theatre of Louisville. He has directed productions and staged readings for Austin Shakespeare, American Players Theatre and Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre and has been an acclaimed narrator of audiobooks for over 20 years, receiving numerous Golden Earphones Awards from Audiophile magazine. Robert is currently Interim Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin where he also serves as the head of the acting program. He is a graduate of the Los Angeles Theatre Academy and received his MFA from the Professional Theatre Training Program at the University of Delaware.  Robert is a proud member of Actors Equity, the Voice and Speech Trainers Association, and is the current Vice President of the University Resident Theater Association.
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MARYA SEA KAMINSKI 
​(click here for bio)
Marya Sea Kaminski is a director, writer, and producer based in Pittsburgh, where she serves as Artistic Director of Pittsburgh Public Theater. She centers her artistic and leadership practices in the values of integrity, imagination, and joy in order to create powerful creative experiences that both delight and challenge us to see ourselves and one another in new ways. Marya has been honored with the Genius Award in Theater from the Seattle newsweekly, The Stranger, and has been recognized as an Artist of the Year by Seattle Magazine. She has taught and lectured at Point Park University, Hollins University, the Univer­sity of Washington, and at Cornish College of the Arts, where she was awarded the Drama Department’s Award for Teaching.
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john ammerman
​(click here for bio)
JOHN AMMERMAN is a professional actor, director, playwright, and academic professor. He has been a professional performer for over forty years, and has performed more than 150 professional roles and directed over 50 plays. His solo career includes five One-Man plays
written and performed, the most recent being Booth, Brother Booth which appeared at the Globe Theatre in London, England and is featured in an anthology of his plays entitled Booth, Brother Booth and Other Plays. His most recent plays produced include The Tatischeff Café (full length mimodrama in tribute to the great Jacques Tati and narrated in French gibberish), Life Goes On (a mimodrama in the style of a Black and White silent film), Slapping Bernard (a play in the style of Black and White film noir), and a stage adaptation of Janes Austen’s Persuasion. In January 2020, his new play Barton Field will receive its premiere in Atlanta, Georgia. His directing credits include Woman and Scarecrow, Ah Wilderness, Oklahoma, The Enigma Variations, Romeo and Juliet, Measure For Measure, Hamlet, You Can’t Take It With
You, Uncle Vanya, Sumidagawa, The Playboy of the Western World, A Lie Of The Mind.  He has extended histories in performance and direction with both the Virginia Shakespeare Festival and the Georgia Shakespeare Festival including roles as Shylock, Macbeth, Hamlet, Richard III, Cyrano de Bergerac, Prospero, Jaques (AYLI), Sir Toby Belch, and Salieri in Amadeus. He is the founder and artistic director of The Refuge Theatre whose inaugural
production of Durrenmatt’s Conversation At Night With A Despised Character appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe Theatre Festival in 2014. He is a member of Actors Equity Association and is a recipient of the Suzi Bass Award (ATL) in acting for his portrayal of Sir Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons. He is a Full Professor in the Department of Theater Studies at Emory University for which he teaches movement, styles, scene study, and acting; he also serves as a resident Actor/Director with Theater Emory, a resident professional company where he also served as its artistic director. He holds an M.F.A. in Acting from the University of Georgia, and a B.S. in Drama Education from Central Michigan University. He is also a former student of the great French Mime, Marcel Marceau, as well as the legendary American mime Richmond Shepard.

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CHERYL FARAONE
​(click here for bio)
Cheryl Faraone is Mettler Professor of Theatre at Middlebury College, where she has taught since 1986. She is also Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies. Faraone is also a Founder and Coartistic Director for PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project), a New York based Off Broadway company affiliated with the College.  2019 marked PTP/NYC’s 13th season in NY, after 20 years in the Washington, D.C. area. As a director, professional work with PTP includes Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth,  Arcadia, Vinegar Tom, The After-Dinner Joke, Pentecost (with Richard Romagnoli), Serious Money, Territories, Lovesong of  the Electric Bear, Crave,, An Experiment with an Air Pump, Stanley and Mad Forest, among many others. For the Olney Theatre Center in Maryland she directed King of the Jews, The Real Thing and Anna Karenina. Her work at Middlebury College, where she is Mettler Professor of Theatre, includes 30+ productions, among them Men on Boats, Enron, American Sunrise/Sunset, Stupid Fucking Bird, Vampire, Vinegar Tom, As You Like It, Mad Forest, Good Woman of Setzuan, The 5 Hysterical Girls Theorem, Top Girls, Perfect Pie. She holds graduate and under graduate degrees from Catholic University’s Drama Department and Florida State University’s School of Theatre, and has been a member of SDC, ART/NY and the League of Washington Theatres. ​
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robert caisley
​(click here for bio)
Robert Caisley was born in Rotherham, England. His plays have been performed across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom and translated into Italian, French, Estonian and Spanish. He is Head of Dramatic Writing at the University of Idaho where he teaches courses in new play development, playwriting (at the undergraduate and graduate levels), play analysis and various topics in contemporary drama. He is a recipient of a 2015-’16 Fellowship in the Performing Arts from the Idaho Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the UI 2015 Excellence in Research and Creativity Award. He is a two-time alum playwright of the National New Play Network and former featured playwright at Seven Devils Playwrights Conference. He was named the 2011 Blaine Quarnstrom Visiting Playwright at the University of Southern Mississippi. His play Lucky Me has been produced by New Jersey Repertory Theatre, Curious Theatre in Denver, Riverside Theatre in Iowa City, 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa, CA, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, The Modern Theatre, Spokane, WA, Theatre Tallahassee in Florida, CAT Theatre in Richmond, VA, and enjoyed an NNPN Rolling World Premiere in the 2014-15 season. Lucky Me is currently touring with the Vana Baskini Teater in Estonia. His play Happy, first presented at the 2011 National New Play Network (NNPN) Annual Showcase of New Plays at InterACT Theatre in Philadelphia, was a 2012 Finalist for both the prestigious Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s New Play Conference and the Woodward/Newman Award for Drama at Bloomington Playwrights Project, and was selected for a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere in the 2012/2013 season at New Theatre (Miami, FL), Montana Repertory Theatre (Missoula, MT), 6th Street Playhouse (Santa Rosa, CA) New Jersey Repertory and Redtwist Theatre (Chicago, IL) where it was named by Chicago Magazine as of the “Nine Best Comedies” of the season. Happy was also nominated for a Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Best Original Script and won the 2014 SOTA Award for Best Play. It received its Spanish-language premiere this year at Teatro Milan in Mexico City, where it has been nominated for a 2018 theatre Billboard Award. Other plays include Kissing (New Theatre, Coral Gables, FL; Phoenix Theatre New Play Festival, Phoenix, AZ; 6th Street Playhouse), The Lake (RVC Studio Theatre, Rockford, IL; Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia; Mill Mountain Theatre, Roanoke, VA; Lavender Footlights Festival, Miami, FL), Push, The 22-Day Adagio (Mill Mountain Theatre, Roanoke, VA; London’s Royal Court Theatre, Summer Playwrights Program), Front (Sundance Institute’s Playwright’s Lab), Kite’s Book (RVC Studio Theatre, Rockford, IL; 6th Street Playhouse, Santa Rosa, CA), Letters to an Alien (optioned by Flying Eagle Films, Mad Horse Theatre, Portland, ME), Santa Fe (StageWorks/Hudson, New York, which was a Finalist for the 2004 Heideman Award from Actors Theatre of Louisville) and Winter which received its World Premiere at New Theatre in Miami in 2012 and was presented in 2014 at Playwrights Revolution at Sacramento’s Capital Stage. This past season he had two new plays premiered at the Clarence Brown Theatre (The Open Hand) and B Street Theatre in Sacramento, CA (A Masterpiece of Comic … Timing!) which have both been recently published by Samuel French, Inc. & Juliet was developed in residency at the Missoula Writers Colony with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Idaho Arts Commission, and received a developmental reading last year New Jersey Repertory Company, where it received its World Premiere in May 2017. & Juliet has just been nominated for a BroadwayWorld- New Jersey award for Best New Play.
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LESLIE ISHII
​(click here for bio)
Leslie Ishii (Director), newly appointed Artistic Director of Perseverance Theatre, Alaska, has directed at: Perseverance Theatre; East West Players; At Play: 99 Histories; UC, Irvine; USC; CSLA; Oregon Shakespeare Festival: API 2x2 Lab New Works Residency, Founder/Producer, Dramaturgy, FAIR Assistant Director Program Recipient; Native Voices, and where she began, Northwest Asian American Theatre. (Arts Education) East West Players; Cold Tofu Improvisation; LA Playback Theatre; Los Angeles Unified School District/Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce Project; Fitzmaurice Voicework; Center Theatre Group; American Conservatory Theatre; UC, Irvine, California State, Los Angeles; USC. (Actor) The Brothers Paranormal, Penumbra/Theatre Mu, Spring 2019; Broadway, Regional theatre and Film/Tv credits upon request. (National Scope) Co-Chair Steering Committee/Board Member: 5th and 6th Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists’ ConFest; National Cultural Navigation Theatre Project for the sustainability of artists and theatres of color; artEquity, core faculty working throughout the US with arts and culture organizations. (Affiliations & Awards) Arts For LA ACTIVATE; Los Angeles County Supervisors’ Cultural Equity Inclusion Initiative Work Groups; Founder/Director, National Cultural Navigation Theatre Project; James P. Shannon Leadership Institute; Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Integrity Award; Los Angeles County Teachers Making A Difference Award; SDC E/D/I Standout Moments, 2016, 2017. AEA, SAG-AFTRA, SDC.

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ALEXANDER GELMAN
​(click here for bio)
Alexander Gelman is a Russian-born and American-trained director, who received his training at Boston University. He has worked at American Repertory Theatre, Arena Stage Company, Canterbury Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Utah Opera, Ashlawn-Highland Music Festival, Chattanooga Opera Association, Hartford Stage Company, The Acting Company, New York Shakespeare Festival, Minneapolis Children’s Theatre, Emmy Gifford Theatre, and Juilliard. In addition to director of the School of Theatre and Dance at NIU, he also serves as the Producing Artistic Director of the Organic Theater Company.
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ANN M. SHANAHAN
​(click here for bio)
Ann M. Shanahan (MFA) is the chairperson of the Department of Theatre and Associate Professor of Directing at Purdue University. She joined the faculty in January 2019, coming from Loyola University Chicago where she taught for 19 years, during which time she served as Interim Director and Graduate Program Director of Women’s Studies and Gender Studies, Co-Chair of the Academic Council of the College of Arts and Sciences and as Humanities Representative to the University-wide Faculty Council.
Professor Shanahan’s is a scholar-artist specializing in theatre directing, with a focus on feminist directing and gender and theatrical space. Her recent publications include Landscapes of Consciousness: Meredith Monk, Robert Wilson and Richard Foreman, the 6th volume in a new series, Great North American Theatre Directors (Series Editor Jim Peck; Bloomsbury Methuen, forthcoming 2020); “Making Room(s): Staging Plays about Women and Houses” in Performing the Dream House: Space, Ritual and Images of Home, Eds. Emily Klein, Jen-Scott Mobley, and Jill Stevenson (Palgrave, 2019); “Pirated Pedagogy: Re-purposing Brecht’s Performance Techniques for Revolutions in Teaching” in New Directions in Teaching Theatre Arts, Eds. Anne Fliotsos and Gail Humphries (Palgrave, 2018); and “Teaching Maria Irene Fornés’s Fefu and Her Friends” in How to Teach a Play: Exercises for the University Classroom, Eds. Miriam Chirico and Kelly Younger, (Bloomsbury Methuen, 2019 forthcoming). Shanahan is the founding co-editor of the Peer-Reviewed Section of the SDC Journal, the official publication of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. Her essays are published in Theatre Topics, Theatre Journal, Partake: The Journal of Performance as Research, and SDC Journal. She served as Focus Group Representative for the Directing Focus Group at Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) 2014-16, and as the Vice President for Conference 2018, theme: “Theatres of Revolution: Performance, Pedagogy and Protest” (https://athe.site-ym.com/page/18_home).
Her professional directing credits include: Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (Room(s)), The Turn of the Screw (City Lit Theatre), Lies and Legends, Wasp, Warrior, The Living, and On Golden Pond (Buffalo Theatre Ensemble) and Drums in the Night (The Brecht Company). Shanahan has directed numerous productions at the university level, including: Machinal, Romeo and Juliet, A Doll’s House, Twelfth Night, The House of Bernarda Alba, The Trojan Women, Mansfield Park (original adaptation), Hedda Gabler, Our Country’s Good, Arcadia, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Mother Courage, The Crucible, Ghosts, Fefu and Her Friends, and Abingdon Square.
 
Along with members of the Gender Research Seminar at Loyola University Chicago, she is a founder of Room(s). Named for the central metaphor of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Room(s) provides spaces for interdisciplinary performance-based research related to women and gender. Prior to beginning her academic career, Shanahan was a member of the Brecht Company in Ann Arbor, MI from 1987-1992 and performed internationally in Stockholm and Prague with the American Drama Group and British Festival Theatre Company.  

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ROBERT RICHMOND
​(click here for bio)
Robert Richmond is originally from Hastings, England, and studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. He is currently a Professor at the University of South Carolina.
 
Robert is an Associate Artist at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. He has directed Henry VIII, Othello, Henry V, Twelfth Night, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Antony & Cleopatra, Timon of Athens, Macbeth, and Nell Gwynn . His association with the Folger also includes audio productions of the complete works of Shakespeare. These fully produced recordings are published by Simon & Schuster and accompany the Folger’s printed editions of the plays, all are available for download on iTunes, accompanied by an interactive app for iPad, and reach a global audience.
 
Prior to his position at USC Robert taught at New York University, Tisch School for the Arts, in the Classical Studio. For thirteen years he was the Associate Artistic Director for the Aquila Theatre Company and directed over forty shows and administered twenty-four tours across the nation and Europe. His work is known for its ability to reinvigorate theatre with imagination, innovation, and relevance. His mission is to create theatre that will sustain and transform the twenty-first century, revitalize audiences, and reward them for their patronage.
 
In 2016 Robert devised and directed the Gravediggers Tale for the Folger Theatre. Gravedigger’s Tale accompanied the national tour of the First Folio exhibition that celebrated the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare. The First Folio toured all fifty states in that year alongside the Gravediggers Tale, performed by actor Louis Butelli.
 
Robert’s upcoming projects include designing and creating a pop-up Globe Theatre, in partnership with University of South Carolina and Folger Theatre. This portable playhouse is will to tour the nation and beyond.
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