2025-26 Shakespeare Intensive Faculty

Leraldo Anzaldua

LERALDO ANZALDUA is a Houston,TX based Actor, and a Fight Director with the Society of American Fight Directors and choreographer with Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. Theatres include:  Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Houston Grand Opera, Alley Theatre Cardinal Stage and Indiana Repertory Theatre. He is a voiceover talent of over 100 characters with Sentai Filmworks including: Ken/ G-1 –Gatchaman;; Takashi- High School of the Dead; Halo Legends, Noda- Angel Beats, Kei Tsukishima – Haikyu!;Ryo Kurokiba – Food Wars! With Funimation: Largo – One Piece and many more. He has many titles currently on Netflix, Hulu and Cartoon Network/Adult Swim. He has been a motion capture performer and fight director with Sony Pictures in Tokyo, Japan. He has been a Motion Capture Fight Director & Talent for video games in Stockholm & Uppsala, Sweden.

He has received a Master’s Degree in Acting from the University of Houston. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Movement and Stage Combat with the Dept of Theatre, Drama & Contemporary Dance at Indiana University.    

Irwin Appel

Irwin is thrilled to return to Prague Shakespeare Company where he taught acting and directed the European premiere of his original adaptation of Shakespeare’s history plays, The Death of Kings: Seize the Crown at 2017’s PSC Summer Shakespeare Intensive. As an actor, director and composer/sound designer, he has worked with Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, the New York, Oregon, Utah, New Jersey and Colorado Shakespeare Festivals, The Acting Company, Theatre For a New Audience, Hartford Stage, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, PCPA, both the National Theatre Conservatory and Colorado New Play Summit at the Denver Center of the Performing Arts, the Bread Load Acting Ensemble, and other prominent regional theaters. Acting roles include: Prospero in The Tempest, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Falstaff in Merry Wives of Windsor, Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, Kent in King Lear, Macbeth in Kabuki Macbeth, Matt in Talley’s Folly, Stage Manager in Our Town, and the title roles in Richard III, Timon of Athens, and Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. He is Professor of Theater and Director of the BFA Actor Training Program at University of California Santa Barbara, where he is also founding artistic director of Naked Shakes, producing award-winning Shakespearean productions in California since 2006. He also has led workshops and lectured about Naked Shakes at the International Festival of Making Theater in Athens, Greece, the International Platform for Performer Training in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Institutes of English and American Studies at the Universities of Gdansk and Warsaw in Poland, as well as the Shakespeare Theatre of Gdansk. He is a graduate of Princeton University and the Juilliard School. www.deathofkings.com.

Dani Bedau

Dani Bedau (she/her/hers) is a theatre artist, facilitator, and educator. She is Associate Professor and Head of Youth Theatre in the School of Theatre, Television, and Film at San Diego State University. Dani has directed, written and devised many plays. She has also co-authored several articles that have been published. Dani specializes in teaching and directing Shakespeare. She has directed Shakespeare at Indiana Repertory Theatre, Shakespeare Center/LA, and Prague Shakespeare Company (to name a few). Dani creates theatre programs and plays that facilitate conversations across social distance such as race, sexual orientation, gender identity, faith and class. Over the last nearly 30 years, these programs have included; Will Power to Youth, for Shakespeare Center/Los Angeles, Speak to Me, for the Mark Taper Forum and Compassion Plays for Western Justice Center. She is currently working on a musical adaptation of James Brandon’s novel, Ziggy, Stardust & Me, a queer love story. Dani is committed to creating brave spaces for learning and art-making, providing leadership opportunities for young artists, and doing her part, imperfectly, to dismantle hierarchies and end white supremacy.

Eva Bellefeuille

Eva was born in the Czech Republic and graduated from the Prague Drama Academy (DAMU). Since then she has done work as a stage and costume designer for Divadlo Rokoko in Prague, and worked extensively for other theatres around the Czech Republic including theatres in Hradec Kralove, Cheb, Ostrava and Karlovy Vary. Eva has designed costumes and worked on Amadeus, Richard III, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Trojan War cycle at the Estates Theater for PSC. In addition to her stage work and work for TV and film, she does graphic design work and paints.

Nicolette Bethel 

Nicolette Bethel holds a BA (Hons) in Literature and French from the University of Toronto, and an MPhil and a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. She works at the University of The Bahamas. She serves as the Chair of the Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts and as President of Shakespeare in Paradise. She is also President of the Shakespeare Theatre Association (an international association of Shakespeare-producing theatres).

She was born and raised in Nassau, Bahamas. She has lived, studied and worked in the UK and Canada. She was a United World College scholar at Lester B. Pearson College, Victoria, BC, and later returned as a teacher of English and Anthropology (1995-2000). She served as Director of Culture for the Bahamas for five years (2003-2008). She is co-founder of the Shakespeare in Paradise theatre festival (est. 2009) and Ringplay Productions theatre company (est. 2001). She was the founder and editor-in-chief of tongues of the ocean, an online literary journal (2009-2014). She is a playwright, poet, fiction writer, anthropologist and theatre director. In 2015, she was short-listed for the Hollick Arvon Prize in Poetry of the Bocas Literary Festival, and her submissions have been featured in Thicker than Water (Peekash, 2018). Other publications have appeared in Social Identities, The Oxford and Cambridge May Anthologies 1993, The Caribbean Writer, Calabash, The Caribbean Review of Books, Poui, sx: Small Axe Salon, Caribbean Quarterly, New West Indian Guide, and International Journal of Bahamian Studies, among other places. In 2010 her first poetry chapbook, Mama Lily and the Dead was published by Poinciana Paper Press; her second chapbook, Lent/Elegies, was published by the A Place Without Dust Nanopress in 2011, and in 2015 a third collection of poems was published in If, a publication designed to accompany the installation of the same name in Transforming Spaces 2015. 

With Shakespeare in Paradise, in 2018 she established the Short Tales incubator, a place for the development of new Bahamian playwrights, directors and actors, now in its seventh year. She has served as editor of numerous collections of original Bahamian short plays: Short Tales Vol. I (Shakespeare in Paradise, 2018) Short Tales 2019 Vol. 2, (Shakespeare in Paradise, 2019), Short Tales 2020 Vol. 3 (Shakespeare in Paradise, 2021), Short Tales 2022 Vol. 4 (Shakespeare in Paradise, 2024), Short Tales 2023 Vol. 5 and Short Tales 2024 Vol. 6 (Shakespeare in Paradise, in production). In honour of the Fiftieth Anniversary of Bahamian independence, Shakespeare in Paradise mounted A Year of Bahamian Theatre—one play per month by a different Bahamian playwright for thirteen months (October 2022-October 2023).

In January 2023, led by Nicolette, Shakespeare in Paradise hosted the Shakespeare Theatre Association Conference in Nassau, and that year she took up the reins as President of the Shakespeare Theatre Association, a position she held until January 2025. In the summer of 2025, Shakespeare in Paradise was invited to present at the Globe Theatre, London, and at the Prague Shakespeare Summer Intensive. 

She lives in Nassau with her husband, Philip Burrows, a theatre director.

Nancy Bishop

Nancy Bishop, CSA, is an American born Emmy-nominated casting director working internationally with active offices in both London and Prague. She was the founder and first president of the CSA European Branch. She has been retained as a casting director by dozens of major producers and directors. Recent credits include Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, and Netflix’s The Liberator. She is currently working on Amazon’s Wheel of Time, among many other projects. Notable past credits include Mission Impossible IV, Snowpiercer and The Romanoffs. Beginning as a theatre director in Chicago, she moved to Prague shortly after the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. Appointed as artistic director of an English language theatre company, she began to help US and European producers and directors with location casting requests, which developed into an international casting and she opened the London office. Expanding on this she started to give seminars on the process and demands of casting and auditioning for actors in the internet era. Now having taught classes from Rio de Janeiro to Moscow, she has written two books on auditioning, the most recent published by Bloomsbury: “Auditioning for Film and TV.” She is also the founder of the Acting for Film Program at the Prague Film School. She also is a member of BAFTA, The Television Academy, CDG (The Casting Directors Guild of Great Britain,) ICDN, International Casting Directors Network, and the European Film Academy. 

Nari Blair-Mangat

Nari has a strong array of theatre credits working with some of Britain’s most revered actors, writers and directors. In November 2019, he originated the role of Valvert in Martin Crimp’s new adaptation of Cyrano De Bergerac, directed by Jamie Lloyd and starring James McAvoy. Nari won Best Supporting Male Actor in a Play at the Black British Theatre Awards for this role. The production also won Best Revival at the Olivier Awards and was filmed and broadcast to cinemas globally via National Theatre Live. 
Nari performed in the original cast of the West End and NYC smash hit show People, Places and Things written by Duncan Macmillan, directed by Jeremy Herrin and starring Denise Gough. He was the recipient of an Ian Charleson Award commendation for his performance in the critically acclaimed production of Macbeth for the Manchester International Festival, directed by Kenneth Branagh and Rob Ashford. The production subsequently transferred to NYC’s Park Avenue Armory and a film is available via the National Theatre Live catalogue. Nari has played the lead role in Shakespeare’s Othello several times at different stages of his career; at drama school, in London’s West End, and most recently with the Prague Shakespeare Company.
His screen credits include Spectre, directed by Sam Mendes, Disney’s Cinderella, Murder On The Orient Express, Death on The Nile and a guest spot on the TV series Temple. He is also known for playing the lead role of Billy Laidlaw in the BAFTA award winning online football video game, I Am Playr.

Stephen Burdman

Stephen Burdman founded New York Classical Theatre in 2000 and is the vision behind the creation of Panoramic Theatre. Originally from Los Angeles, he earned a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and planned to become a doctor. During college, Stephen auditioned for a production of Hamlet, and discovered his passion for Shakespeare. That experience completely changed the course of his life. Stephen founded NY Classical to give all people the chance to discover classical masterpieces as he did.

Stephen has directed over half of the Shakespearean canon. To date, he has helmed 38 productions for NY Classical. Some of his favorites include: Henry IV (Parts 1 & 2), Cymbeline (performed by 7 actors), The Importance of Being Earnest (Two-Ways), Romeo & Juliet (6 actors), The Rivals, The Winter’s Tale, Measure for Measure, The Seagull, A {15-Min!} Christmas Carol, Playing Moliere, Henry V (in The Battery and, via ferry boat, Governors Island), Hamlet, King Lear, Misalliance, Mary Stuart, Scapin, and The Triumph of Love.

Stephen attended the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and later received an MFA in Theatre Directing from the University of California, Irvine. In 1989, he was selected to participate in the first young theatre artist exchange with the (former) Soviet Union and has been a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society since 1994.

Stephen received the 2022 Sidney Berger award from the Shakespeare Theatre Association for outstanding talent and commitment to the works of William Shakespeare. He has also been a panelist with the National Endowment for the Arts, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, The Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York, and the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation.

He lives in Central Harlem with his wife, Adena, and son, Zeke.

Katherine Steele Brokaw

Katherine Steele Brokaw is co-founder of Shakespeare in Yosemite and Chair of Literature and Languages at University of California, Merced. Professor Brokaw researches and produces community performance and eco-theatre. She acts, directs, and dramaturges in California’s Central Valley and around the world. 

She is the author of Staging Harmony: Music and Religious Change in Late Medieval Early English Drama (Cornell University Press, 2016), which won the David Bevington Award for best new book in early English drama studies, and the author of several articles about Shakespeare in performance. And, she is the editor of the Arden Performance Edition of Macbeth (Bloomsbury, 2019). She is currently writing a book on Shakespeare in community performance, and several articles on Shakespeare and eco-theatre.  

Philip A. Burrows

Phillip Burrows  (Director/Teacher/Actor/Playwright) is a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. He was the Artistic and Resident Director of the Dundas Repertory Season from its beginning in 1981 through 1997, and has served as Artistic Director of Ringplay Productions (2001-present) and Shakespeare in Paradise (2009-present). Mr. Burrows left The Bahamas in 1997 to introduce and teach a Theatre Arts program at Lester B. Pearson UnitedWorld College in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and upon his return to The Bahamas in 2000, became a founder of Ringplay Productions.

Some of his directing credits include Sweeney Todd, The Rimers of Eldritch, The Good Doctor, The Foreigner, Agnesof God and Six Degrees of Separation. In addition, he brought over thirty original works to the Bahamian stage, mostnotably You Can Lead a Horse to Water (Winston Saunders), No Seeds in Babylon (Ian Strachan), Powercut (NicoletteBethel), Father’s Day (Jeanne I. Thompson), I, Nehemiah, Remember When…, Chapters One, Two and Three(Winston Saunders), The Children’s Teeth (Nicolette Bethel), Thessalonicus (Patrick Rahming) and Mister Speaker(Patrick Rahming). In August 1991, he headed a contingent of some thirty performers which took part in theEdinburgh Festival Fringe where, under his direction, the first production of Music of the Bahamas was staged. Thatproduction was co-written for the stage by Mr. Burrows and his wife, Nicolette Bethel.

As an actor, he has appeared in Edward Albee’s Zoo Story Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple and Lyle Kessler’s Orphansin Nassau; and in New York, he played, among others, the role of ‘Alton’ in Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in SidneyBrustein’s Window. His first appearance at the Dundas was in 1976 as a member of the Nassau Amateur OperaticSociety in Hello, Dolly! and then in 1977 he appeared in their production of Finian’s Rainbow. He later put hismusical ability to work as co-director of E. Clement Bethel’s Sammie Swain and of the first Bahamian opera, OurBoys; of the latter he was also responsible, with Winston Saunders, for the libretto. He wrote the book and co-wrotethe script for the original Bahamian Musical Der Real Ting, and directed First Comes Mourning by J. Ben Hepburnand Patrice Francis.

On a national level, he has directed five Cacique Awards Ceremonies for the Ministry of Tourism, and wrote anddirected Bahamian Rhapsody which was performed at The Apollo Theatre in New York City in 2004. He has beenco-director and director of numerous Independence productions staged on Clifford Park, most notably the 20^th, 25^th,30^th and 50^th celebrations. In 1992, Mr. Burrows directed the Columbus Landfall Reenactment in San Salvador, aproduction that was carried live by CNN and ABC. He served as Artistic Director for the Bahamian contingent to theCaribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA) in 2006 (Trinidad) and 2008 (Guyana), and has produced and directedopening ceremonies for the naming of the Lynden Pindling International Airport and for the Caribbean Tourism Conference in 2006 in Freeport, Grand Bahama. More recently, he served as director of the Ninetieth Birthday Celebration of Sir Sidney Poitier as well as for the Sir Sidney Poitier Memorial Celebration.

Internationally, Mr. Burrows has directed productions of Them and Single Seven in Barbados in 1981; You Can LeadA Horse to Water in San Francisco for the Eureka Theatre Company in 1984, working alongside co-director RichardSeyd and dramaturg Oskar Eustis; for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1991; in 2005 at Grand Valley StateUniversity, Michigan, with students from that institution; and in 2006 in Trinidad and Tobago. In 2008, he directedthe presentation of The Children’s Teeth in Guyana, and in 2015 and 2019 he presented his production of SizweBansi is Dead in Cayman and Michigan respectively. As a member of the Shakespeare Theatre Association, hemade presentations at the Globe Theatre in London and at the Prague Shakespeare Company Summer Intensive inPrague in the summer of 2024. He is scheduled to co-direct Macbeth, with Nicolette Bethel, at the SummerIntensive in June and July 2025.

In 1994, he served as Music and Dance Curator for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. In this capacity, he travelled throughout The Bahamas researching and identifying Bahamian tradition bearers in the areas of sacred and secular music and dance. At the Folklife Festival, he presented these tradition bearers to audiences on the Mall in Washington as part of the Secular Tent.

Since 1985, Mr. Burrows as served intermittently as Drama Adjudicator for the National Arts Festival (later the E. Clement Bethel National Arts Festival), working with E. Clement Bethel, Kayla Lockhart-Edwards, Patricia Bazard, Keva Cartwright and Sonovia Pierre. He is the longest-serving adjudicator for that festival, and has travelled to every island in The Bahamas.

He is co-founder and Artistic Director of Ringplay Productions and of the Shakespeare in Paradise theatre festivalheld in Nassau, Bahamas during October. He has served as the Manager, the Artistic Director, Board Member, Co-Chair and Chair of the Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts. Through his work as artistic director, he has trainedand inspired four generations of Bahamian actors and directors. In 2014, he designed and created the black boxtheatre at the Dundas, which was later named in his honour. Over the past ten years, the Philip A. Burrows Black Boxhas been a site of new and experimental Bahamian works.

In 2022-2023, Mr. Burrows, along with the executive team of Shakespeare in Paradise, mounted A Year of Bahamian Theatre, thirteen months of original Bahamian plays by different Bahamian playwrights. During this year, Shakespeare in Paradise produced sixteen plays by fifteen Bahamian authors with fourteen Bahamian directors, many of them new.

In recent years, Mr. Burrows has added playwriting to his repertoire. While he has always contributed scripts to awards shows, musicals and operas, he originated and co-wrote the script of Der Real Ting (2018), and in 2021, he devised and wrote Competent Authority, a look at COVID-19 in TheBahamas. In 2024, his original play Ralphie’s Barbershop premiered during the Ringplay Season, alongside ThePrivate Memoirs of Five Bahamian Men, co-written by Nicolette Bethel. He has been at the helm of numerous other productions, contributing to Junkanoo in Paradise (with Patrice Francis), and Bahamas Experience (with Fred Ferguson).

Film and television credits include Quincentennial Update; the Bahamian game show Brainstorm, of which he was creator and executive producer; the television program Guess Who’s Cooking of which he was director, co-producer and editor; he served as producer for the video productions of Music of The Bahamas, The National Art Gallery… A Work of Art and The Bahamian Macbeth, and he has directed numerous commercials. Throughout his career,Mr. Burrows has held acting workshops both in Nassau and in Freeport, and in October of 2001 he made his film-directing debut with Plantation Pictures’ production of the Bahamian film Powercut. He followed that up with his direction of the documentary When a Man Dreams Dreams.

In 2022, Mr. Burrows’ contribution to Bahamian theatre was recognized by the nation when he was named an Officerof the Order of Merit. In addition, in 2016 he received a Bahamian Icon in recognition of his contribution to theatre.In all, Mr. Burrows has been responsible for the direction of over one hundred theatrical productions. He has trainedand mentored hundreds of Bahamian actors, directors, builders, designers and technical personnel. In the absence offormal training available in The Bahamas, Mr. Burrows has been the wellspring building the capacity of Bahamiantheatre.

Debra Ann Byrd

DEBRA ANN BYRD is an award winning classically trained actress and producer who recently was named Writer-in-Residence at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Artist-in-Residence Fellow at the Folger Institute, a Community Scholar Arts Fellow at Columbia University, and Artist-in-Residence at Southwest Shakespeare, where she recently reprised the role Othello, winning her the 2019 Broadway World Phoenix Award for Best Lead Actress. She is the Founding Artistic Director of the Harlem Shakespeare Festival and an emerging playwright, who recently completed her new solo show BECOMING OTHELLO: A Black Girl’s Journey.  As the Founder and Producing Artistic Director of Take Wing And Soar Productions and the Harlem Shakespeare Festival, she guided the company’s growth from its birth as the passionate dream of one determined woman, into a viable support organization serving classical artists of color and theater arts groups throughout New York. Debra Ann received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Acting from Marymount Manhattan College and completed advanced studies at The Public Theater’s Shakespeare Lab, Shakespeare & Company and The Broadway League’s Commercial Theatre Institute. Her classical roles for the stage include Queen Elizabeth in Richard III, The Choragos in Antigone, Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals, Volumnia in Coriolanus, Winter in Love’s Labors Lost, Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Cleopatra in Antony & Cleopatra, Othello in The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice, Marc Antony in the all-female production of Julius Caesar and Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest; the latter, for which she received Best Lead Actress and Outstanding Actress in a Lead Role nominations from AUDELCO and the NY Innovative Theatre Awards. Byrd’s career as an actor, producer, arts manager and business leader has been recognized with more than 20 awards and citations, including the NAACP Shirley Farmer Woman of Excellence Award, the LPTW (League Lucille Lortel Award, and the Josephine Abady Award for Excellence in “Producing works that foster diversity.”

Thomas Chaanhing

Thomas Chaanhing is a Danish actor based in Sweden. His long career acting started onstage with Miss Saigon in and continues on stage, film and TV in the Scandinavian, English and Chinese markets. International productions include Netflix’s Marco Polo and Amazon Prime’s White Dragon among others. He has also been seen on TV recently in Strangers, 30° I februari, Spegelvänd, Chimerica, Agatha and the Midnight Murders, De utvalda and the upcoming Gabriel Klint among numerous others. Thomas leads workshops on the do’s and don’ts of self tapes, how to make strong acting choices based on script analysis and acting technique using the Ivana Chubbuck technique. 

Laura Cole

Laura is very pleased to be returning as an actor and teacher with the Prague Shakespeare Company. She made her PSC Debut in 2018 in Julius Caesar. Atlanta Georgia is her home where she is the Director of Education and Training for the Atlanta Shakespeare Company at the Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse. She is a professional actor, director, choreographer and teacher of students from four years old to professional actor level. Laura has acted in almost every play written by Shakespeare, only lacking roles in Measure For Measure, Titus Andronicus, Henry V, Richard II, Merchant of Venice, Pericles, The Tempest, Two Gentlemen of Verona and Two Noble Kinsmen. She has choreographed some Much Ado’s and Midsummers, a Pericles, and has directed Merchant, Tempest, R&J, Othello, Loves Labours Lost, Two Gents, McB, and Twelfth Night. Other credits include: International- Prague Shakespeare- Julius Caesar, Off-Broadway- New York Classical Theatre- Twelfth Night. Roles at ASC-Elizabeth in RIII, Cleopatra, Lady Hotspur, Lady Capulet, Mrs. Ford, Lady McB, Hermione, Margaret in RIII and HVI 1,2, Cassandra in T&C, Titania, Kate, Rosalind, Audrey, Beatrice, Viola, Luciana, Adriana, Emelia, Katherine of Aragon, Countess in All’s Well, Ensemble in Timon of Athens, Constance in King John, Regan in Lear, Rosaline and Maria in LLL, and even a 10 minute play of the Dark Lady cycle of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Mephistopheles in a two person Dr. Faustus, Isabella in Edward II. The Duchess in The Duchess of Malfi, (Resurgens) Rapture Blister Burn, (Out of Box), A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur, Arcadia-US (Alliance Theatre) As Bees In Honey Drown, (Actor’s Express) The Canterbury Tales, (Theatre Gael); God of Vengeance (7 Stages/ Jewish Theatre of the South) Death of A Salesman, Garden of Riki Tiki Tavi, (Theatre In the Square) Power Lunch, Girls Guide to Chaos (Art Attack) She is a proud graduate of Northwestern University, with a degree in acting and a minor in choreography. She loves her husband Joe, her pup Tay, her dear nieces Lili and Lucy and her home and garden in Atlanta. 

Swati Das

After completing her M.Phil. thesis on the changes witnessed by ‘Bhavai’, one of the folk theatre forms of India, Swati decided to change track from academics to performance. Having finished a full year’s theatre training in Delhi, Swati moved to Mumbai in 2011 to pursue a career in acting. Since then she has acted in many plays in multiple languages.One of her longest running plays has been ‘The Vagina Monologues’. She has also been part of a 5 year long Indo-Swedish theatre collaboration with Uppsala and Stockholm based company ‘Bananteatern’. Her recent stage performances include William Shakespeare’s  ‘King Lear’ and ‘The Taming of The Shrew’, as well as Mahesh Dattani’s  ‘Snapshots of a Fervid Sunrise’. Apart from many short films, Swati has acted in Bollywood movies ‘Bombay Talkies’ (2013) ‘Hindi Medium’ (2017), ‘Beyond The Clouds’ (2018) and ‘Jayeshbhai Jordaar’ (2021, upcoming) . She has also acted in Indo-American collaborative feature films ‘Space MOMs’ (2019) and ‘Desert Dolphin’ (2021, upcoming). She has written for a television series titled ‘Yeh Hai India Meri Jaan’ which was aired on the national broadcasting channel Doordarshan. She wrote the screenplay for ‘Grill’, which won the best short film award at the Indian Film Festival of Boston. She is also the writer of the upcoming Bollywood short film ‘Anaarkali’. Swati completed the Summer Shakespeare Intensive with Prague Shakespeare Company in 2019.

Matthew Radford Davies

Matt Davies is an Associate Professor in the MLitt/MFA Shakespeare and Performance program at Mary Baldwin and a professional actor and director of twenty years standing in the UK and the US. An associate director of renowned Shakespeare company Actors From The London Stage, Matt has been touring the States since 1999. He began his graduate studies at UT Austin in 2004 and defended his Ph.D dissertation in the summer of 2012. Earning three fellowships and a graduate teaching award while at UT, Matt also continued working professionally in the city’s vibrant theater community. Alongside UK national acting awards for two new works, Our Boys and Misconceptions, Matt has received numerous B. Iden Payne and Critics Circle awards and nominations for his classical work for Texas theater companies Austin Shakespeare, Hidden Room, and the Chekhov-based Breaking String, of which he is a founding member. Matt has directed both the classics and new works in London, Glasgow, Houston, and Austin. In Prague Matt appeared as Bolingbroke in Richard II as part of the 2018 Summer Shakespeare Intensive. 

Suzanne Dean

Suzanne Dean is an Actress, Director and Producer. She is the Associate Artistic Director for Los Angeles based Shakespeare by the Sea, Co- Founder of Little Fish Theatre, co- creator of the We Are Shakespeare Digital Video Festival, and is the owner of Rebelfilm Productions LLC – a film & video company. She has been involved in Film and Video for over 25 years and is EMMY nominated for her Commercial work, having managed over 120 spots and produces film budgets ranging from $50k- $10M. As a Theatre Producer & Director, she has overseen more than 175 stage productions including an annual New Works Festival of Short Plays, live events on all scales – from large touring productions, to intimate black box performances, public Pop-Up events, and created Pub Shakespeare. As an Actress, she has extensive experience in Noel Coward, Tennessee Williams, Harold Pinter, and Shakespeare – having performed leading roles in 20 of his plays, some multiple times. She is an active member of SAG/AFTRA, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Women in Film, Shakespeare Theatre Association, LA Stage Alliance, Theatrical Producers League of Los Angeles, SF FILM, and Theatre Bay Area. She is a recurring Guest Artist/ Director with Prague Shakespeare Company and Arabian Shakespeare Festival. 

Lue Douthit

During her 25 years at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Douthit oversaw a full service literary department as Director of Literary Development and Dramaturgy. Play on! began in 2012 as a pilot program under her supervision. She was the Production Dramaturg for more than 50 productions, including 15 world premieres and over two dozen Shakespeare productions. In 2009, she was the co-producer and co-founder of the Black Swan Lab for new play development at OSF which she ran until 2016. In 2019, she co-founded Play on Shakespeare, which carries forward the Shakespeare translation work began at OSF.Douthit is the recipient of the 1999 Literary Manager & Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) Prize in Dramaturgy: The Elliott Hayes Award. She received a PhD at the University of Washington, an MFA from Trinity University, and an MA from University of Arizona.

Markéta Fantová

Markéta Fantová is a scenic, lighting and costume designer for theatre, dance, and performance art. She has worked in theatres, galleries and visually inspiring sites in both the United States and Europe. Her costume and set designs were included in the USITT-USA PQ National Exhibit (2007) and World Stage Design Exhibit in Seoul, South Korea (2009). She is currently living in Prague, Czech Republic, where she is holding the position of Artistic Director of the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. n New York, she was set and lighting designer for the Off-Broadway world premier of Tiny Bubbles, with New Directions Theatre (2012). She has designed for UnderMain Theatre, Circle Theatre, Kitchen Dog Theatre and Water Tower Theatre, all in Dallas-Forth Worth. Ms. Fantova was a guest artist at The Ohio State University, University of Toledo, Texas State University and Baylor University. She has worked in collaboration with dynamic artists and choreographers on numerous performance projects and dance works including Angier Performance Works: Paper III, a site specific performance art piece performed in Prague, Czech Republic; costumes for the performance installation Liminal exhibited in The Fosdick-Nelson Gallery, NY; and site adaptive installation performance pieces Waiting III and IV in the Random Room Gallery, Alfred, NY and Gem Hotel Gallery in New York City, Letter to the World series co-created with D. Chase Angier and Evelyne Leblanc-Roberge in Rochester, NY and set design for a production Children’s Hour and Lydie Breeze Trilogy at EgoPo Theatre in Philadelphia. Her current projects include collaboration with Prague Shakespeare Company: set design for Amadeus and Trojan War: An Ilaid, Troilus and Cressida and The Trojan Women in Theatre of the Estates in Prague, Czech Republic. Besides professional design work Marketa held several teaching positions starting as an assistant professor at Texas Woman’s, visiting assistant professor at the University of North Texas; later an associate professor of Performance Design at Alfred University, NY where she received tenure. Two years before moving back to Czech Republic she led Performance Design at Rowan University. While teaching she had been an active member of USITT where she served as a Vice President of International Activities from 2011 to 2016, which included the work of an artistic director for the USITT-USA PQ Exhibition in 2015 and a member of the OISTAT organization.

Julie Fishell 

Julie Fishell is an award-winning teacher, actor and director and a distinguished graduate of The Juilliard Drama Division.  She has appeared Internationally, Off-Broadway and Regionally.  She most recently played Amanda in The Glass Menagerie at Indianapolis Repertory Theatre (2025).  Select roles include Amanda in Private Lives, Charlotte in The Real Thing, Annette in God of Carnage, Fraulein Schneider in Cabaret, Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Hannah/et al in Angels in America, Parts 1.&2., Winnie in Happy Days, Kate in All My Sons, Linda in Death of a Salesman, Prospero in The Tempest, Emilia in Othello, Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Richard II in The Death of Kings, Charlotte in A Little Night Music and Sara Jane Moore in Assassins. Professional Affiliations include Actor’s Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild and the National Alliance of Acting Teachers. Directing includes Hay Fever, Art, Tartuffe, Hedda Gabler, Dead Man Walking, Mad Forest, The Cherry Orchard, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Antigone, Translations, Urinetown, Mahagonny Songspiel, The Seven Deadly Sins. Upcoming Dancing at Lughnasa (2026). 

Ms. Fishell currently teaches in the B.F.A. acting program at UC-Santa Barbara. For twenty years, Julie was a resident company member of PlayMakers Repertory Company and distinguished faculty member of the Department of Dramatic Art at UNC-Chapel Hill (NC). Ms. Fishell is the Founding Director of the N.C. Women’s Prison Performance Project and has led numerous master classes and workshops for Los Angeles, New York, and North Carolina professional and student artists.  Notable awards: Michel and Suria St. Denis Prize from The Juilliard School; Tanner Award for Teaching Excellence and the Johnston Award for Excellence in Teaching from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Patrice Francis
Patrice Francis is an actor and playwright from Nassau, The Bahamas, the home of Shakespeare in Paradise (SIP). She has played various roles in  SIP productions including Nerissa in Merchant of Venice, Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, Maria in Twelfth Night and Gertrude in Hamlet.  In 2019, she appeared in two Prague Shakespeare Company’s (PSC) Shakespeare Summer Intensive (SSI) productions as Alonso in The Tempest and Nathaniel in Love’s Labours Lost. In the Spring of 2023, she played Metellus Cimber in PSC’s production of Julius Caesar and last Summer did double duty, first as Menelaus in Troilus and Cressida and then Hamlet #2 in a unique PSC SSI mounting of the Danish play. In Spring 2025, Patrice played Juror #9 in the Ringplay Repertory Season’s production of Twelve Angry Jurors at the Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts in Nassau, Bahamas. As a playwright, she particularly enjoys the art of 10-minute storytelling for the stage. A fabulist and guidance counselor, Patrice teaches drama and inspires strengths-based living at a high school in her home city. She is thrilled to return to PSC’s invigorating SSI as an actor and faculty member.

Linda Gates

Linda Gates is a voice and speech teacher, dialect coach, actress, director and author who has worked in Chicago, New York, regional theatre, England and Europe. As a voice and dialect coach, Linda Gates has worked both on and off-Broadway, in Chicago, regional theatre, opera and film. She recently coached the dialects for Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein at Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago and other theatre vocal coaching credits include Steppenwolf Theatre Company, The Goodman Theatre, Victory Gardens, Northlight, Marriott Lincolnshire, Apple Tree, The Court Theatre, Remy Bumppo, Writers Theatre, About Face and Lookingglass Theatre Company. She also works as an English Diction Coach for opera and she was the English Diction Coach for the Metropolitan Opera, coaching Placido Domingo in the The First Emperor and the new English language production of The Magic Flute. She has also coached at Lyric Opera of Chicago and Chicago Opera Theatre where she coached American opera singers to speak Shakespeare’s text for a new production of Belioz’s Beatrice and Benedick. Linda Gates has conducted vocal workshops for the Royal Shakespeare Company, VASTA, ATHE, and for the Pan European Voice Conferences in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the Czech Republic. Her book Voice for Performance is published by Limelight Editions and her new book Speaking Shakespeare’s Text: A Guide for the American Actor has just been published by Northwestern University Press. For Prague Shakespeare Company, Linda Gates co- directed Much Ado About Nothing with Kiara Pipino,. played Egeus, and in Lisa Wolpe’s gender flipped A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the Archbishop of Canterbuy in Richard III at the Prague Castle.  Chicago credits include: Hildegarden von Bingen in The Wisdom of Serpents, Vita Sackville West in Vita and Virginia, Native Tongues in Exile at Steppenwolf Theatre, Man and Superman at Remy Bumppo; Landscape and The Bay at Nice at Turnaround Theatre. British credits include: Sylvia Plath in her adaptation of The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath at the Oxford Playhouse. Regional Theatre credits include: I Hate Hamlet and Sunday in the Park With George at New American Theatre, Rockford, ILLes Liaison Dangereuses, Romeo and Juliet, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Beggar’s Opera, Romeo and Juliet, A Christmas Carol at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival; Lear, Yale Repertory Theatre; New York credits include The Thistle and the Rose, Eve of Retirement, and The Devil’s Disciple. Linda Gates is a Senior Lecturer and the Head of Voice in the Department of Theatre at Northwestern University. She has taught voice, speech and text at New York University’s Tisch SOA, Yale School of Drama, Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and was invited by the Hochschule fur Musik und Theater in Hamburg to teach Shakespeare’s text in English and taught voice for Shakespeare for the BADA Midsummer at Oxford program in England for over fifteen years. In addition, she has conducted vocal workshops for the Royal Shakespeare Company, VASTA, ATHE, and for the Pan European Voice Conferences in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the Czech Republic. Her book Voice for Performance is published by Limelight Editions and her new book Speaking In Shakespeare’s Voice: A Guide for the American Actor is being published by Northwestern University Press.) This is Linda Gates’ fourth season with Prague Shakespeare Company. Directing credits include: Much Ado About Nothing Prague Shakespeare Company; As Far As Thought Can Reach’ G.B.Shaw’s, The Stronger at Balliwick Theatre, Chicago, IL; Chicago Actors’ Equity Celebrates Shakespeare’s Birthday, As You Like It, Old Times, Illinois Repertory Theatre, White Lies, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, The Tempest, Vocal Director, Yale Repertory Theatre, Lysistrata, Under Milk Wood, Bernhard Arts Center, Bridgeport, CT. 

Ian Gould
Ian Gould is a New York City based actor, director, and scholar who has appeared in over 40 Shakespeareproductions, encompassing 26 plays in the canon. Off- Broadway: Henry IV, Romeo and Juliet, AMidsummer Night’s Dream, The Winter’s Tale, Measure for Measure (New York Classical Theatre);Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Hamlet, Macbeth, A Connecticut Yankee… (The ActingCompany); The Show-Off (Peccadillo Theatre Company); The Devil’s Disciple (Metropolitan Playhouse).Regional: The Guthrie Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, Shakespeare on the Sound, Shakespeare Theatreof New Jersey, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival, Great Lakes Theater, LunaStage, Kings County Shakespeare Company, MetroStage, New Harmony Theatre, The Public Theatre ofMaine. International: Shooter (Theatre Konstanz, Germany/TAK, Liechtenstein), Film and TV: “Off Book,”“Bad Actor”, “Law and Order: Criminal Intent.” Media: Love’s Labour’s Lost with Radio Shakespeare Laband The Winter’s Tale with Play On Shakespeare. He helped found the Bootleg Shakespeare series inWashington DC, an annual performance at the Folger Theatre, and appeared in productions of The TwoNoble Kinsmen, Henry VIII, and Cymbeline. He received an OOBR Award for his performance in the titlerole of Pericles. Ian served as an associate editor of the Barnes and Noble Shakespeare series,contributing textual editing and introductory essays, and contributed an essay to Staging Shakespeare’sViolence published by Pen and Sword History. Directing credits include The Comedy of Errors for GalleryPlayers and The Winter’s Tale for The Stella Adler Conservatory. He currently serves on the faculty of theNew York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts and as an Artistic Associate at New York Classical Theatre and,in 2024, joined an international directors’ cohort at Shakespeare’s Globe. In 2025 he served as a judge forthe finals of the English-Speaking Union’s National Shakespeare Competition at Lincoln Center. Training:MFA, Shakespeare Theatre Company Academy, BFA, NYU/Tisch. AEA, SAG-AFTRA.

Gregory Gudgeon

Gregory trained at Webber Douglas in London and Jaques Lecoq in Paris, and lives in C esky Krumlov & Brighton, England. For PSC: Puppet King Richard II (also Brighton Fringe), Troilus & Cressida, Deaf Empire, Winter’s Tale, Julius Caesar & Twelfth Night. In UK: A Midsummer Night’s Dream & Monsieur Popular (Theatre Royal Bath), Jefferson’s Garden & Time of My Life (Watford Palace Theatre); Wendy and Peter Pan (Royal Shake-speare Company);Travels With My Aunt (Menier Chocolate Factory); Blue Remembered Hills (Chichester); Sleeping Beauty (Birmingham Rep); 5 seasons at Shakespeare’s Globe including Touchstone in As You Like It; and Zazu in the original London cast of The Lion King. Recent film & tv: The Letter For The King (Anglo-Czech), A Boy Called Christ-mas, Carnival Row (Legendary Pictures); Interlude In Prague (Stillking); Genius (Fox/National Geographic). Writing/directing: adaption of Franz Kafka’s Amerika for Prague Shakespeare Company.

Jim Helsinger  

Jim is the Artistic Director of Orlando Shakespeare Theater in Partnership with UCF (30th season), at the John and Rita Lowndes Shakespeare Center in downtown Orlando, Florida. For Orlando Shakes, he has directed productions of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (named in the top 10 productions in regional theatre by the Wall Street Journal), Hamlet, Gertrude and Claudius, Titus Andronicus, Cymbeline, Tartuffe, Richard III, Crime and Punishment, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge, All’s Well that Ends Well, Every Christmas Story Ever Told, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and others. Other regional directing credits include Actor’s Theatre of Louisville (The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged, A Tuna Christmas), Florida Studio Theatre (The Mystery of Irma Vep, Good Evening), Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival (The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, The Foreigner, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Imaginary Invalid, Sleuth), Colorado Shakespeare Festival (Much Ado About Nothing, Cymbeline) Cape May Stage (Stones in His Pockets, The Big Bang, The Fourposter), Florida Repertory Theatre and The Actor’s Playhouse (The 39 Steps), and Flatrock Playhouse (The Hound of the Baskervilles).  As an actor, he has performed Off-Broadway in The Death and Life of Sherlock Holmes, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Contrast; and regionally in the title roles of Cyrano de Bergerac, Hamlet, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, Dracula, and Henry V. Television credits include From the Earth to the Moon; Sheena, Queen of the Jungle; Noah Knows Best; and Mortal Kombat. As a playwright, his work includes Robinson Crusoe; A Christmas Carol in Five Parts; Dracula: the Journal of Jonathan Harker; Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus; and The Trial of Joan the Maid.  He is a member of Actor’s Equity Association, Screen Actor’s Guild-American Federation of Radio and Television Artists, National Theatre Conference, The National New Play Network, is a past president of the Shakespeare Theatre Association, a recipient of the Sydney Berger Award for outstanding talent and dedication to the works of William Shakespeare, and a two-time winner of the “50 Most Powerful People in Orlando” award from Orlando Magazine. He also serves as a teacher and faculty member at the University of Central Florida. He holds a BA from Miami University (Ohio) and an MFA from the Alabama Shakespeare Festival/University of Alabama Professional Actor Training Program. 

Jovanna Hepburn

Jovanna Hepburn is an actor, playwright, director, who has studied in The United States and Europe, and holds degrees in Fine Arts.  Jovanna is a lifetime member of The Actors Studio and also a former Drama Adjudicator for The E. Clement Bethel National Arts Festival (The Bahamas).  

Hepburn was last seen on stage internationally, as Mrs. Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor in Prague and in Hamlet in Venice both during PSC’s Summer Season 2024.  In The Bahamas, where she calls home, her most recent roles include Horatio, in the 50/50 version of Hamlet and Juror #4 in a run of the popular play, 12 Angry Men (Jurors).  She has been on this acting adventure for over twenty years.  Some of her most memorable Shakespearean roles include Beatrice, Cassius, Titania, Gloucester, Mark Antony, Nurse and Horatio.  Among her diverse non-classical roles are General Cartwright in Guys and Dolls, Berenice in The Member of The Wedding, Sister Aloysius in Doubt and Florence in the The Odd Couple (female version).

Her second full – length play (a collaboration with Patrice A. Francis)First Comes Mourning (FCM), premiered in 2022 during the Shakespeare in Paradise (SiP) festival as a part of ‘The Year of Bahamian Theatre’, a celebration of The Bahamas’ Fiftieth Anniversary of Independence.  This year, their screenplay for FCM was turned into a television pilot which won several awards including one for best screenwriting.  Her children’s book The Kingdom at Bedtime is available on Amazon.

Larry Heyman
Larry Heyman is a freelance designer based in Cleveland. He is a USA Local 829 scenic designer with over thirty years of experience in set design, as well as properties design, fabrication, and supervision, across theatre, film, television, commercial projects, and higher education. 

He is a passionate teacher with experience in classroom and online instruction. He has a deep understanding of modern teaching paradigms, multiple learning styles, multiculturalism, and collaboration within professional learning communities. He has developed courses, taught extensively on theatrical design, and mentored production students in the shop. He focuses on all aspects of design and production, from script analysis and paperwork to organization, research, sourcing, procurement, and fabrication. Larry thrives on creative problem-solving, budgeting, and design and fabrication.

He has a diverse portfolio of design work, ranging from opera and theatre to film, commercial work, and trade events. 

Larry is also known for developing a new, low-cost, non-staining, non-fiber reactive stage blood recipe used in theaters nationwide. His recipe was included in Jennifer McClure’s book, Bloody Brilliant: How to Develop, Execute, and Clean Up Blood Effects for Live Performance, as well as an article in a professional publication.

Affiliated companies: The Goodman Theatre, The Huntington Theatre, the LaJolla Playhouse, The Cleveland Playhouse,  Kaleidoscope Productions, Paramount Pictures Corp., Twentieth Century Fox, MTV, and Touchstone Pictures.

Helen Hopkins
Helen Hopkins is a co-artistic director of The Shift Theatre, founded in 2009, and focused on presenting dynamic works with strong roles for women, both from existing texts and in the development of new works. The Shift Theatre aims to provide a stimulating and collaborative platform for directors, actors and a creative team who share a vision for a vibrant ensemble company and stories that capture the heart and the imagination. 

Helen is also chair of the Committee of Management for La Mama Theatre in Melbourne, Australia’s home of raw, relevant and radical theatre, and a script writer, theatre producer and actor with a lengthy career in both film and theatre. 

Together with Carolyn Bock she has written, produced and performed in The Girls in Grey (published by Currency Press) and Hallowed Ground-Women Doctors in War. Her theatre appearances include Melbourne, Adelaide, Dublin and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. She has acted for Essential Theatre, The Australian Shakespeare Company and more than 40 La Mama productions. 

Recent performances include Garage Girls, Eat Your Heart Out and #NoExemptions for The Shift Theatre all of which premiered at La Mama. The co-production with Three Birds Theatre of the acclaimed Garage Girls about Alice Anderson’s all girl garage in Melbourne in the 1920s, is touring regional Australia in 2025. 

The Shift Theatre’s new work in development is The Advisors, a re-construction of the power wrangling by five advisors who pressure Queen Elizabeth to execute Mary Queen of Scots, performed with an all-female cast.

Helen appeared in Melbourne theatre’s Green Room award winning In Angel Gear and Green Room Award nominated ensemble for The Merry Wives of Windsor. 

www.theshifttheatre.com

David Huynh

David Lee Huynh is an actor and activist based in NYC. Off-Broadway: National Asian American Theatre Company’s Henry VI (Drama Desk nomination, Outstanding Revival), Transport Group’s The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, Pan Asian Repertory’s No-No Boy and Emperor’s Nightingale, Classic Stage Company’s Play On! Festival, and Target Margin Theatre’s 1,001 Nights. Regional: Kennedy Center, Alley Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Mixed Blood Theatre, TheatreSquared, Houston Shakespeare Festival, Virginia Stage Company and others. Film: Children of the Dust, Roll With It. TV: FBI. He delivered a TEDx Talk on institutional racism within the entertainment industry titled Asian Enough? Co-founder and a producing artistic leader of The Sống Collective. MFA: University of Houston Professional Actor Training Program www.davidleehuynh.com

Scott Jackson

Scott Jackson (he/they) has served as the Mary Irene Ryan Family Executive Artistic Director of Shakespeare at Notre Dame since the position was created in 2007, providing oversight for the many Shakespeare-related programs housed at the University of Notre Dame, with a particular focus on engaging the local community through the works of William Shakespeare.

Previously he served as executive director for the Fairbanks Shakespeare Theatre (FST) in Fairbanks, Alaska. At FST he produced and performed in outdoor Shakespeare productions staged under the midnight sun at venues throughout Alaska and around the globe (most notably at the VIII World Shakespeare Congress in Brisbane, Australia, and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland). From 2000–2003, Scott was the business and legal affairs coordinator for Brighter Pictures, Ltd (now a part of Endemol Shine UK), one of the United Kingdom’s most successful independent television and film production companies.

He holds a dual BA in theatre and history from Indiana University Bloomington, an MFA (distinction) in Actor Training and Coaching from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (University of London), and is a certified Kundalini yoga teacher (CKYT-200) under acclaimed practitioner Maya Fiennes. He has produced, directed, and performed in over 175 theatrical productions.

Scott currently serves as the vice president/president-elect for the Shakespeare Theatre Association, where he also served as treasurer from 2013-2017. He has taught acting process at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, the University of Notre Dame, Holy Cross College, and Indiana University South Bend. Since 2018 he has served as an Associate Artist  for the Prague Shakespeare Company where he teaches Meisner acting technique and Mindfulness for the Artist during PSC’s Summer Shakespeare Intensive.

A firm believer in the power of Shakespeare and the theatre arts to affect positive social change, he is a co-founder of the Shakespeare in Prisons Network. He teaches a Shakespeare in performance course and leads the kundalini yoga club at the Westville Correctional Facility, Indiana’s largest state prison.

His leadership in the nascent field of Applied Shakespeare has led to an appointment as a Research Associate for the Von Hügel Institute at St. Edmund’s College in the University of Cambridge. Additionally, he has developed an anti-harm approach to actor training called Foundationing and presented this research at the annual meetings of the European Society of Criminology, the British Shakespeare Association, the Shakespeare Theatre Association, the Shakespeare Association of America, Theatre Communications Group, the Association of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the World Shakespeare Congress.

He is the recipient of the Shakespeare Association of America’s Publics Award for the production of the 4th International Shakespeare in Prisons Conference in 2020-21, the Robinson Community Learning Center’s Arthur Quigley, PhD award for community service, and the Fairbanks, Alaska Downtown Association’s Golden Heart award.

Přemsyl Janda

He started as a designer of neon signs and lighting shops. Then after two years left and started work in mid-2002 in the Estates Theatre where, after three years of practice become a lighting designer. From year 2005 he collaborated with many prominent directors, set designers and lighting designers. For example, spouses Ursel and Karl-Ernst Herrmann, Hartmut Schörghofer, Joël Lauwers, Etienne Pluss, Michal Docekal, Daniel Tesar, Robert Wilson, AJ Weissbard. Lighting design created for those scenes: Estates Theatre, New Stage, Mahennovo theater, Theater De Munt La Monnaie in Brussels, Théâtre de Caen – Opera House, Opera De Dijon, Les Theatres De La Ville de Luxembourg. His most successful designs are: Richard The Third directed by Michael Dočekal (Prague 2006), La finta Giardiniera directed by Ursel and Karl Ernst Herrmann (Prague 2008, Brussel 2011), Die Entführung aus dem Serail directed by Joël Lauwers (Prague 2011), Don Giovanni directed by duo SKUTR (Prague 2012), Orfeo ed Euridice directed by Hartmut Schörghofer (Prague 2013), L’Olimpide directed by Ursel Hermann (Prague, Théâtre de Caen – Opera House, Opera De Dijon, Les Theatres De La Ville de Luxembourg. 2013), Der Stein directed by Michal Docekal (Prague 2015). For Prague Shakespeare Company he has designed lights for The Trojan War trilogy, The Winter’s Tale, Macbeth, Othello, Measure for Measure, Richard III, Amadeus and numerous other productions at the National Theater’s Estates theatre and Prague Castle. He sees himself as a lighting designer, which places emphasis on functionality and dramaturgy of lighting design and perfect technical execution performance.

Carolyn Johnson

Carolyn Johnson is an Equity actress, singer, director and dialect, voice & acting coach with more than 30 years of professional experience. She has been the dialect and vocal coach on numerous productions, most recently for the opera, Dead Man Walking, starring Joyce DiDonato, at both The Teatro Real Opera (Madrid, Spain) and The Barbican/ BBC Symphony (London). She has coached for Houston Grand Opera, Prague Shakespeare Co., The Alley Theatre, Stages Repertory Theatre, Ensemble Theatre, and Main Street Theater among others. Carolyn directs, both professionally and academically, for the stage; most recently, Mauritius for Lamar University and Panto for Stages Repertory Theatre (Houston Press Best Musical Nomination), and regularly performs with theatres in Houston, Prague, Chicago, LA and Philadelphia. Recent roles include A Midnight Clear for Stages Repertory Theatre, (Sr. Bernadette, world premiere) Much Ado About Nothing for Prague Shakespeare Company (Don John), Trevor for Catastrophic Theatre (Sandra), End of The Rainbow (Judy Garland) and Luna Gale for Stages Repertory Theatre (Caroline), for which she won the 2017 Houston Press Best Actress Award. In Chicago, she was a company member of Noble Fool Theatre and Co-Artistic Director of Bugeater Theatre. Carolyn also privately teaches/coaches accents and acting, and works with the online accent resource, AccentHelp.com. She received her BFA in Acting from The University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 

Jim Johnson

Jim Johnson teaches voice & accents for the BFA and MFA programs at the University of Houston, and he is the founder of www.AccentHelp.com, where he has created materials for learning 50 different accents. In addition to coaching actors for theatre, film, and television, he leads accent intensives for audiobook narrators and travels the world recording native speakers for his accent materials as he continues to expand the accent offerings for AccentHelp. Jim also continues to work as an actor and director.

Jennifer King

Jennifer King is an award winning theater maker based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She divides her time between Europe and the United States, performing, directing and creating work in the UK, Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. US acting, directing and teaching credits include work for the Prague Shakespeare Company, California Shakespeare Theater, Dallas Theater Center, Aurora Theatre Company, Capital Stage, Shakespeare Napa Valley, SF PlayGround, Berkeley Playhouse, Sonoma County Repertory Theater, Cinnabar Theater, Symmetry Theater, the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, Napa Valley College, Kingston University (London), Sonoma State University and University of California Davis, among others. An arts leader, she has held senior level positions at Sonoma County Repertory Theater (Artistic/Executive Director), California Shakespeare Theater (Director of Artistic Learning), and Dallas Theater Center (Director of Education and Community Outreach). She is a tenured Professor of Theater Arts and Head of Performing Arts at Napa Valley College, as well as, Founder and Artistic Director of Shakespeare Napa Valley, where she has directed As You Like it, Pericles, How Shakespeare Won the West, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew and The Comedy of Errors. Her 2018 production of Dry Powder at the Aurora Theater company was recently awarded a Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Best Production. As an actor, her favorite roles include Emily Dickinson (The Belle of Amherst) Haley (Bad Dates), Blanche (A Streetcar Named Desire), Nora (A Doll’s House), and, Emma (Betrayal), among many others. In addition to her theater projects Jennifer is a voice over artist, voicing commercials and documentaries and can be heard in the Reduced Shakespeare Company production of The History of Comedy (abridged). This October, she will perform The Belle of Amherst for Shakespeare Napa Valley and direct Sex with Strangers by Laura Eason for Aurora Theater Company in May 2020. For more information, visit thisisjenniferking.com.

Jeff Mills

Jeff Mills is an award-winning actor, director, teacher, fight director and musician. He is best known for his work with the award winning BOXTALES Theatre Company in Santa Barbara. As a core member of BOXTALES, Jeff co-created ten original works in as many years, including his direction of OM: An Indian Tale of Good and Evil (The Ramayana) and his portrayal of Odysseus in The Odyssey. Jeff and BOXTALES have toured their innovative theater for young audiences throughout the U.S. and in Mexico. Nationally and internationally Jeff has performed with the Denver Center Theater Company, Theatre de la Jeune Lune, American Folklore Theater, Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Door Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Shakespeare Festival, Wooden O Theater, the International City Theater, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Pominencer Census (Munich), the Estudia Busqueda de Pantomima Teatro (Guanajuato, Mexico) and Theater Mitu/Visthar Center (Bangalore, India). In Santa Barbara Jeff has acted and/or directed with several companies, including PCPA Theaterfest, Shakespeare Santa Barbara, Speaking of Stories, Genesis West, Dramatic Women, Lit Moon Theater, Santa Barbara City College and the Santa Barbara Summer Solstice. In 2014/2015 Jeff played the title role in Lit Moon’s Hamlet at the National Theater of China in Beijing and the Bitola International Shakespeare Festival in Bitola, Macedonia. Other favorite roles include Macbeth, Katurian in The Pillowman, Edward in Henry VI Part 3, and Carlotta in The Cherry Orchard. In 2004 Jeff appeared on screen as Tristan in Bill Viola’s and Peter Sellars’ production of the opera Tristan and Isolde, which was performed at the Opera National in Paris, the Disney Hall in Los Angeles and the Lincoln Center in New York. Jeff is currently working with his new company, Proboscis, creating original works of mask, puppetry and physical theater, exploring science, Shakespeare and vaudeville; and a radio variety program called Live from the Piano Kitchen. Proboscis creations include Piezoelectric Love: The Half Life of Marie Curie (2011), which he co-devised and directed; La La La Strada (2015), which he wrote, directed and played Anthony Quinn; and Strap-On, which he co- wrote and directed. From 2007 to 2016 Jeff served on the BFA acting faculty at the University of California Santa Barbara where he taught movement, acting and solo performance. 

Andrea Miltnerová

Andrea Miltner is a British dancer and choreographer of Czech origin who has settled in Prague. For many years now she has been active in the field of baroque dance, trying to fuse it with other dance techniques, especially contemporary dance. She was born in London where she studied classical and modern dance.

Josh Morrison

JOSH MORRISON is the Associate Artistic Director of Stages, a regional theatre located in Houston, Texas where he has been a staff member since 2001.  With an average of 13 shows per season, Stages produces a broad scope of plays, musicals and new work festivals year round.  Josh is a member of Stages Management Team, which recently helped lead Stages’ $32 million capital campaign to fund, design and construct Stages’ visionary three-stage venue, The Gordy. Josh has worked as a producer, actor, director, fight choreographer, production manager and technical director for the past 20 years with Houston theaters such as Stages, The Alley Theatre, AD Players, Catastrophic Theatre, Rec Room, Main Street Theater, Unity Theater, Houston Grand Opera, Houston Shakespeare Festival and many others.  He has served as a judge and clinician for the University Interscholastic League One-Act Play Contest, as well as UIL Forensics/Speech & Debate Tournaments.  Josh works extensively with Stages’ acting and production internship programs and Young Actors Conservatory, and helped create Stages Young Actors Conservatory Technical Theatre Program.  He also lectures in workshops for several universities, high schools and junior high schools, including the University of Houston, Sam Houston State University, San Jacinto College, The University of St. Thomas and the High School for Performing and Visual Arts.  For two decades, Josh has worked closely with Houston’s visual arts community, where he has constructed, collaborated, and presented installations and entries for organizations like Houston Art Car Parade.  Josh has received several awards and nominations for his work as an actor and director from the Houston Press, The Houston Chronicle and Broadway World.com., and received nominations from BTVA for his voice acting with Sentai Filmworks.   

Taylor Napier

Originally from Morristown, Tennessee, Napier is an actor and writer currently based in both Prague and Los Angeles. A PSC Associate Artist, he appeared as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet at HAMU, Edmund in King Lear at the Estates Theater, Cassio in Othello at Prague Castle, Špilberk Castle in Brno and Ostrava Castle as well as Malcolm in Macbeth and Richmond in Richard III both at the Estates Theatre for PSC. In addition to his numerous TV and film credits, he can be seen as Maksim in the Amazon TV series The Wheel of Time as well as Crazy, Rich and Deadly. Also a writer, his award-winning short film Atacama has been seen in Festivals around the world. He has an MA in Acting from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London and a BFA in acting from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts.

Claire Nicholls

Claire is an Australian actor, director and educator specialising in Shakespeare. Between 2005 – 2011 Claire worked and trained with physical theatre company, Liminal Theatre and Performance, performing locally and internationally in several productions, the most notable of which being Oedipus: A Poetic Requiem, which won the 2008 Melbourne Greenroom Award for best independent production. In 2010 Claire relocated to Hong Kong to work with Theater Du Pif on their touring verbatim piece, The Will To Build. From 2011 – 2020 Claire has worked as an actor and educator with the Australian Shakespeare Company, playing roles in numerous productions including Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Henry IV Part 1, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Twelfth Night and Alice in Wonderland. She has conducted hundreds of in-school performances throughout Australia over the past nine years and been instrumental in the management and direction of the ASC’s Graduate Players program, which has toured shows to the Prague Fringe Festival over the past three years. Claire assisted ASC colleague, Kevin Hopkins in the direction of King Lear as part of the Summer Shakespeare Intensive for Prague Shakespeare Company in 2019. 

Clark Nicholson

Clark Nicholson is the Artistic Director of Gamut Theatre Group in Pennsylvania’s capital, Harrisburg, PA. In partnership with his wife, Melissa Nicholson, Executive Director of that organization, they founded Gamut in 1992. 

Since that time, Clark has served the organization as both an actor and a director, as well as a teacher, a scenic designer, and a carpenter. It has been his honor and pleasure  to share the works of classic authors ranging from the Brothers Grimm to Aesop to Euripides to Chekhov to Shakespeare. Recently, he also added training in Theatrical Intimacy by earning his diploma from Theatrical Intimacy Education (TIE), and also completed training in all levels of modern improvisational theory and application at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theater in Manhattan.

He has spent the last 30 years of his life weaving together seemingly disparate, but ultimately cooperative artistic disciplines, such as classical stage training along with modern improvisational theory, to open new avenues to active listening, participatory learning, and group creativity. 

As an actor, some favorite Shakespearean roles include Hamlet, Claudius, and the First Gravedigger in Hamlet, Macduff, Banquo, and Duncan in Macbeth, Prospero and Caliban in The Tempest, Puck, Oberon, and Flute in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Caesar in Julius Caesar. Non-Shakespearean favorites include The Player in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman, and Sir in Ronald Harwood’s The Dresser.   

His directing favorites are too numerous to name, however, in the realm of Shakespeare, he would like for you to know that he has 7 yet to go to complete the canon. And, he’s planning to get there.                                   

Petr Nůsek

Petr Nůsek, A.R.G.O. is a choreographer and stage fight specialist, who worked at films and tv series as Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Hellboy, The Mists of Avalon, Borgias and theatre plays and musicals as Robin Hood, Cyrano of Bergerac, Romeo and Juliet, The Man in the Iron Mask and many others. He is also a lecturer in the school of historical European martial arts – Magisterium and in 2000 he established a fencing school Academy of Knight’s Arts and he’s been leading it ever since.

Suzanne O’Donnell

Suzanne loves her life with Shakespeare having performed in over 20 plays in the canon, many of them multiple times. She is a long time company member at Orlando Shakes and The Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival and has performed at The Arden Theatre (As You Like It, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, The Folger Theater (The Comedy of Errors) and Virginia Stage Company (Twelfth Night). Recent credits: Stephanie in POTUS/Arden Theater, Mistress Quickly in Merry Wives of Windsor/ Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, Mayor/Reignier (and a fierce French General) in Henry VI Part 1/Orlando Shakes, Narrator in Every Brilliant Thing/Orlando Shakes and PSF, Nora in Doll’s House Part 2/ Florida Rep,  Mrs Peacock in Clue/Arts Center of Coastal Carolina and Ross in Macbeth/Orlando Shakes (directed by Irwin Appel). As a teaching artist, Suzanne directed, coached and taught Shakespeare to students from elementary thru high school as well as storytelling and acting to Seniors as part of Elderhostel and CFCA’s healthy aging initiative. As a yoga teacher she developed and taught Flower Yoga at Leu Gardens in Orlando and holds certifications in Kripalu Yoga, Yogaworks, Silver Yoga and Yoga for All. In addition, she loves working on new play development and most recently participated in Florida Rep’s PlayLab (Amy/ Why We Go to Florida by Kenneth Jones) and the NNPN national conference (Donna/Dunk City by Stephen Brown). You can also look for her in her first feature film That Boy! playing the role of Rhonda, coming out later this year. Suzanne is thrilled to be working with the talented Prague Shakespeare Company artists this summer and continuing her love story with the Bard internationally!  https://www.suzanneodonnellactor.com

Robert Orr

Robert Orr is a director, actor and teaching artist from the UK. Recent acting credits include Wheel of Time (Amazon Prime), A Small Light (Disney +), Das Boot 2, Spy City and Carnival Row (Amazon). On stage he has performed with PSC and toured for over twenty years with the NIE Ensemble.

Robert teaches Physical Theatre and Commedia. He trained at RCSSD London, with Philippe Gaulier, at the Gardzience Academy Poland (Grotowski) and with members of Complicite. 

As a Visiting Lecturer, Robert directs and teaches acting at St Mary’s University London, at the University of Agder in Norway and at the National Centre for Circus Arts. Recent directing credits include the Prague premier of The Third Army by Joe Sutton, his own adaptations of Gogol’s The Government Inspector, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at UIA Norway, and Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps at SMUC London.

Detra Payne

Detra Payne, (MFA, The New School for Drama/Actors Studio Drama School), is an Assistant Professor of Instruction at Northwestern University, her area of focus is Acting. Detra’s actor training consist of The Meisner Technique, Suzuki Method, and The Method formulated by Lee Strasberg. Professor Payne has acted professionally in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Memphis and in the Dallas Ft. Worth area. She is a founding member and current board member of the Los Angeles based theatre company, Sacred Fools. Ms. Payne has produced and directed for stage, and has worked on films and television not only as an actor but as a production and talent coordinator. Her written work has been published in Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics and Studies in Theatre and Performance. Her research interests include the contributions made by African American Women to the American theatre scene, the intersectionality of acting and movement in devising theatre, and developing intentional theatre for online. Ms. Payne is a member of the Screen Actors Guild American Federation for Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA); the Association for Theatre in Higher Education; member of the Black Theatre Association and the Black Theatre Network; member of the ATHE Acting Focus Group and the Directing Focus Group; member of the National Alliance of Acting Teachers; and Steering Committee member for the Organization of Women Faculty at Northwestern. Currently she is developing a staged performance around the topic of grief.

Ray Paolino

As an actor in New York City Ray performed the leading role in the world premiere of Israel Horovitz’s “Turnstyle” at the Cubiculo Theatre and was in “Hamlet” with Rip Torn and Geraldine Page at the Sanctuary Theatre. He played “Tee” in the Chicago premiere of Edward Allan Baker’s “Mafia On Prozac,” which also toured to the Edinburgh Fringe in summer of 2015. Latest professional roles have been George in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” at 7 Stages Theatre in Atlanta, GA, the role of Gottschall in “God’s Man in Texas” at the Springer Opera House in Columbus, GA and Atticus in “To Kill a Mockingbird” for Rose of Athens Theatre. Mr. Paolino’s other acting credits include leading roles in New York for Trinity Theatre, Theatre Matrix, Renaissance Theatre and the IRT Theatre. He is a member of Actor’s Equity Association (AEA) and Screen Actors Guild (SAG/AFTRA). He appeared in the films “Raging Bull,” “King of Comedy,” “Manhattan,” “The Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover,” and the soap opera “One Life to Live.” For the last 20 years, Paolino has headed the MFA Acting program at University of Georgia where he is a master teacher of acting and directing. He has directed 17 titles of the Shakespeare canon. For UGA, he developed a new Drama in Cortona program in Tuscany, Italy where he directed Taming of the Shrew, Comedy of Errors, Two Gents, As You Like It. and has also taught internationally for the UGA London Drama program. His recent 2018 collaboration with Italian playwright Laura Forti, resulted in the U.S. premiere of her work “Pesach,” at 7 Stages Theatre in Atlanta. Former students of Paolino have appeared on “ER,” West Wing,” “Glee,” “Law and Order,” “Weeds,” “Two and a Half Men,” and with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Denver Theatre Center, the Long Wharf Theatre and many others.

PHILIP PARR

Alongside a wide-ranging freelance practice as director of theatre, opera and festivals, Philip is Artistic Director of Parrabbola, who make large scale community plays in the UK and across Europe, and Director of the York International Shakespeare Festival, which celebrated its 10^th anniversary year in 2025 www.yorkshakes.co.uk

Theatre work has ranged from main house productions, to small scale rural touring, with a particular focus on site specific and promenade theatre and on Shakespeare. 

Current Shakespeare productions include Henry V [man and monarch], a solo show for actor Brett Brown, which has played around the world since 2017.  FEAST: a play in one cooking, by Romanian writer Olivia Negrean for 6 actresses – exploring Shakespeare’s female characters, and touring productions of Twelfth Night, Macbeth and As You Like It which premiered last year at festivals in Craiova (Romania) and Budva (Montenegro)

His production of Pericles Prince of Tyre premiered in 2024 at the Hungarian State Theatre Csiky Gergely in Timisoara and was selected for the National Theatre Festival in Romania. It continues in the repertoire.

Agenda LiterNet / Mihai Brezeanu: Portul în care a ancorat bunătatea – Pericles la TESZT, 2024

His most recent premiere was Codename Othello, a new play by the Ukrainian playwright Olga Annenko, which premiered in York in April 2025. In July he will direct the Croatian actor Filip Krenus in a new production of I Peaseblossom by Tim Crouch, for festivals in Croatia and Verona. 

. 

Larger work has included a site specific, promenade performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Romeo and Juliet for the festival in Craiova, and Pericles and The Winter’s Tale in Gdansk. His most recent large scale projects were a site-specific cross-border production of The Winter’s Tale which travelled between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and Shake Fear | Break Walls in Gdansk – an exploration of borders real and imagined with five European partners. www.shakingthewalls.co.uk

Philip teaches widely; he holds a post as Lecturer at the University of Gloucestershire and is an adjunct professor for Lewis and Clark College in Portland Oregon, teaching on their London programme and occasionally in Portland. 

Philip is a founding council member of the European Shakespeare Festivals Network and in 2021 was elected Chairman. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Kiara Pipino

Kiara Pipino graduated in Genova, Italy, with a BFA in Architecture and proceeded to earn a graduate degree in Scenic Design at the University of Genoa. In the meantime, she founded the Festival Internazionale Valle Christi, a summer theatre festival in Italy, where she still serves as the Artistic and Resident Director. In 2009 she moved to the U.S.A., where she completed an MFA in Directing at the University of Arkansas. In 2016 Kiara became a certified GLMCC Michael Chekhov technique instructor. She is currently teaching and directing for SUNY Oneonta, after teaching at King University and at Grand Valley State University. Kiara has been teaching and directing professionally in the U.S.A., Italy and in the Philippines. Her credits include, 9 to 5 (SUNY Oneonta) A Doll’s House Part 2 (Chenango River Theatre), After All (playwright, staged reading at Playwrights Horizons, NYC), Clytemnestra (author, director, United Solo Festival, NYC), The Wrong End of The Telescope, (director, United Solo Festival, NYC), Washed Away (playwright, Chicago Fringe Festival), You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown (director, University of Arkansas), The Women of Lockerbie (director, GVSU), Purgatorio (director, Ateneo de Manila University). In 2015, 2016 and 2017 she has received the Kennedy Center Meritorious Award for Directing. She published two books: Theatre and Pietas, for Trento University Press and Conquering the Stage, for Kendall Hunt. She is currently working on a publication for Routledge on the condition of women in the theatre business in America. Kiara is an active member of ATHE, KCACTF, SETC, SDC and the Dramatist Guild of America

Allison Pistorius
Allison Pistorius is a professional actor and educator, and she is thrilled to join Prague Shakespeare Company this summer.  As an actor, Allison has worked with the Dallas Theater Center, the Denver Center Theatre Company, TheatreWorks Hartford, Houston Shakespeare Festival, Trinity Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare Dallas, Stage West, Theatre Three, Amphibian Stage Productions, and more.  Favorite roles include Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Rosalind in As You Like It, Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Olivia in Twelfth Night, Hermione in The Winter’s Tale, and Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew, as well as Marianne in Constellations and Marie in Marie Antoinette.  However, the highlight of her theatre career is quite possibly playing Soccer Mom in the Dallas Theater Center production of The Wolves while her infant triplet daughters napped in her dressing room.  Allison is also an on-camera and voice actor.  Her latest project is the independent feature Tempest, inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest and currently in post-production.  She voices Ella Starr in the critically lauded 1865 podcast from Wondery, narrates historical romance audiobooks, and can be seen playing various versions of “mom” in national and regional television commercials in the US. 

Allison is based in Texas, where she is an Assistant Professor and Head of BFA Acting at the University of Houston.  She is one of only eight recipients of the prestigious 2025 University of Houston Teaching Excellence Award.  At UH, her classes focus on merging research and preparation with physicality and presence in the moment, and she serves as executive producer of the BFA Acting Showcase, an on-camera project for graduating students filmed with a professional production team.  She joined the UH faculty in 2022, having previously taught Acting and Theatre at Southern Methodist University, the University of North Texas, Texas Christian University, and Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.  She has given master classes for the University of Hartford’s Hartt School, the University of North Texas, the Dallas Theater Center, and the Dallas Independent School District.  She earned her BA in Theatre and Dance with a minor in French from the University of Texas, and her MFA in Acting from the National Theatre Conservatory.  Allison is a bit of a nerd and has been on Jeopardy! twice, sadly neither time with a Shakespeare category, and is a member of Actor’s Equity Association.

Debs Ramser
Debs Ramser (Stage Manager) has worked with Prague Shakespeare Company since 2011, on productions including As You Like It, King Lear, Richard III, Hamlet, Women of Will, Henry V, Macbeth, Cymbeline, Into The Woods, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  She has also assisted with PSC’s Shakespeare Intensive productions of Pericles, Henry VI Parts 1, 2, and 3, and Merry Wives of Windsor.  Debs is a union stage manager based in Houston, Texas, where she has stage managed professional theater, musical theater, opera, dance, concerts, benefits, and galas for more than 25 years, working at Alley Theatre, Theatre Under the Stars, Main Street Theater, Houston Shakespeare Festival, Stages Theatre, Generations Theatre, Houston Gilbert & Sullivan Society, and Houston Grand Opera, among others.

Guy Roberts

Guy Roberts is the Founder and Artistic Director of Prague Shakespeare Company, the professional English language theatre of the Czech Republic, celebrating its 12th year in 2020. He has produced, directed and acted in over 200 productions and his work has been experienced onstage in the United States, Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, Poland, Qatar, Egypt and India and he and his productions have been honored with multiple awards and over 100 US theatre award nominations, including many for Best Actor, Director and Production. In 2020, his PSC solo production of Hamlet at Main Street Theater Company in Houston, TX was honored with the Houston Theatre Award for Best Visiting Production (Best Tour). In 2018, he was honored with the Houston Theatre Award for Best Actor for his performance as the Poet in the Prague Shakespeare Company / Main Street Theater Company production of An Iliad (also recipient of Best Production, Costume, Set and Lights Award nominations), co-directed by Roberts and MST Artistic Director Rebecca Greene Udden. In 2016, under his leadership, PSC became the first theatre company in the world to present the entire newly accepted Shakespearean canon (41 plays including Sir Thomas More, Cardenio and Edward III as well as all of the sonnets and poetical works) in a single year as part of the historic PSC400 Season. He is a 2015 recipient of the Tomas Garrigue Masaryk Medal of Honor from the Masaryk Democratic Movement in recognition for his work promoting arts and artistic freedom. In 2014 Guy received the inaugural Sidney Berger Award from the Shakespeare Theatre Association in recognition of his dedication to the works of William Shakespeare. He was named “Honorary Houstonian” at the 2013 Houston Press Theatre Awards for his PSC touring productions in collaboration with Main Street Theater Company (MST). PSC/MST productions include Hamlet, An Iliad, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Henry V (Houston Press Theatre Award for Best Director) and Richard III. Notable Shakespeare roles include Macbeth, Henry V, Iago, Richard III, Hamlet, Pericles, Leontes, Jaques, Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Hector, Romeo, Mercutio, Benedick, Bottom, Demetrius, Snug, Puck, Dogberry, and Lucio among others for Prague Shakespeare Company with numerous productions in association with the Czech National Theatre at the historic Estates Theater including also Patrick Doyle’s Shakespeare in Concert, Measure for Measure (also Prague Castle), Julius Caesar, his Trojan War trilogy: An Iliad, Troilus and Cressida, and The Trojan Women (co-directed with Rebecca Greene Udden), Amadeus as well as Much Ado About Nothing, Venus in Fur, Twelfth Night among numerous others at Divadlo Kolowrat, Main Street Theater Company, Houston Shakespeare Festival, Austin Shakespeare Festival and the Huntington Theatre Company. Recent stage work as an actor includes the title roles in ​​Richard III on tour to New Delhi and Puducherry, India as part of the Bharat Rang Matosav 2020 Festival, Prague performances of Hamlet at the Estates Theater in association with the Czech National Theatre and Iago in Othello at Prague Castle and on tour to Ostrava and Brno with the Czech Summer Shakespeare Festival, Letní Shakespeareovské Slavosti. Other PSC international tours include An Iliad in New Delhi and Varanassi, India as part of the Bharat Rang Matosav 2019 Festival; Hamlet in Houston, Texas with Main Street Theater Company and in Alicante, Spain; Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing at the Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt; Patrick Doyle’s Shakespeare in Concert with Patrick Doyle, James Shearman and Jessica Boone in Doha, Qatar and Orlando, Florida. As a guest director, his PSC Much Ado serves as the basis for a Czech version, which he directed and has been running for over four years at Divadlo Bez Zabradli in Prague and his production of Midsummer for the Bremer Shakespeare Company in Germany recently celebrated its one year anniversary in the repertory. His on camera work as an actor includes the reoccurring role of Uno Nomesta on Amazon’s The Wheel of Time, and Cyril in the feature film MEDIEVAL directed by Petr Jakl, among other TV and film as well as numerous voice overs for Japanese anime and commercials for director Craig Gillespie (I, TONYA). Guy is a longtime member of the Society of American Fight Directors and has choreographed fight sequences and staged violence for over one hundred theatre productions, ballets and operas in Europe and the United States as well as the First National Tour of big! the musical. Guy also travels extensively conducting Shakespeare and Leadership workshops training corporate executives and managers in the art of leadership using essential Shakespearean lessons as a model for dealing with modern-day corporate challenges. Click here to view Guy’s TEDxYouth talk To Lead or Not To Lead: Changing the World with Shakespeare Guy served as Artistic Director of the Austin Shakespeare Festival (USA) from 2001-2007. He received his BFA from Boston University, and is also proud member of Actor’s Equity Association, The Society of Stage Directors, British Equity, and the Shakespeare Theatre Association. Guy resides in Prague, Czech Republic with his wife, the actress Jessica Boone, and is the proud father of Isabella, Rohan, and Landon.

Jennifer Rohn
Jennifer Rohn is an actor, director and acting teacher. In Boston she has appeared in Dark Room (Elliot Norton Award), The Sound Inside and How I Learned to Drive (Elliot Norton nominations). Jennifer has appeared on Broadway in The Kentucky Cycle and The Crucible and several Off-Broadway productions including Love’s Fire and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (The Public Theater), Romeo and Juliet (The New Victory Theater), Lady Windermere’s Fan (The Mint Theater) The CIVIL warS (Brooklyn Academy of Music), Another Person is a Foreign Country (En Garde Arts). Her regional theater credits include Quartet (American Repertory Theater) O, Pioneers (Huntington Theater and Seattle Repertory Theater), Love’s Fire (Guthrie Theater), The Butcher’s Daughter, The Importance of Being Earnest (Cleveland Play House). Her European credits include Hamletmachine (tour), Salome directed by Robert Wilson (La Scala) and Love’s Fire (The Barbican).  She has appeared in several television commercials, Law and Order, American Playhouse (PBS) and the film Crossing the Atlantic. Jennifer has guest taught at Boston Conservatory, UNLV, and Boston University. She teaches acting and physical theater at Bennington College.

Nick Salamone

Nick is the author of thirteen full-length plays. As a playwright he has received multiple awards including the Edinburgh Fringe First, the LA Weekly, Scotsman’s Audience Favorite, Entertainment Today TicketHolders, LA Times Best New Play and the Backstage West Garland. He has twice been a finalist for the Kleban Award for his librettos. Nick is the recipient of the Playwrights’Arena Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Los Angeles Theatre Community. He balances his love of the classical canon with his passion for new works, modern masterpieces and the avant garde. He has acted in almost eighty productions of plays in NYC Off and Off Off Broadway, in Los Angeles and the United Kingdom. He has been nominated for Britain’s Stage Award as Best Actor at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival as well as the LA Weekly Award and four times for the Backstage West Garland Award and most recently won the NYC Summerfest Best Actor Award. He is an associate artist with Playwrights’ Arena and with New York Classical Theatre where he has performed in 17 productions. He graduated summa cum laude, phi beta kappa, from Tufts University with dual degrees in Drama and English, studied for seven years at HB Studios and has been taught by Patsy Rodenberg, Alfred Molina, Geraldine Page, Joan Melton and his longtime mentor, Steven Strimpell.

Jon Savage

Jon teaches scenic design at Boston University where he served asHead of the Design, Production and Management BFA programs for several years (stepped down in 2019).  Jon has also taught multiple workshops at the Southeastern Theatre Conference and the USITT National Conference. He has taught workshops at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Accademia dell’Arte in Arrezzo, Italy, Prague Shakespeare Company Summer Intensive, Prague, Czechia and Utah State University, Logan, UT. He has worked on productions on Broadway (Hot Feet, Associate Designer; Sunset Boulevard, Assistant Designer), Regional Theatre credits include work at The Huntington Theatre, Boston, MA; Olney Theatre Center, DC Area; Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, PA, Bucks County Playhouse, New Hope, PA; Bay Street Theatre, Sag Harbor, NY; Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, MA, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, The National Theatre, DC, and The Kennedy Center, DC among others. workshops at the Southeastern Theatre Conference and the USITT National Conference. He has taught workshops at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Accademia dell’Arte in Arrezzo, Italy, Prague Shakespeare Company Summer Intensive, Prague, Czechia and Utah State University, Logan, UT. He has worked on productions on Broadway (Hot Feet, Associate Designer; Sunset Boulevard, Assistant Designer), Regional Theatre credits include work at The Huntington Theatre, Boston, MA; Olney Theatre Center, DC Area; Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, PA, Bucks County Playhouse, New Hope, PA; Bay Street Theatre, Sag Harbor, NY; Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, MA, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, The National Theatre, DC, and The Kennedy Center, DC among others. Internationally he has designed projection content for Carousel (English National Opera) and Ghosts of Versailles (Marie Antoinette Theatre, Versailles, FR) and was acurator of the United States Student Exhibition at the 2007 Prague Quadrennial. He has also designed for Prague Shakespeare Company Summer Intensive and will be designing three shows this summer for PSC and Verona Shakespeare Fringe Festival, Verona, Italy. Jon’s television credits include work as a scenic artist for the John Adams Miniseries, HBO; Assistant Art Director on And Just Like That, HBO MAX; Assistant Art Director on Julia Season 2, MAX among others. Jon was also the Production Designer for the independent movie Heartworm shot on location on Martha’s Vineyard, MA.Jon is a proud member of United Scenic Artists and serves as an adjudicator for USA entrance exams. He currently serves as the Vice Chair for International Programming for the United Sates Institute of Theatre Technology (USITT) and is a member of the International Organization of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians (OISTAT). He is also a member of the Resident Artist Company for Actors Shakespeare Project, Watertown, MA.

Livy Scanlon

Livy Scanlon (they/she) is a versatile theater professional working as a producer, director, actor and teaching artist. Livy currently works for The Hanover Theatre and Conservatory for the Performing Arts in Worcester, MA, where they serve as managing director of the Jean McDonough Arts Center (JMAC) and artistic director of The Hanover Theatre Repertory (THT Rep). Favorite THT Rep credits include directing an all-female production of TheCrucibleby Arthur Miller, and directing/acting in an outdoor production of JuliusCaesarby William Shakespeare, performed free and open to the public on Worcester Common during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recently, Livy commissioned playwright Katie Bender to pen an original solo show, Judith, which received its World Premiere production in 2024 at the Urbanite Theatre in Sarasota, FL. Other regional credits include Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Trinity Rep, Asolo Rep, Paper Mill Playhouse, Hartford Stage and Bridge Rep, which Livy founded and led for five years. During that tenure, Livy enjoyed features in The Boston Globe and on WGBH, had an essay published on HowlRound Theatre Commons, and received an Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director (DarkRoom) and an IRNE Award for Best Actress (Mrs.Packard).

Livy teaches acting in the Department of Humanities and Arts at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. They have been included in Worcester Magazine’s list of Women to Watch and in the Worcester Business Journal’s Power 50. A member of Actors’ Equity Association since 2011, Livy earned an MFA in acting from Brown University/Trinity Rep and a BA in theater and dance, summacumlaude, from Amherst College, where they were a four-year varsity athlete.

www.worcplaymaker.com • @_worcplaymaker  

Ron Severdia

Ron Severdia is an award-winning actor and scholar who has appeared in theatre, television, and film roles. A classically trained professional, Ron has recently won awards for his performance in Every Brilliant Thing as well as he originated the role of Miles in the world premiere adaptation of Sideways. Starting as a magician when he was young, he was later inspired to write and perform in his critically acclaimed play Houdini: The Great Escape. He has traveled Europe performing in Shakespeare festivals and television. While studying at American Conservatory Theater, he played the title role in the Exit Theatre’s controversial reverse-cast production of Othello. He received a Shakespeare Certificate (with Distinction) from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and currently teaches Shakespeare. He’s won multiple Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Awards among others, including one for his solo adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In his spare time, Ron runs the Shakespeare website PlayShakespere.com and develops the popular Shakespeare Pro app. See more of Ron’s work at rontheactor.com

Christine Schmidle

Christine Schmidle is a freelance director and text coach. At Shakespeare’s Globe, London she has worked as Text Associate on over 60 productions. She has worked for the Blackfriars Playhouse – the recreation of Shakespeare’s indoor theatre, as Director of Education at the Shakespeare Festival in Neuss, Germany, she is Director of Vision and Text for Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival and has worked on productions that have toured the world over. Christine is the co-founder of the Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival in Flagstaff, Arizona, and has translated texts for performance – her translation of Der Bestrafte Brudermord  was produced by The Hidden Room and presented at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London. Christine received her MLitt and MFA in Shakespeare and Performance at Mary Baldwin University, Virginia, USA. You can find more about Christine at www.ActShakespeare.com

Dawn Stern

Dawn Stern is a New York City-based AEA/SAG-AFTRA actor, teaching artist, member of the off-Broadway theatre collective The Coop, and COO of the non-profit DE-CRUIT which received the 2020 Aaron Stein award from American Group Psychotherapy Association (AGPA) given to an organization that utilizes creative applications of group therapy to benefit the community, especially in non-psychiatric settings.  Dawn has taught The Business of Acting, movement, yoga, breath work and Shakespeare to veterans and students in the US, Canada, Italy, and The Hague. She obtained her B.S. in Theatre Performance from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (SIU-E) and earned her AFTRA, AEA, and SAG union cards in St Louis and Chicago.  Dawn moved to Los Angeles in 1996 where she built a seventeen-year television acting career which includes six pilots, three series regular gigs and over twenty-five guest star appearances. Her highlights include: a series regular on Viper, 413 Hope Street, Starhunter and Nobody -a recurring role on the Young and the Restless and notable guest star appearances including: Star Trek: Enterprise, Ally McBeal, Profiler, Beverly Hills 90210, and True Blood.  A few of her favorite guest stars include working with Damon Wayans on My Wife and Kids, Steve Harvey on the SteveHarvey Show, Wanda Sykes on Wanda at Large and Monique on The Parkers. Her film credits include: The Fugitive and Original Gangstas.  Dawn moved to NYC in 2013 to develop DE-CRUIT with her husband, Stephan Wolfert.  DE-CRUIT treats trauma through Shakespeare & Science.  Dawn fell in love with Shakespeare at age 12 and has professionally played Kate, Lady Macbeth, Olivia, Paulina, Goneril, Elizabeth and Margaret. She currently is co-chair of the Inclusion Diversity Equity Accessibility (IDEA) committee for Shakespeare Theater Association (STA)

Clay Storseth
Clay is an Associate Artist with New York Classical Theater and has performed in 16 productions with the company over the last 18 years. He has worked regionally at A Noise Within, Laguna Playhouse, Musical Theater West, ICT, Will and Company, and in Los Angeles with Playwrights Arena and Blank Theater Company. He has acted in nine plays at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, including the three-hander musical
Moscow which won both the Fringe First Award and the Audience Favorite award. He started his professional training in vocal performance and has continued to focus on voice and speech work. His initial
training was based on Arthur Lessac’s work, He has studied extensively with Fran Bennet (who was one of the first two designated teachers in the Kristin Linklater method) and Patsy Rodenberg. Patsy directed him in “King Lear” which was a master class in Shakespeare text analysis and vocal performance. He has had the joy of collaborating with Joan Melton throughout his time at NYClassical and is certified in her “One Voice Method”. Most recently he vocal coached the NYClassical production of “Henry IV”. He has continued
his acting training with Larry Moss. Clay has a BBA from Baylor University in Entrepreneurship
and Marketing and a Masters Degree in Acting from CalARTS. He spent a decade coaching and leading seminars with The Flash Forward Institute teaching actors, directors, writers and producers skills to “pitch” and market themselves in the entertainment industry. He spent 7 years as an adjunct professor with Colombia College of Chicago’s “Semester In L.A.” program teaching the same skills and served as Casting Director, providing the students access to professional actors for their film projects.

Rupesh Tillu

Rupesh Tillu is an actor, director and independent film-maker, born in Mumbai India.  He holds an MFA in Physical Comedy from The National School of Dramatic Arts, Sweden, and a bachelor’s degree in commerce and economics from Mumbai University.  He has received several international theatre awards such as Outstanding Artist/Act – Stockholm Fringe Festival 2012, a Special Jury Award – Best of Prague Fringe Festival 2013, and many more.  He has worked with several theatre companies such as Avikal Theatre Company (India), Urban Theatre Company (Sweden), Teater Slava (Sweden), and Bananteatern (Sweden).  He has done expeditions with Clowns without Borders to Moldova, Palestine, Israel, India, Jordan, and Egypt.  He is a part of Drömställe – A clown trio, which toured nationally in all renowned theatres of Sweden in 2013.  His vocational training includes one year Physical Theatre at Fhsk Vårdinge By and professional Clown training with Clowns without Borders Sweden.  He has also worked for UNESCO Centre for Peace, Frederick, MD, USA.  His debut documentary feature film The Living Gods is co-produced by the Swedish National Television.  He played the character of Ajay in a feature film Ship of Theseus and also line produced Swedish schedule for the same film.  He is the founder and artistic director of Theatreact.  He owns the film production company Rednose Entertainment, based in Stockholm.

Kevin Vavasseur

Kevin Vavasseur is a teacher, director, actor and writer whose credits include work at Elm Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare & Company, London Shakespeare Studio, Highways Performance Space, Theater @ Boston Court, Odyssey Theater, Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company, H.E.R.E, Company of Angels, Los Angeles Theater Center, Playwrights Arena, Edinburgh International Arts Festival, New York Fringe Festival, and Lincoln Center. He recently completed the National Alliance of Acting Teachers – Teacher Development Program.

An NAACP Image Award, GLAAD Media Award and LADCC Award nominee, he also reviews Broadway/Off-Broadway productions and film, including the internationally renowned Tribeca Film Festival, for online publication Stage and Cinema. He currently teaches at Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York City and is on faculty for the Shakespeare & Company Actor Training Programs in Lenox, MA. He’s a member of the Playwrights/Directors Unit at the famed Actors Studio. He’s been a guest director at Kansas University and the Professional Actor Training Program at University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. He also has an extensive background in film and television production where his work included supporting top studio execs and Oscar-winning producers on many feature films including, Bad Boys, Air Force One and Men in Black. 

In 2016, he completed a Master of Arts degree at NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study where he designed a curriculum in theater (writing focus), gender studies and sociology. His research examines how theater can create real time, empathetic experiences for audience members that can potentially lead to more inclusive encounters outside of the performance space. 

Rosie Ward
Rosie Ward is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Rosie has trained actors in acting, voice, and text at international conservatories, as well as U.S. actor training programs. Teaching credits include: The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (UK), Sharjah Performing Arts Academy (UAE), Northampton University (UK), University of Houston (US), and Brigham Young University (US). Rosie has voice coached and acted in various productions at Prague Shakespeare Company, Utah Shakespeare Festival, American Players Theatre, Alley Theatre, Kentucky Shakespeare, AD Players, Main Stage Theatre, Wheelock Family Theatre at Boston University, and the University of Houston. She holds an M.A. in Voice Studies from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and an M.F.A. in Acting from the University of Houston. 

Stephan Wolfert

US Army, ’86-’93, Medic & Infantry Officer. Stephan left a career in the military for a life in the theatre after seeing Shakespeare’s Richard III. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree from Trinity Repertory Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island. 

As an artistic leader, Stephan co-created the largest touring Shakespeare company in New England, created the first military Veteran Shakespeare company in the country, directed and taught acting Shakespeare at Cornell University and at Antelope Valley College. He has served as an acting/character coach for Cirque de Soliel’s Mystere and worked on Broadway with Twyla Tharp, creating and directing the military segments for the Tony-Award winning production Movin’ Out. 

As an actor he has received critical acclaim and multiple awards both nationally and internationally. He was a cast member in Kate Hamill’s long running hit Sense and Sensibility and appeared in the acclaimed production of Saint Joan in New York City.Stephan also won the Syracuse Area Theater Award for best actor in Kate Hamill’s Pride & Prejudice at Syracuse Stage. Combining his own personal story of leaving the Army and pursuing a career in the arts with Shakespeare’s writings on war, he created the solo piece Cry Havoc! which he has performed over 500 times around the country and the world. Cry Havoc! has won awards in Houston, Fort Worth, New York City, Italy and The Berkshire Theatre Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor. Frequently combined with public events for veterans and trauma conferences/symposiums, performances of Cry Havoc have been presented off-Broadway at the New Ohio Theater in NYC, the Access Theater, Brooklyn Historical Society, Columbia University, Folger Theatre in D.C., Psychotherapy Networker in Washington D.C., Syracuse Stage, Syracuse University, NYU, Bessel van der Kolk’s Trauma Research Foundation, Friends of the Semel Institute UCLA, LA County Psychological Association, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis, Kit Shakespeare Festival Italy, STET theatre Netherlands, Byron Clinic Trauma Conferences Australia, Shakespeare Theater Association in Prague, and many more venues.

As a writer he has written and received awards for four original plays and four adaptations of Shakespeare from a military Veteran’s perspective. He also has ten scientific journals published, has contributed to two book chapters in the scientific field, and is currently completing two books. He frequently writes, lectures and is interviewed for his work known as DE-CRUIT^®: a program to reintegrate military Veterans using Shakespeare and science. For his work with Veterans he has multiple awards from the mental health community including The Aaron Stein Award from the American Group Psychotherapy Association and the Max Gabriel Award from the National Alliance for Mental Illness. And as an teaching artist, he has taught Shakespeare in performance at Cornell University, Syracuse University, and Antelope Valley College, California. He has also been a guest teacher of Shakespeare, and theater as medicine at over two-dozen universities world wide.

The organization he runs and the performances of his Shakespeare adaptations combine to share his passion for the idea that while we are very good at recruiting people into the military, we are far less skilled at de-cruiting them back into civilian life.  Don Aucoin of the Boston Globe has said “Stephan Wolfert commits himself body and soul to that mission in Cry Havoc!, and the result is riveting.”

Olivia Willcox
Olivia Willcox is a Louisiana-based actor, fight director, and Certified Teacher with the Society of American Fight Directors whose work has taken her across the country and now, around the world. She earned her BA in theatre with an emphasis in performance and fight direction at Louisiana Tech University in 2018 then went on to work in Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway houses, short films for the Louisiana Film Festival, and in regional houses across the states. Her fight direction credits include work with Pipeline Theatre Company, Silverwood Theme Park, Unto These Hills, Ghostwright Media, Fierstein School of Cinema, Louisiana Tech University, GhostLit Repertory Theatre where she received an Outstanding Directors and Choreographers of 2019 mention from Broadway World, and the South Arkansas Arts Center where she serves as resident Fight Director. 

Some of her favorite acting credits include Gonzala in The Tempest: A New Musical, Goneril in King Lear, Dorine in Tartuffe, Truvy Jones in Steel Magnolias, Nora in A Doll’s House, Ophelia in Living Dead in Denmark, Captain Slank in Peter and the Starcatcher and Cassie in Rumors.
Olivia is also the co-founder of More Than OK Studios, a production company she launched with her best friend, Katie Watts to bring the joy and hope of theatre to nursing home residents throughout Louisiana. She is thrilled to make her international debut with Prague Shakespeare Company.

Lisa Wolpe

Lisa Wolpe is an international activist working for the empowerment of women, people of color, and trans actors. In 1993 she founded the all- female multicultural Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company (22 seasons), where she worked with over 1000 women and girls, bringing their voices onto the stage and into the world. In London she created the TranShakespeare project. Lisa produced, directed, and performed roles including Hamlet, Richard III, Angelo, Leontes, Romeo, Shylock, and Iago. She is currently touring her solo show Shakespeare & the Alchemy of Gender to venues around the world. She has directed and acted regionally at theaters including Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Utah Shakespeare festival, Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Repertory Company, Shakespeare & Company, Arizona Theater Company, San Diego Repertory Theater, and more

Renee E. Yancey
Renee E. Yanceyis a Theatre Educator, Production Manager and AEA Stage Manager. Originally from Texas, Renee spent 10 years based in the Washington, DC area. Olney Theatre Center was Renee’s home theatre where she held positions as a Stage and Production Management Intern, Company Manager, Production Stage Manager, and Production Manager. Her work at Olney Theatre Center included over 50 productions, 30 of which were as Production Stage Manager. Other DC area theatres Renee has performed events and stage management for include Studio Theatre, theatreWashington/Helen Hayes Awards, Shakespeare Theatre Company, and AFI Silver Spring.

Currently based in Boston, Renee is a Senior Lecturer in stage & production management and the Management Program Head at Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Theatre. Stage management work in the New England area includes TEDxNewEngland; Is this America? (White Snake Projects); National Playwrights Conference 2022 (The O’Neill); Frankenstein (Central Square Theater), The Normal Heart, Heartland, Ripe Frenzy (New Rep Theatre); The Fantasticks (Opera House Arts); The Honey Trap, Faithless, and Exposed (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre). Production management work includes the free Shakespeare on the Common productions of Cymbeline and Richard III (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company), A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Boys from Syracuse at the DCR Memorial Hatch Shell (Landmarks Orchestra and Commonwealth Shakespeare Company). Renee holds an MFA in Production Management from Boston University and a BFA in Theatre Arts from Texas State University-San Marcos. She is a member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Stage Managers’ Association (Eastern Region Director), and the Production Manager’s Forum. renee-e-yancey.com