2024-25 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.

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.

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.  

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.

Brendon Fox

BRENDON FOX is a director, teacher, adapter, producer and two-time NEA Panelist whose work has been seen from Los Angeles to Prague. He has worked internationally at a number of theaters and training programs. Directing credits include: Love’s Labour’s Lost, Prague Shakespeare Company, Colorado Shakespeare Festival; Long Day’s Journey into Night, American Stage, an all-women, five-person A Christmas Carol, Delaware Theatre Company; Baskerville, Long Wharf Theatre, and a co-production of Cleveland Playhouse / Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park; The Pitmen Painters, American Stage; Peter and the Starcatcher, PlayMakers Repertory Company;Angels in America (Parts One and Two), PlayMakers Repertory Company; Shipwrecked! Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park; Much Ado About Nothing, Old Globe Theatre; Opus, Portland Center Stage, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Houston Shakespeare Festival; The Lady with All the Answers, Pasadena Playhouse; A Hidden Corner (Theatre J, reading). Brendon has taught at programs such as Juilliard, USD / Old Globe, UNCo, FSU / Asolo Rep, and others. Member, SDC. His article “Directing Long Day’s Journey into Night: Two Crucial Moments” was recently published the in the 2020 Eugene O’Neill Review. His website is www.foxdirector.com.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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

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.

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)

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.

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.”