Guest Artists

Spring 2007

Juliette Carrillo

As an ensemble member with Cornerstone Theatre Company, Juliette has directed Los Fausinos, As Vishnu Dreams, Lethe, House on Mango Street, and Warriors Don't Cry. Juliette was an Artistic Associate at South Coast Repertory Theatre for seven years, where she ran the Hispanic Playwright's Project and directed regularly. Favorite projects there include the West Coast premiere of Anna in the Tropics and the World Premiere of References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot. A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, she has directed theatre extensively throughout the U.S., at Ten Thousand Things, the Alliance Theatre, TheatreWorks, Laguna Playhouse, Actor's Theatre of Louisville and the Mark Taper Forum, among many others. She is a recipient of the NEA/TCG Directing Fellowship and Princess Grace Award. Her first short film, Spiral, garnered recognition at nine festivals in the U.S. and abroad.

Duane Cyrus

Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro and Director of Cyrus Art Production. Performed with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Martha Graham, The Lion King, Carousel, and domestic and international touring with Cyrus Art Production. Cyrus is co–author and editor of the book "Vital Grace: The Black Male Dancer", a photographic celebration of black men in dance. A graduate of the Juilliard School (B.F.A.) and the University of Illinois (M.F.A.), Cyrus is a recipient of the Princess Grace Foundation Emerging Artist award. While visiting UT, Mr. Cyrus led a Viewpoints workshop and responded to student–generated work.

Erik Ehn

Erik Ehn's work includes The Saint Plays, Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling, No Time Like the Present, Wolf at the Door, Beginner, and Maria Kizito. Mr. Ehn joined us as keynote speaker at our festival of new work, and as a member of the National Graduating Class, a support organization for emerging playwrights he co–founded with UT's Suzan Zeder. He is an artistic associate at San Francisco's Theatre of Yugen. Plays have been produced in San Francisco (Intersection, Thick Description, Yugen), Seattle (Annex, Empty Space), Austin (Frontera), Maine (Portland Stage), New York (BACA, Whitney Museum), San Diego (Sledgehammer), Chicago (Red Moon), Atlanta (7 Stages); elsewhere. Graduate, New Dramatists. He is currently Dean of the CalArts School of Theater.

Maria Elena Fernandez

In April 2007, Maria Elena Fernandez presented her one–woman show Confessions of a Cha Cha Feminist in conjunction with our semi–annual festival of new work. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Maria Elena Fernandez is a writer, performance artist and history professor based in Los Angeles. Ms. Fernandez has toured it in various cities including Berkeley, Denver and Albuquerque. She recently published the first person essay, “Fooling Mexicans” in the anthology Waking Up American, and teaches History of the Americas in the Chicana/o Studies Department at Cal State Northridge.

Dan Fields

Dan Fields (Director/Producer) was Associate Director for the Chicago national tour of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and Resident Director of Disney's Broadway production of The Lion King. He has served as Resident Director at Annex Theatre in Seattle, as Artistic Associate at Manhattan Theatre Club, and has been a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab since 1996. At Williamstown Theater Festival, he was Assistant Director for a production of Chekhov&r#39;s The Seagull, featuring Christopher Walken, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Blythe Danner. He joined us at our festival of new work to respond to student–generated projects.

Rachel Healy

Ms. Healy's costume designs have been seen on various Chicago stages including The Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Writers' Theatre, Chicago Children's Theatre, The Court Theatre, Northlight Theatre, Appletree Theatre, American Theatre Co., The Next Theatre, Remy Bumppo Theatre, Strawdog Theatre Co., and Naked Eye Theatre Co. Regionally, she has designed with the Alliance Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre and American Players Theatre. Ms. Healy is a professor for DePaul University teaching costume design and rendering techniques to theatre designers. While at UT, Ms. Healy did a portfolio review of our students' work and led a rendering workshop.

Sherry Kramer

Sherry Kramer's work has been seen at Yale Rep, Soho Rep, EST, New York's Second Stage, Woolly Mammoth, Seattle's Annex Theater, Mixed Blood, and The Humana Festival. She is a recipient of the N.E.A., New York Foundation for the Arts and McKnight Fellowships, the Weissberger Playwriting Award; a New York Drama League Award, the L A Women in Theater New Play Award, and the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award. Ms. Kramer's plays include The Ruling Passion, Partial Objects, and The World at Absolute Zero. Ms. Kramer is a frequent visitor and guest lecturer at UT; she joined us as part of the festival of new work, and will be joining us again in Spring 2008 to teach two semester–long playwriting courses.

Rob Milburn

Rob Milburn composes, arranges and designs with Michael Bodeen. Broadway credits include music and sound for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Speed of Darkness, and sound for A Year with Frog and Toad, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Buried Child, and The Grapes of Wrath. Off–Broadway credits include music and sound for Boy Gets Girl, Red, Space, and Marvin's Room. Recent projects include original music and sound for Lost Land at Steppenwolf Theatre, and original music, music direction and sound for The Caucasian Chalk Circle at South Coast Rep. They have created music and sound at many of America's resident theaters, the National Theatre of Great Britain, the Cameri Theatre in Tel Aviv, the Subaru Acting Company in Japan and festivals in Toronto, Dublin, Galway, Perth and Sydney. He joined us to respond to student work and to lead a workshop on sound design.

Emily Morse

Ms. Morse is the Director of Artistic Development at New Dramatists. Formerly, Emily was a resident director at ND, literary consultant for Portland Center Stage, and development consultant for Creative Time. Her directing work, 10–minute plays and service as dramaturg on workshops and productions have been seen in a variety of venues in New York City and regionally. She has studied Choreography for Directors with Annie–B Parson, Butoh with Dawn Saito, Viewpoints with J. Ed Azaira, Critical Response, and movement and stage composition with Liz Lerman, and playwriting with Eduardo Machado and Suzan–Lori Parks. She collaborated with Rachel Dickstein on Innocents, an adaptation of The House of Mirth, and recently she has been working with Carol Gilligan on an adaptation of The Scarlet Letter.

Charles Otte

Productions include Bulgakov's Flight, Brechts' Baal, Goose and Tomtom by David Rabe, and Philip Glass's multi–media opera La Belle et La Bete. Additional work with Glass includes staging the international tour of Einstein on the Beach (for Robert Wilson), Songs from Liquid Days, The Civil Wars (for Wilson), and The Juniper Tree. Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, Otte produced the CD–ROM game Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail. Screenwriting and film directing credits include Blind Faith, Beer Nuts, I am Not a Ghost, and Mission Invisible. In addition, Otte was Creative Director for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Illinois where he directed presentational and interactive media. Of special note to audiences in Austin is Otte's production of The Star of Destiny, on permanent exhibit in the Texas State History Museum. Mr. Otte joined us to respond to new student work and to direct a workshop production of M.F.A. Playwright George Brant's Elephant's Graveyard.

Katie Pearl

Katie Pearl is a New York based collaborative theater maker working throughout the country on site–specific performance and new plays. She has been recognized by the Austin critics' community for her direction of such productions as Steve Moore's Nightswim, Fatigue, The Whimsy, and Lisa D'Amour's Anna Bella Ima. Pearl is the recipient of a Roothbert Fellowship, a Drama League directing fellowship, and a 2003 Village Voice OBIE Award (Nita & Zita). She joined us to direct a workshop production of M.F.A. Playwright David Modigliani's WIRELESSLESS.

Todd Rosenthal

Mr. Rosenthal is a Chicago based set designer. Recent regional theater credits include: Last of the Boys and Betrayal for Steppenwolf; Romance, Clean, and A Christmas Carol for the Goodman Theatre; Death and the Maiden for Centerstage in Baltimore; Our Lady of 121st Street for The Alley Theatre; Drawer Boy for the Papermill Playhouse; King Lear and A Month in the Country for Milwaukee Rep; Step Right Up for the Big Apple Circus at Lincoln Center; and The Guardsman and False Creeds for the Alliance Theatre Company. Current projects include: The Unmentionables for Yale Rep; August: Osage County, The Crucible, Good Boys and True for Steppenwolf; Doubt for Cincinnati Playhouse and Actors Theatre of Louisville; and The Big Apple Circus' 30th Anniversary. Todd is part of the US contingent of professional designer exhibiting at The Prague Quadrennial this summer. He teaches design at Northwestern University's school of communications, and is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.

Debbie Saivetz

Ms. Saivetz has directed and developed new work with Clubbed Thumb, Rattlestick, the Lark, the Women's Project & Productions, Voice & Vision, Powerhouse/NYSAF, the Goodman, Hartford Stage and the NJ Shakespeare Festival. She will direct a Spanish–language production of Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House in Oaxaca, Mexico next year. She was a Resident Director at New Dramatists, a Drama League Directing Fellow, is a member of Soho Rep's Writer/Director Lab, and a New Georges Affiliated Artist. She teaches at Baruch College/CUNY. She joined us to direct a staged reading of M.F.A. Playwright Erica Saleh's Love, Candy.

Joan Schirle

Joan Schirle, actor, playwright, director, and deviser joined us this Spring to lead movement–based acting workshops, and to present her one–woman show, Second Skin. Ms. Schirle is Founding Artistic Director of Dell'Arte International, the ensemble acclaimed for 30 years of collaborative creation and global touring. She directs Dell'Arte's International School of Physical Theatre, (one year training, plus M.F.A. in Ensemble Based Physical Theatre). She was one of six American actors awarded a 2006 Fox Foundation National Artists Residency grant. A senior teacher of the Alexander Technique, she heads Dell'Arte's Study Abroad: Bali Program.

Kirstie Simson

Kirstie Simson has been a continuous explosion in the contemporary dance scene, bringing audiences into contact wit the vitality of pure creation in moment after moment of virtuoso improvisation. Called “a force of nature” by the New York Times, she is an award–winning dancer and teacher who has “immeasurably enriched and expanded the boundaries of New Dance” according to Time Out Magazine, London. Simson's eternal subject is freedom, as she dares to go beyond the boundaries of form and structure to create movement out of the rhythm of life itself.

Theatre of Yugen

In April 2007, Theatre of Yugen joined us to present part of their cycle plays, a work in progress. Theatre of Yugen is developing The Cycle Plays, five plays performed during the course of a one–day–only presentation informed by the ritualistic Japanese Noh theater, written and directed in an ensemble process by Yugen's Artistic Associate and playwright Erik Ehn, with musical composition by Allen Whitman, Suki O'Kane and the Yugen Orchestra.

This marathon theatrical event presents American stories told in the signature poetic, dance–drama style of Yugen, with its roots in the spirit of Noh, reaching up to new movement and narrative forms through original, cutting–edge contemporary music. The five categories of plays forming the traditional Noh architecture are re–invented in the lexicon of Western archetypes and with American legendary figures: Pretty – the fifth category Demon play – is the story of the abduction and murder of a young girl.

Naomi Wallace

Playwright Naomi Wallace

Naomi Wallace's work has been produced in both the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. Her plays include One Flea Spare, In the Heart of America, Slaughter City, The Inland Sea, and The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek. Her work has received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Kesselring Prize, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, and an Obie. She is also a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. Her award–winning film Lawn Dogs is available on DVD. She is presently working on a commission for Actor's Theatre of Louisville and Clean Break of London.

Her new play, Things of Dry Hours, received its world premiere at the Pittsburg Public in 2004, and will be produced next spring by the Manchester Royal Exchange and the Gate Theatre of London. It will receive its New York premiere at New York Theatre Workshop in January 2008.

Thang Dao

In residence February 15–16 teaching dance master classes.

Thang Dao was born in Danang, Vietnam. He currently resides in New York City as a dancer and choreographer. He is dancing for the Metropolitan OperaHouse, Janie Brendel and Company in Adam Houglands Brahms's ballets while attending NYU focusing on his M.A. in Dance Film and Choreography. Thang received his formal dance education from the Juilliard School and The Boston Conservatory. In 2001, he received his B.F.A. in dance from The Boston Conservatory. After graduation, he joined the Stephen Petronio Company where he danced until 2006, leaving to further and focus on his choreographic career. Thang has presented his works in Boston, New York City, and Austin with acclaimed reviews by the Boston Globe and The New York Times. In 2006, his ballet Stepping Ground, choreographed on Ballet Austin for the 1st Biannual New American Dance Talent, received the Audience Choice Award all four nights. He is back to teach and choreograph for Ballet Austin II this February. Thang will be featured in Dance Magazine this April as an emerging choreographer.