Acting/Performing Faculty, UMKC Theatre Department

FACULTY - Acting/Performance

Erika Bailey (Assistant Professor of Voice and Dialect). Erika Bailey has previously served as an Adjunct Professor of Voice at Barnard College and as a Visiting Instructor of Voice at Carnegie Mellon’s BFA Acting program. As an actress she performed with theatre companies such as The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey and Pennsylvania Shakespeare Theatre. Among her projects as a voice and dialect coach, Professor Bailey has coached Syringa Tree with Kansas City Repertory Theatre, A Christmas Carol with Princeton, New Jersey’s McCarter Theatre and Romeo and Juliet with the Public Theatre’s Shakespeare Lab in New York City. She also served as a dialect coach with the Drama Division of the Juilliard School. Professor Bailey received a BA in Theatre from Williams College, an MFA in Acting from Brandeis University and an MA in Voice Studies from Central School of Speech and Drama. This summer she spent studying Fitzmaurice Voicework with Catherine Fitzmaurice and she is now a Candidate for Certification as an Associate Teacher in that technique.

Gary Holcombe (Head of Undergraduate Studies in Theatre) is well-known as both an accomplished actor and singer and a veteran of many Broadway musicals including Big River, South Pacific, 42nd Street, Golden Apple, and An Evening with Romberg among them. Gary starred as Oliver Warbucks in the nation tour of Annie, where he met his wife, actress Donna Thomason. Other national tours include principle roles in The Most Happy Fellow, 1776, and On the Twentieth Century. He has appeared on ABC’s One Life to Live and PBS’s Molders of Troy. He was featured in the film, Truman, for HBO and co-starred in the television movie, Puppy Love. A highly regarded baritone, Gary began his career with the Washington Opera, was soloist for Eric Butterworth for The Unity Church in New York City, and can be heard on the recording of Rose Marie for the Smithsonian. Gary has also been the guest soloist with symphonies from Baltimore to Los Angeles. Gary is the recipient of the Drama Desk Award, three Best of Kansas City Awards and The 2005 Pinnacle Award for Excellence in the Arts.

Ricardo Khan (Directing/New Project Development) is the Co-founder and Artistic Director of the Crossroads Theatre Company of New Brunswick, NJ. Under his direction, Crossroads won the 1999 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater, making it one of the nation’s most acclaimed African-American theater companies in history. He is also the Founder and Director of a new multi-national writers’ initiative called The World Theatre Lab, currently based at theatres in New York, Johannesburg and London. He has directed in New York at the Manhattan Theatre Club, the Negro Ensemble Company, Queens Theatre in the Park, the Village Gate and the world famous Apollo Theatre; at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Crossroads, and in South Africa at the Windybrow Theatre. His work has recently been represented on Broadway in Hot Feet! for which he was Associate Director. He is a recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from Rutgers University (1997). In 1989, he was co-chair of the National Endowment for the Arts’ theater advisory panel and from 1996-2000 was the President of Theatre Communications Group, the national organization of American professional theatres. During Crossroads’ first 20 years, Khan nurtured new plays that have forever enriched the cannon of the American theatre, working with Ntozake Shange, Ron Milner, Leslie Lee, Rita Dove, George C. Wolfe, August Wilson, Anna Deavere Smith, Mbongeni Ngema, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee among the many.

Barry Kyle (Professor of Theatre Arts) is Honorary Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and Founding Artistic Director of Swine Palace Productions in Louisiana as well as having served as the first Artistic Director of Stratford's Swan Theatre. Mr. Kyle has directed many productions in Stratford and London over the last 20 years. These include Love's Labour's Lost, The Two Noble Kinsmen, The Taming of the Shrew, Richard II, Edward Bond's Lear, and Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. In 1992 he directed an off-Broadway production of Henry V which was awarded the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Revival. He also directed To Kill a Mockingbird at Actor's Theatre of Louisville and Romeo and Juliet at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. More recently in New York City, Kyle directed Henry VI, which won a Drama Desk Nomination as Outstanding Revival, and Measure for Measure. He has directed many major British actors including Jeremy Irons, Patrick Stewart, Kenneth Branagh and Ben Kingsley. He has directed productions in major theatres around the world including Tel Aviv, Melbourne, Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, Hamburg, and Moscow, and was the first Western director to work at the National Theatre in Prague where he directed Shakespeare's King Lear. Mr Kyle directed a ground-breaking all-female production of Richard III at Shakespeare's Globe in London, where he also directed another hugely successful production of King Lear, which went on to play in Tokyo, Japan. He directed The Mysteries- a modern version of the medieval, Christian drama for the Belgrade Theatre in England. The Guardian newspaper in the UK ranked them as one of this year's 5 star productions in England. He completed a major revival of An Inspector Calls by J.B.Priestley for Theatr Cymru, the national theatre of Wales, which is currently on a national tour. Mr. Kyle directed Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream in a big budget production in Singapore on a hillside site with an Asian cast, and to rave reviews in the Singapore and Malaysian media.

Jennifer Martin (Hall Family Foundation Professor of Theatre) teaches Movement for Actors, Historical Styles of Movement and Dance, Physical Approaches to Characterization and Subtle Energy Disciplines for the MFA Professional Training Program. As a member of the Medical Humanities Faculty she coordinates a course called "Healing and the Arts." She is resident choreographer and movement coach for the Kansas City Heart of America Shakespeare Festival. Her choreographic work has been seen at Missouri Repertory Theatre (now KC Rep), Seattle Repertory Theatre, Northlight Theatre, Ford’s Theatre, Goodspeed Opera House, The Shakespeare Theatre, Connecticut Repertory Theatre and Masterworks Lab Theatre in New York. She is a founding board member of The Association of Theatre Movement Educators and an editorial board member of the newly founded ATME Journal, a digital kinetic journal devoted to documenting the original work of theatre movement specialists. Dr Martin conducted master classes in training programs across the USA, Europe and in New Zealand. She has called the Kansas City theatre community her home for 25 years.

Carla Noack is enjoying her fourth year as part of the Great River Shakespeare Festival acting company, where recent roles include Rosalind in As You Like It and Katherine in Taming of the Shrew. For ten years she was a core artist of the Commonweal Theatre Company in Lanesboro, MN, and has worked regularly with Minneapolis-based companies Ten Thousand Things and Theatre Latte Da. Carla earned her MFA from UMKC in 1992, and came back to Kansas City in 1997 to play "C" in Kansas City Repertory Theatre's acclaimed production of Three Tall Women. She is thrilled to return again now, to the training grounds that provided the foundation for her career.

Stephanie Roberts (Assistant Professor of Physical Theatre) teaches Morning Practice, Commedia dell’Arte, Clown, Mask, and Epic Storytelling for the MFA Professional Actor Training Program. She has toured nationally and abroad with companies such as Annex Theatre, Tears of Joy, Living Voices and Seattle Mime Theatre. She has also taught and directed devised work for the Seattle Repertory Theatre Education Department as well Cornish College of the Arts. Recent ensemble-created projects include directing Meanwhile for UMKC’s Undergraduate Theatre Department, and performing in The Best Story Never Told, at Dell'Arte International and CalArts. Professor Roberts holds a BFA in Acting from Cornish, and an MFA in Ensemble Based Physical Theatre from Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre.

Theodore Swetz (The Patricia McIlrath Endowed Chair in Theater Arts, Acting) began his career with the New York Shakespeare Festival, performing at Lincoln Center and the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Ted has had the privilege of studying with legendary teachers Morris Carnovsky, Phoebe Brand and Stella Adler, all founding members of the Group Theater. For ten years, as an original member of American Players Theatre, a "Tony" nominated classical repertory company founded by Randall Duk Kim, Anne Occhiogrosso and Charles Bright, he acted, taught, directed and served as assistant artistic director. As a principal actor Ted has appeared in many regional theaters throughout the country. Some representative roles include Bottom (Midsummer), Falstaff (Merry Wives), Gloucester (Lear), Friar Lawrence (R&J), Claudius (Hamlet), Touchstone (As You Like It), Argan (Imaginary Invalid), Max (Laughter on the 23rd Floor) and Percy (The Boyfriend). His work as a director has been varied in style and venue and includes Mojo, Side Man and All in the Timing (Unicorn Theatre), Misalliance and Room Service (Commonweal Theater Company), The Comedy of Errors and The Shorts Fest (The Missouri Rep), Talley's Folly (Kansas City Actors Theater) and Ferdinand the Bull (Coterie Theater). For twelve years Ted was a faculty member in the professional training program here at UMKC as well as serving as resident artist with the Missouri Repertory Theatre. He returns to UMKC from Binghamton University where he held the title of Head of Acting and Directing.

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