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FACULTY
- Acting/Performance
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Erika Bailey
(Assistant Professor of Voice and Dialect) teaches vocal
production, text, speech, and dialects for the MFA program. She has
previously served as an Adjunct Professor of Voice at Barnard College, a
Visiting Instructor of Voice at Carnegie Mellon's BFA Acting program and
as a dialect coach with the Drama Division of the Juilliard School. 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, To Kill a
Mockingbird, Drawer Boy, The Borderland and three
seasons of A Christmas Carol with Kansas City Repertory
Theatre, Nine Parts of Desire with the Unicorn Theatre, Our
Town with The Coterie theatre, A Christmas Carol for two
seasons with Princeton, New Jersey's McCarter Theatre, and Romeo and
Juliet with the Public Theatre's Shakespeare Lab in New York City.
Most recently Professor Bailey served as dialect coach on the
Tony-nominated Broadway production of Mary Stuart starring
Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter. 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. She
is currently studying Fitzmaurice Voicework with Catherine Fitzmaurice
and is a Candidate for Certification for Associate Teacher in that
technique. Professor Bailey also continues her research into the field
of rhetoric and its application as a training tool for actors exploring
heightened dramatic text. |
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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.
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 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.
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Barry
Kyle (Professor of
Theatre Arts)
is an Honorary Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and
Founding Artistic Director of Swine Palace Productions in Louisiana. He
was the first Artistic Director of the RSC's Swan Theatre in
Stratford-upon-Avon. Mr. Kyle has directed more than 30 productions for
the Royal Shakespeare Company. These include Love's Labour's Lost,
Measure for Measure, The Two Noble Kinsmen, The Taming of the Shrew,
Richard II, Edward Bond's Lear, and Marlowe's Dr. Faustus.
His work has been seen in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Jerusalem,
Moscow, Warsaw, Melbourne, Singapore and many other places around the
world. He has been twice nominated for Olivier Awards as Best Director
for his RSC productions of Shakespeare's comedies in London. In New York
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. Also in
New York City, he adapted and directed Henry VI, which won a
Drama Desk Nomination as Outstanding Revival. He has directed many major
British actors including Helen Mirren, Jeremy Irons, Patrick Stewart,
Kenneth Branagh and Ben Kingsley. He was the first Western director to
work at the National Theatre in Prague where he directed Shakespeare's
King Lear during the 'velvet revolution'. Mr Kyle later directed
a ground-breaking all-female production of Richard III at
Shakespeare's Globe in London, where he had also directed a second
production of King Lear, which went on to play in Tokyo, Japan.
In 2006, he directed The Mysteries- a modern version of the
medieval Christian drama, set in the bombed-out cathedral in Coventry,
for the Belgrade Theatre in England. The Guardian newspaper in
the UK ranked the production as one of that year's 5 star productions in
England, and he was awarded "Director of the Year" by Britain's Daily
Mail newspaper in 2006. He completed a major revival of An Inspector
Calls by J.B. Priestley for Clwyd Theatr Cymru, the national theatre
of Wales, where he is now directing his own adaptation of Nikolai
Erdman's The Suicide. In 2007, Mr. Kyle directed Shakespeare's
Midsummer Night's Dream in a big budget production in Singapore on a
hillside site, with an international Asian cast, and in which the set
covered five acres. Later this year he will direct the English and
Welsh premiere of The Drawer Boy and prepare the World premier
production of The Master and Margarita, adapted by Ron
Hutchinson, which will begin its life at UMKC.
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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.
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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.
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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, Tears of Joy, Living Voices and
Seattle Mime Theatre. She has also taught and directed devised work for
the Seattle Repertory Theatre as well Cornish College of the Arts.
Ensemble-generated works include
Meanwhile (UMKC’s Undergraduate Theatre
Department), The Best Story Never Told
(Dell'Arte International and CalArts), and
Boom! An International Lost and Found Marching Band
(KC Fringe Festival, and The St. Mane in Lanesboro, MN). Professor
Roberts was recently award an ArtsKC Inspiration Grant to develop a
one-woman mask play, and was chosen by the Charlotte St. Foundation for
a one-year studio residency as part of the Urban Culture Project. She
holds a BFA in Acting from Cornish, and an MFA in Ensemble Based
Physical Theatre from Dell’Arte International School of Physical
Theatre.
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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)
Percy (The
Boyfriend)
and Donny (The Lieutenant of Inishmore). His work as a director has
been varied in style and venue and includes
Mojo, Side
Man, All in the Timing, Rabbit Hole
(Unicorn Theatre),
Misalliance
and
Room
Service
(Commonweal Theater Company),
The Comedy
of Errors
and
The Shorts Fest
(The Kansas City Rep),
Talley's
Folly
(Kansas City Actors Theater)
Ferdinand
the Bull
(Coterie Theater) and The Cripple of Inishmaan (Nebraska Rep).
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 Kansas
City Repertory Theatre. He returns to UMKC from Binghamton University where
he held the title of Head of Acting and Directing. He serves UMKC’s
Department of Theatre as The Patricia McIlrath Endowed Professor of Theater
– Acting. |
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