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FACULTY
- Acting/Performance
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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.
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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 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.
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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 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.
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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) 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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