Kate Burke, Associate Professor, Voice, Speech, Acting, is once again teaching a fall theatre voice course for the M.Litt./MFA degree program at the American Shakespeare Theatre in partnership with Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, VA.  This summer she was text and dialect coach for The Matchmaker, Measure for Measure, and Romeo and Juliet at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, WI.  She recently became the department’s Equal Opportunity Officer and also serves as a faculty advisor to U.Va.’s St. Anselm Institute, which brings 4 Catholic theologians and thinkers to grounds for lectures each year and sponsors other activities for Catholic students.  She offers private voice coaching to newscasters at Piedmont-area channels 19 and 29.

Bob Chapel, Professor of Drama/Producing Artistic Director, Heritage Repertory Theatre, spent the 2005-06 academic year on leave, having stepping down after 15 years as chair of the department.  Bob spent three weeks last September teaching workshops in Musical Theatre Performance (in English) in Moscow, at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS), and the Cinematography Institute (VGIK).  Upon returning in October, he immediately went to Ann Arbor, Michigan to direct a well-received production of Moises Kaufman’s The Laramie Project for the University of Michigan’s Department of Theatre and Drama.  This past February-May, Bob served as Artist in Residence at the University of Tasmania’s School of Visual and Performing Arts, directing Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer for their acting conservatory.  Bob then produced five shows for the Heritage Rep summer, directing two, South Pacific and Sunday in the Park with George.  He has returned to teach in the department this fall, but his travels aren’t over, as he’s been invited back to Moscow and GITIS to direct Sweeney Todd this November/December on a Fulbright Senior Specialists Grant.  A Michigan alum, he has been invited back to direct the very first production in the University of Michigan’s new Arthur Miller Theatre, Miller’s stage adaptation of his teleplay, Playing For Time, the centerpiece of an international conference on Miller.

John Frick, Theatre History and Dramatic Literature, has assumed the Presidency of the American Theatre and Drama Society; published an entry on producer Richmond Dillard Crinkley in the Dictionary of Virginia Biography; presented a conference paper, "Not From the Drowsy Pulpit: The Moral Reform Melodrama on the Nineteenth Century Stage" to be published in the 2007 edition of Theatre Symposium; had a second article, "A New Look at an Old Play: Re-reading Royall Tyler's The Contrast," accepted for publication in The New England Theatre Journal; and wrote a third article, "But is it Art?  'Reading' Popular Entertainment" for a book titled Thinking of Reading to be published by the University Press of Virginia.  John has been invited to present a paper, "A Second Glance at New York; or, New York as it Really is," at the NYC Edwin Forrest's New York, Conference in November and has been invited to present "The Ante Bellum Dramatizations of Uncle Tom's Cabin"  at the Uncle Tom's Cabin in the Web of Culture” multi-disciplinary conference at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Archive in Hartford in June 2007.   In spring 2007, John will be on sesquicentennial leave in London continuing research on his current book, The Theatre and the City: Representations of the Metropolis on the American Stage.

Gweneth West, Professor, Costume Design, created clothes for U.Va.’s Luminosity (directed by Betsy Tucker) in the Helms in March.  She designed and executed the clothes for School for Husbands (directed by Roseann Sheridan) for the summer Texas Shakespeare Festival in Kilgore, Texas.  There she worked with several actors from the University of Delaware MFA Acting program, where actress Sara Dandridge (veteran U.Va. and HRT performer) is currently enrolled.  Having completed her responsibilities as KCACTF Region IV Design Chair, she will be the design representative on the three-member KCACTF National Selection Team at all 8 regional festivals.  After seeing over 50 spring productions the team will select six for presentation at the National Festival at the Kennedy Center in April.  Soon after she will be attending the Prague Quadrenniel ’07 as a member of OISTAT Costume Working Group.  She was promoted to full professor as of August 2006.

Michael Rasbury, Assistant Professor, Sound Design, started his work this summer at The Lost Colony in Manteo, North Carolina. He served as sound designer and assisted with the installation of a new $250,000 surround sound system, installed by Creative Visions, Inc. From there, he traveled to California to serve as composer/sound designer for Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival's productions of Twelfth Night and Othello. Examples of these compositions can be heard here. In the spring of 2006, he received a $2600 grant from the University of Virginia's Council for the Arts for the purchase of a portable digital recording system.