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Tom Bloom

News From The Chair
by Tom Bloom, Chair, Associate Professor, Scenic Design
tab4p@virginia.edu

Guest Artists Featured for the Upcoming '09 - '10 Season

An array of guest artists will be working with us throughout our next season of productions.  Several guest artists whom we are welcoming back are graduates of our BA and MFA programs.  Some of the following names may bring back memories of your time in the building - and consider this my invitation to reunite with a past colleague who will be working with us next season. 

Here's a list of guest artists contributing to our 2009-2010 Production Season:

Rachel Witt, MFA Scene Designer, will be designing the opening production of our fall '09 season - The Foreigner, directed by Richard Warner. 

Doreen Bechtol directs Language of Angels, the second production of the fall season.  Doreen is no stranger to the building.  She's taught Master Classes for the acting program as well as teaching movement and acting courses on a part time basis for the department. 

Doreen travels to Charlottesville from "over the mountain" in Staunton where she is the American Shakespeare Center Education Department's director of the Young Company Theatre Camp, a position she has held since 2006 and currently is developing a new interactive Shakespeare program for local high school English classes.  She started work with the ASC in 2002 performing in the first Resident Troupe in roles such as Olivia in Twelfth Night, Goneril in King Lear, Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and most recently as Moth in Love’s Labour’s Lost.  Doreen received degrees in theatre and education at Western Michigan University and specializes in movement skills having served as a movement coach and choreographer for the ASC.  She is also a founding member of the Performer’s Exchange Project based in Charlottesville, VA.

Colleen Kelly will be directing Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid, which is the final production of our fall '09 season. Colleen is currently in residence directing the spring '09 production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona and we're delighted that she will once again be working with us throughout the fall season. 

Colleen Kelly is the director of education and research at the American Shakespeare Center and teaches in the MLitt/MFA Shakespeare Program at Mary Baldwin College. Previous work with the ASC includes directing the 2006/2007 touring production of Julius Caesar and co-directing the 2002/2003 touring production of The Taming of the Shrew. Colleen has also served as movement coach, dance choreographer, and fight director for several ASC touring and resident productions.

A former Associate Professor in our Drama Department, Colleen also has taught at the University of San Diego/Old Globe Theatre, and served as head of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s MFA/Professional Actor Training Program. Colleen holds BS and MA degrees from Eastern Michigan University and an MFA from Ohio University. She is a member of Actors’ Equity, a Founding Board Member of the Association of Theatre Movement Educators, and a past vice president of the Society of American Fight Directors. Colleen has worked professionally as an actor, director, fight director, and dance choreographer for theatres such as Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Denver Center, Milwaukee Rep, Dallas Theatre Center, The Old Globe, and La Jolla Playhouse. Film credits include dance choreography for Sommersby and fight direction for the PBS series "Tell About the South."

Michael Allen, MFA Scene Designer, returns to Charlottesville to design The Imaginary Invalid.  Michael, a USA Scene Designer, has recently moved from NYC to Rocky Mount NC. His NY credits include designs for several national tours (Hairspray, Oklahoma!, The Wiz, Miss Saigon) and his versatility extends to designing Macy's windows (A Very Merry Muppet Christmas) , and MTV Awards events.

Amanda McRaven directs the first production of spring '10 - Anton Chekhov's The Seagull.  A Charlottesville native, Amanda graduated with a BA in English and Theatre from U.Va. and holds an MFA in Directing from the University of California, Irvine, where she studied with Dr Keith Fowler and Bill Rauch, of Cornerstone Theatre and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
 
She is most interested in creating collaborative, interactive performance with no fourth walls.  Her inspirations are non-Western performance, dance, and personal creativity.  Her artistic influences are Anne Bogart, Ariane Mnouchkine, Jerzy Grotowski, Robert Wilson, and Derevo.  With her company, FUGITIVE, she seeks to create live performance that invigorates performer and audience, and perpetuates Artaud’s notion of the “acrobat of the heart.”

In addition to directing, Amanda’s interest in social arts programs led her to The Voice Project, a writing and performance program for female inmates.  She is currently expanding FUGITIVE and The Voice Project into an international performance ensemble encouraging people to make theatre with their own voices.

She is the recipient of a 2008 Fulbright award to study community-based theatre and its relationship to culture in New Zealand.  Amanda is returning to us from Palmerston North, NZ, where she has been working on The Voice Project Aotearoa, an ensemble-based piece on cultural identity in a multicultural society.

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