Theatre and Dance

Alumnus Jeffrey Carlson (B.A., dramatic arts, ‘97), who achieved acclaim for his portrayal of one of the first transgender characters on daytime television in the series All My Children, died on July 6. His career spanned Broadway, regional theatre, television and film. 

Alumna Mengyuan “Mia” Qin (B.A., theatre and dance, ‘20) has recently served as a production assistant on the new Broadway musical Shucked. In addition, Qin received her MFA in stage management from Columbia University’s School of the Arts in 2023.

From a classic Shakespearean comedy to a dynamic hip-hop workshop, the UC Davis Department of Theatre and Dance 2023-2024 season aspires to have worldwide effect.

Professor Margaret Laurena Kemp, chair of theatre and dance, will direct Remote Theatre’s forthcoming production which is a mixed-reality piece inspired by the late Obie-award winning playwright Ntozake Shange’s coming of age novel, Liliane. The production, titled Your Mind, Girls, is set to launch in early 2024 in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Professor Margaret Laurena Kemp, theatre and dance chair, is pleased to announce that UC Davis alum Dahlak Brathwaite (B.A. English and theatre and dance, ‘08), a spoken-word poet, musician, actor, playwright and writer, returns to campus for a Hip-Hop residency in winter quarter 2024. 

Alumna Kara Branch (M.F.A., dramatic arts, ‘11) has received a 2023 Drama Desk Award nomination for her costume design for According to the Chorus, presented off-Broadway in New York by the New Light Theater Project.

Branch’s nomination is in the category of Best Costume Design for a Play. The category features plays that are produced both on and off-Broadway.

Alumnus Hien Huynh (B.A., theatre and dance, ‘15) appears in Lemongrass & Anise, a performance featuring two generations of a Vietnamese American family. San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum presents the work on May 18 at 6:30 p.m. 

A stalwart of the UC Davis Department of Theatre and Dance, Professor Emeritus John Iacovelli died April 14 at 64. An award-winning artist, he designed numerous theatrical productions in regional theaters across the country while maintaining a distinguished teaching career at UC Davis where he co-created the Master of Fine Arts program in theatre design.

Branwen Okpako, associate professor of cinema and digital media, has adapted Helon Habila’s The Chibok Girls into an experimental documentary, Return to Chibok. The film re-enacts the journey to visit those left behind after the shocking kidnapping of 276 girls from Chibok Girls School in 2014. It will be screened at UC Davis on Feb. 27 by the Center for the Advancement of Multicultural Perspective on Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities (CAMPSSAH). 

Alumna Sonya Eddy (B.A., Afro-American studies, ’94), best known to television audiences for her long-running role as head nurse Epiphany Johnson in the ABC soap opera General Hospital, has died. She was 55.  

For their final project, Professor Margaret Laurena Kemp, Department of Theatre and Dance chair, along with the students and guest artists from the fall quarter course DRA 199: Theatre for Social Change and Social Justice have created a video inspired the striking UC graduate students and teaching assistants. 

For DRA 199, students, faculty and staff have a year-long engagement with Ping Chong and Company and create a fact-based performance (docu-drama) and film about the issues and impact of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Statements). 

Kristin Orlando (B.A. theatre and math ‘08) and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra won a Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award in 2022 for their long-form video of Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21. She is Vice President of Operations at the NJSO, and in that capacity, the film company, the orchestra and Orlando jointly won the award.

The award-winning performance can be viewed on YouTube. 

Professor L.M. Bogad has been awarded a grant from the Creative Work Fund. The grants are given to Greater Bay Area artists collaborating with nonprofit organizations to develop new works of theater, traditional art, dance, poetry, arts activism and more.

Poetry by doctoral student Diego Martínez-Campos (M.F.A, dramatic arts, ‘20) has been selected to be part of Catalyst New Music, an innovative music collaboration, along with the work of 14 other artists across the U.S.A.

The Department of Theatre and Dance has selected the Granada Artists-in-Residence for 2022-2023. Erika Chong Shuch will be the fall quarter guest artist and David Adam Moore and Victoria “Vita” Tzykun will be the joint guest artists for winter 2023.