Alumna Olivia Caserta (B.A., theatre and dance, ‘22) and
undergraduate student Megan Abbanat are co-directing the Winters
Shakespeare Workshop production of the Bard’s
romantic comedy Twelfth Night which performs
July 21 and 22 at the Winters City Park playground stage.
The production features music direction by Nicholas Carvajal,
librarian for the UC Davis Department of Music.
Professor Margaret Laurena Kemp, theatre and dance department
chair, is pleased to announce the Granada Artists-in-Residence
for 2024 which includes an internationally acclaimed
alumnus.
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.
Alumna Aliya Hunter
(B.A., gender studies, sexuality and women’s studies, ‘21) will
be doing her solo work Undefeated as part of New York’s
PrideFest
2023. The work will be performed at The Tank on June 23 at 7
p.m.
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.
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.
Alumnus Tom Burmester (B.A., dramatic arts, ’01; PhD,
performance studies, ‘22) has been named as the new executive
director of The Historic Woodland Opera House (WOH). He replaces
the outgoing director Angela Baltezore who will retire in June.
A number of UC Davis Department of Theatre and Dance alumni are
working on the Big Idea Theatre’s upcoming production of William
Shakespeare’s classic comedy Twelfth Night. The
play is being presented March 3-April 1.
Professor L.M. Bogad’s play COINTELSHOW: A PATRIOT
ACT is a biting political satire about COINTELPRO,
the FBI’s counterintelligence program with which they sabotaged,
disrupted, and repressed domestic groups like the Black Panther
Party for Self-Defense, the American Indian Movement, along with
individuals like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Fred
Hampton. The play is being presented by ArtsEmerson as a virtual
event March 8-12.
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.
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.
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).
The 180 Series of courses provide exciting practical instruction
and participation in all aspects of theatrical and dance
production. Whether you are exploring these courses as a
Theatre & Dance Major, Minor, or are simply an interested
non-affiliated student, you will find passionate people working
to create art and tell stories on stage. We invite you to
join us at this link.
Emile Rappaport (B.A., theatre and dance, ‘19) works in
video production for the Los Angeles based Zach
King Team which specializes in making short, high
concept videos that are shared onto Tik Tok, Instagram, and
YouTube, though Rappaport originally arrived in L.A. to
pursue an acting career.
We are dismayed at the recent racist violence, and murders, in
Atlanta, and across the country, against Asian and Asian-American
people and women in particular. We recognize that this is part of
an ongoing regime of racism and violence and denounce it.
We stand in solidarity with those working against racism in
our communities, workplaces, government, and cultural
environment.
