Titles and contact information are displayed below. Click on a
section heading or use tabs at left to see all listings for that
section. Click on individual names to see complete biographies.
PhD, Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Brown UniversityM.A., History and Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Brown UniversityB.A, History with minor in Drama, Stanford University
Doria E. Charlson is thrilled to be joining
the faculty of the department of Theatre and Dance at UC Davis as
a Visiting Assistant Professor. Doria earned her PhD in Theatre
Arts and Performance Studies from Brown University, from which
she also holds MA degrees in History and Theatre Arts and
Performance Studies. She also earned a BA in History with a minor
in Drama from Stanford University.
M.F.A. in Theatre (Concentration in Lighting Design), Illinois State University, 2019B.A. in Theater, Summa Cum Laude- North Greenville University, 2014
An avid writer, artist, musician and advocate, Ethan
Hollinger has worked across the country as a lighting,
sound, and media designer in such venues as the Duluth Playhouse,
New Hazlett Theatre, Tennessee GSFTA, Southern Appalachian
Repertory Theatre, and the Texas Shakespeare Festival to name a
few. In addition to teaching and mentorship, Hollinger’s designs
have been seen academically at Illinois State University,
PCPA/Pacific Conservatory Theatre in Santa Maria, Indiana
University of Pennsylvania, the University of Minnesota-Duluth,
and soon, UC Davis.
M.F.A. Classical Theatre, The George Washington University at The Shakespeare TheatreB.S. Interdepartmental Studies, School of Speech, Northwestern University
Margaret Laurena Kemp has appeared on regional
and international stages including Arena Stage, Mark Taper Forum,
Yale Rep, South Coast Repertory, La Mama Theatre (Melbourne,
Australia), Theatre of Changes (Athens, Greece), Red Pear Theatre
(Antibes, France), and The Magnet Theatre (Cape Town, South
Africa).
Ph.D. Duke University, 1999B.A. University of Cincinnati, Phi Beta KappaPerformance Studies
Jon D. Rossini received his PhD in English from Duke University
in 1999 and is Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance
and the Graduate Group in Performance Studies at UC Davis as well
as a CAMPSSAH affiliate. He teaches courses in the History of
Theatre and Dance, Latinx Theatre and Performance, Race and
Ethnicity in Performance, Dramaturgy, Playwriting, Performance
Theory, and Performance/Performative Writing.
M.F.A., Technical Design and Production, Yale School of Drama
Steven Schmidt is a founding member and technical advisor for
California Scenic Fabrication, where he served as the founding
Executive Director from 2024 to 2025. Steven served as the
Technical Director for California Shakespeare Theater from 2017
to 2024, where he built the scene shop into a sustainable,
year-round enterprise constructing scenery for many Bay Area
theaters.
Alexander Boyd graduated from the
University of California at Davis Graduate Program in Performance
Studies in June 2014. His dissertation, “The Sustainability of
Traditional Knowledge Systems: Embodied Learning through
Practice, Teaching and Application,” draws on 20 years of
professional practice and teaching in Daoist Qigong arts
(Daojiao Lishi Quanfa) that he has studied since 1985
with his main teachers Chee Soo (who passed in 1994) and Desmond
Murray.
Mary Beth Cavanaugh has choreographed for
Oregon Shakespeare Festival (for five seasons as choreographer
and actor), Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The New Victory Theater,
Yale Repertory Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse, Repertory Theatre
of St. Louis, Brisbane Arts Festival, La Mama E.T.C., Aurora
Theatre Company, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Lincoln Center Directors
Lab, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, TheatreWorks,
Shakespeare at Stinson, Mills College Rep, and Summerfest Dance
and California Shakespeare Theater (where she is an Associate
Artist) for 17 seasons.
Stuart Carroll is the Artistic Director of the
Sacramento-based Capitol Ballet Company. He has presented
The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Giselle,
Paquita, La
Bayadère, and Don
Quixote to local audiences and the surrounding
communities with support and funding from the Sacramento
Metropolitan Arts Commission and the California Arts Council.
Michele Apriña Leavy is a professional actor and
theatre educator. Originally from Oakland, CA, she has
performed locally with such companies as the American
Conservatory Theater, Alameda Civic Ballet, Berkeley Repertory
Theatre, The Bay Area Playwrights’ Festival, BRAVA Theater
Center, California Shakespeare Theater, Center Repertory Company,
Livermore Shakespeare Festival, Marin Theatre Company, The San
Francisco Playhouse, and TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, among
others. In farther locales, she has appeared with Theatre
Key West (Florida), The Elephant Theatre Co
Joanne Martin has worked at The Adobe Theatre,
Brava, California Shakespeare Theatre, City Lights Theatre, Fess
Parker Theatre, For Change Dance Collective, Frank Theatre,
Gaiety Theatre, Great American History Theatre, Hartung Theatre,
Illusion Theatre, The Joyce Theatre, Livermore Shakespeare
Festival, Mayer Theatre, New Conservatory Theatre, Opera San
Jose, Pacific Repertory Theatre, Penumbra, Perspectives Theatre,
Playground, Riverside Theatre, San Jose Stage Company, Seattle
Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Shapiro and Smith Dance Company, SPARC
Theatre and Teatro Catalina.
M.F.A., Dramatic Arts, UC Davis B.A., Theater, Film, and Television, UCLA
Danika Sudik is a lecturer in the
Department of Theatre and Dance at UC Davis, where she
teaches courses in Acting, Acting for Screen, Directing, and
Theatre and Dance History. She is an Ovation-nominated director,
actor, arts educator, and theatre maker whose practices center
social, economic, and environmental sustainability.
All TAs and AIs teaching classes in the Department of Theatre &
Dance are listed here. Some are department MFA students (Dramatic
Arts), while others are Ph.D. students in Performance
Studies (an interdisciplinary Graduate Group). Visit
the Performance
Studies website for more information.
they/them/elleMFA Shakespeare & Performance, Mary Baldwin University (2017)MA Theater Arts, San Jose State University (2013)BA Theater Arts, University of California, Santa Cruz (2008)
Melinda is an autistic teacher, historian, and theater
professional who started the PhD program in 2022. Their interests
bisect adaptation, performance, and disability studies. Their PAR
seeks to explore autonarrativity and embodiment within the work/s
of neurodiverse theatermakers.
They/them/she/hersMFA in Ceramics from the University of Colorado Boulder
em irvin (they/them) is a performer who asks clay questions to
consider kinds of encounters with clay, centering material agency
to explore the liberatory possibilities of clay through its
materiality. They think about porosity as a way to access and
dismantle exclusionary boundaries, working to create inclusive
disciplines, studios, and practices. They observe the
clay-artist-body in-action and in-dialogue with clay material,
which drives their research on the liberatory potential of clay.
B.F.A., Choreography and Modern Dance, University of North Carolina School of the ArtsM.A., Scenic Design and Scenography, Technische Universität Berlin
Karola Lüttringhaus was born and grew up in Berlin, Germany,
where they founded ALBAN ELVED DANCE COMPANY in 1997 to form an
outlet for their diverse artistic pursuits in dance, visual art,
film, scenic design and sound design. Karola has worked as a
freelance artist, choreographer, and educator at theatres and
universities across Europe and the US. In 2007, they incubated
the SARUS FESTIVAL for Site-specific & Experimental Art in 2007
in Wilmington, NC.
she / her / hersUniversidad Pedagogica Nacional, B.A., 2014
Regina María Gutiérrez Bermúdez is a doctoral student in
Performance Studies at the University of California, Davis. She
holds an MFA in Fine Arts with an emphasis in Directing and MA in
Performance Studies, degrees obtained at the same university.
Graduated in Dramatic Arts from the Universidad Pedagógica
Nacional (Colombia), she has a trajectory of more than 20 years
as an actress, performer, theater and dance educator, and is an
expert in movement, somatic, and energy work.
B.A. Theatre and Dance, James Madison UniversityM.A. Performance Studies
Isa Leal (they/isa) is a
Puerto Rican somatic researcher, performing artist and PhD
candidate in Performance Studies with a designated emphasis in
Practice as Research. Their dissertation project explores
their performance research practice: Dialoguing the Unconscious
and the site of their white-passing body as a transmedia activist
tool for co-ontological agency.
Mindy Cooper has had the privilege of spending
the last 40 years working as a dancer, choreographer, director,
producer and teacher. From dance companies (Twyla Tharp Dance,
Eliot Feld Ballet, Kansas City Ballet, Thingsezisee’m Dance
Theater) to Broadway/Off-Broadway
(Chicago, Titanic, Song and Dance, Beauty and the
Beast, Dracula The Musical, Being Seen, The Eternal Space,
Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, Live!, 50 Shades – The
Musical Parody, Soul Doctor, Wrong Mountain), her passion
for new works has always steered her career.
Costume Design: Stage and ScreenM.F.A., Design, Yale School of Drama
Maggie Morgan is a costume designer for stage and screen. Her
recent work includes a Broadway musical, feature and short films,
and several productions at California theaters.
History of Rhetoric and PerformancePh.D. Adviser, Theatre and Dance
Lynette Hunter, Professor of the History of Rhetoric and
Performance, has written and edited over 30 books and many essays
in a range of disciplines from the history of rhetoric and
literature, to philosophy and feminist theory, to post /
neo-colonial / decolonical studies (especially in Canada), to the
history of science and computing, to women’s history and gender
studies (from the early modern period), to performance studies,
and alternative embodiments.
Bobbie Wynn Bolden, UC Davis Department of Theatre & Dance
professor and the godmother of the university’s dance program,
retired in 2003 after 18 years of teaching. She will always be
remembered for dancing to the beat of her own drummer.
William E. Kleb taught theatre history, critical theory and
playwriting in the Department of Theatre & Dance from 1974 to
1994, when he retired. During that time, he served on numerous
department and university administrative committees and chaired
the graduate program.
Barbara Sellers-Young taught movement, acting and Asian theatre
at the Department of Theatre & Dance from 1993 to 2008. She
served on various university committees at UC Davis, taught as a
member of the Davis Honors program and was Chair of Theatre &
Dance from summer 2001 through spring 2006. She also served as
Interim Executive Director of the Mondavi Center from April 2005
until June 2006.
Theatre Department Chair, 1956–1989Ph.D., Stanford University
Ted Shank was the Founding Chair of the Theatre Department at UC
Davis and taught in the department for 33 years, from 1956 to
1989. He then transferred to the UC San Diego Theatre Department
where his wife, UC Davis alumna Adele Edling Shank, was
Department Chair. Shank was promoted to Distinguished
Professor of Theatre and taught in the department until retiring.
Alumni from the Theatre and Dance Department work all over the
world in film, television, theatre, industry, education, and arts
administration. Our alumni are very important to us, so keep in
touch! If your contact information changes, please send us an
update using our Alumni update form. We send our department
newsletter to all alumni each fall. Please let us know what you
are up to by June of each year so we can include your news.
Katherine Halls (B.A. theatre and dance and English, ‘20) is
currently rehearsing in Belgium with a TIE (Theatre in Education)
theatre company called Emerald Isle Theatre Company.
Recently at the College of Southern Nevada he played Emil
in Jeffery Hatcher’s Three Viewings, Mike Talman in Wait Until
Dark and co-directed Reefer Madness. He just finished his fifth
year teaching theatre to high school and Complete Works of
William Shakespeare (Abridged) (herself) and Dracula (Mrs.
Westenra) at Acalanes High School.
A native of rural New England and graduate of Reed College in
Oregon, Darren Blaney is a teacher, essayist, playwright, solo
performer, actor, and director. He graduated with a PhD in
Dramatic Art with a graduate minor in Critical Theory from UC
Davis in 2009. His doctoral dissertation was
entitled: ”Staging the Social and Cruising the Crisis: A
Genealogy of Utopian Aspiration in U.S. Queer Theater from the
1960s to the Present.”
taught theatre at the International School of Brussels, Belgium
for the first six months after graduation, then took a
one-semester job teaching acting and improv at South Lake Tahoe
Community College. He landed a role in Foothill Theatre Company’s
two-person comedy A Tuna Christmas, moved to Los Angeles in fall
2000 and worked for the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film
Program. Although Sundance is best known for its Film Festival,
it is appreciated in the independent film community for its film
program.
lives in Kenwood, CA. She is a full-time faculty member in
Theatre Arts at Santa Rosa Junior College where she directed the
world premiere of Watermelon Nights, adapted from the Greg
Sarris’ novel. Leslie directed The Kitchen Side of the Door, Word
for Word Theatre Company’s holiday show at the Magic Theatre in
San Francisco. Leslie has also acted with the California
Shakespeare Festival, Marin Theatre Company, Intersection for the
Arts, TheatreWorks, Shakespeare at the Beach, and the Willows,
among others.
owns the American Blues Theatre, 2337 Pacific Avenue on the
Miracle Mile in Stockton, CA.. This spring Harvey plays George in
the American Blues Theatre Company’s production of Who’s Afraid
of Virginia Woolf.
Sue Murphy (BA 1979)
Now living in Los Angeles, was nominated for a 2001 American
Comedy Award for Best Female Standup. She has appeared on Late
Night with David Letterman, HBO, and many times on The Tonight
Show with Jay Leno. Catch her act in her own half-hour comedy
special on Comedy Central.
Robert Károly Sarlós was born into an assimilated Jewish
family (a shirt tailor/ haberdasher and a saleslady/housewife)
June 6, 1931, in Budapest, Hungary, and attended the city’s
renowned Lutheran High School (EvangÈlikus Gimn·zium). Admitted
in 1949 to a select class in stage direction at the Hungarian
Academy of Theatre and Film Arts, he was after one semester
expelled for “bourgeois” descent AND thinking. He became a
lathe-operator, served in the Hungarian (“Peoples”) Army, studied
theatre history, had a small part in the 1956 revolution and then
left his native land.
Former UC Davis professor of theatre and dance, costume design,
Phyllis J. Kress of Sacramento, California, passed away on
Sunday, July 10, 2016, at 77 years of age. Kress retired in 1998
after 32 years at UC Davis.
Alan A. Stambusky (1929 – 2011) became
chair of what was then called Dramatic Art and Speech (now
the Department of Theatre and Dance) in 1964.
He retired in 1991.
The following obituary was written in 2011 by Elin Diamond,
professor of English and director of the Graduate Program in
Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. Diamond, who
specializes in feminist criticism and dramatic theory, earned her
doctorate and master’s degree at UC Davis. See the New York Times
obituary
here.
Della Davidson was a vital creative force for the Department of
Theatre and Dance for over ten years and was a central figure in
the Bay Area dance world since the early 1980s. She has been
described as one of the West Coast’s most fluent writers for the
body, a dance maker of works that ruminate with poignancy and
beauty on topics ranging from a woman’s anger to disease, death
and the fragility of human existence. Her work echoed with
references to the United States tradition in modern dance, and
yet her dancers perform with a passionate abandonment of
commitment and rage.
Robin Gray, Production Stage Manager, has worked, locally, for
Music Circus, B Street Theater, Capital Stage and for the
Sacramento Theater Company. She worked on Hugh Jackman’s
pre-Broadway show at the Curran in San Francisco in 2012. She
last toured for Kansas City Starlight with Hello Dolly
starring Michele Lee. Regionally, she stage-managed Phantom
of the Opera in San Francisco. Before moving to Sacramento,
Ms.
Thomas J. Munn, an internationally recognized Lighting Designer,
has designed for theatre, opera, ballet, television, videos, and
industrials. A graduate of Boston University School of Fine and
Applied Arts in Design, he made his Broadway debut in 1974
designing scenery for Brightowerby Dore Schary.
Design: Stage and TelevisionMFA, New York University, Scenic Design and Art Direction
Professor Iacovelli has designed more than 200 productions at
theaters across the nation, including the critically acclaimed,
TONY-nominated Broadway revival of Peter
Pan starring Cathy Rigby. The Academy of Television
Arts and Sciences awarded Iacovelli the coveted 2001 prime-time
Emmy Award for his art direction of the A&E broadcast of
Peter Pan. He also designed
The Twilight of The Godson
Broadway.
