Department of Theatre
Graduate Student Biographies

MFA Students

Sonya Dowhaluk is a third year MFA candidate in lighting design. She holds a BA in Dramatic Art with Honors from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and after graduating, spent two years doing freelance design work in the Raleigh area. Designs in Raleigh include: Antigone, Smokey Joe's Cafe, Into The Woods, and Blue. Designs at UMD include Don Giovanni, Werther, The Colored Museum, and Urinetown. Sonya has also worked as an assistant lighting designer at Olney Theatre Center for the Arts, Round House Theatre, and Lisner Auditorium.

Brian Engel is a second year MFA student in Lighting Design. He has a BA in Theatre Arts from Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA. For 4 years he worked as the Master Electrician at Meany Hall for the Performing Arts at the University of Washington in Seattle before returning to graduate school. His recent work includes the Lighting Designs for The Physicists, and Filthy Rich at the University of Maryland. Brian has also worked as the Assistant Lighting Designer for: The Ash Girl, Machinal, The Distance From Here (UMD Dept. of Theatre), Orson's Shadow (Round House Theatre), Brooklyn Boy, Godspell, Democracy (Olney Theatre Center for the Arts), My Children! My Africa! (The Studio Theatre).  

Jeremy W. Foil is a third year MFA candidate in Scenic design and graduate from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with a BA in Theatre and Dance. Most recent work includes the scenic design for Urinetown the Musical, directed by Scot Reese at the University of Maryland. Other work includes Scenic Design for The Piano Lesson for the University of Maryland/African Continuum Theatre Company, Take Me Out with Capital Rep Theatre (Albany) (associate scenic designer); assistant scenic designer to Daniel Conway for Macbeth at Two River Theatre Company and the Folger Theatre, Stunning and Martha, Josie, and the Chinese Elvis at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co., Bal Masque (world premiere) at Theatre J, The Long Christmas Ride Home , and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at Studio Theatre. Assistant scenic designer to James Kronzer for Backyardigans Live (national tour), Opus at Primary Stages, Beaux Stratagem at Shakespeare Theatre (Helen Hayes award), A Prayer for Owen Meany at Roundhouse Theatre, Merrily We Roll Along, Glory Days , and My Fair Lady at Signature Theatre, Something You Did at People's Light Theatre, and Stones in His Pockets at The Weston Playhouse. Upcoming work includes Marsiol at the University of Maryland and Big River at Olney Theatre.

Cory Ryan Frank is a third year MFA candidate in Lighting Design. Cory graduated from SUNY New Paltz with a BA in Theatre Design and Technology in 2005. Recent Designs include The Cripple of Inishmaan and I Do! I Do! (Shadowland Theatre, NY), Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Oliver! (Theatre on the Hill, MD), The Piano Lesson (Kay Theatre, UMD), The Distance From Here (Kogod Theatre, UMD) as well as Associate Lighting Design for Bal Masque (World Premier at Theatre J) and An Experiment With An Air Pump for the Potomac Theatre Project (Olney Theatre Center). Cory was also the Assistant Lighting Designer for Summer of '42, A Year with Frog and Toad and A Prayer for Owen Meany (Roundhouse Theatre, MD) as well as Savage In Limbo and The Amen Corner (Kogod Theatre, UMD.) This year Cory will be designing Speed The Plow at Theatre J in October 2007, and his Thesis design will be Marisol in the Kogod Theatre in May 2008. Cory is also the Asst. Lighting Designer for Urinetown: The Musical and Filthy Rich at UM this season.

Daniel Pinha is a first year scenic design MFA student. He graduated from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, with a bachelor's degree in Scenic Arts, specialization in Set Design. He has been in U.S since April 2006 and has worked at the Smithsonian's Discovery Theater for African Roots, Latino Soul and American Rice, in Washington, DC. Daniel also worked at Adventure Theater in Maryland. He participated at the Prague Quadrennial in 1999 as a student exhibitor. In Brazil he has worked for films, television and theater.

MA Students

Erin Bone Steele is a second year MA student. She is on fellowship and carries a partial assistantship in the department's reception office. Erin's current focus is on the history of melodrama, with a thesis centered on dramatic adaptations of a true-crime murder in nineteenth century England. As a director, Erin has worked with youth theatres in Georgia and North Carolina. She was the assistant director for the 2007 middle-school Summer Shakespeare camp production of Julius Caesar, co-sponsored by the Maryland National Capital Parks and Planning Commission and the Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies. In the 2007-08 school year, she was the assistant music director for UM's production of Urinetown, and she served as an instructor for Playwrights of the Future, a partnership between the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center and Hyattsville Middle School. In 2007, she also presented a paper on the death trope in August Wilson's cycle dramas at the Wilson Conference held at the University of Maryland.

Rob C. Thompson (Artistic Director, Camp Coordinator) holds a BA in theatre performance from Susquehanna University. He is currently on fellowship with the University of Maryland where he plans to receive both his MA and PhD in theatre. Mr. Thompson is the founding artistic director of the Odd Act Theatre Group, an independent grass roots theatre company in central New Jersey. His directing credits include his own full-length play, All the Rabbits, and his collection of short plays entitled And the Play as Itself . Mr. Thompson is a professionally trained actor and the coordinator of several youth theatre programs. As part of his thesis research on ghosts and performance, he recently worked as a ghost storyteller in Gettysburg, PA. He is also an editorial assistant for Theatre Journal .

Sarah E. Wilson is in her second year of the Master's program on full assistantship with the department.  Her research interests include feminist studies and gender performance, with a focus on women and body modification. Last year, Sarah presented a paper on female characters and feminist resistance at the University of Maryland's August Wilson Conference. Currently, she is working on her Master's thesis, which centers on the performance of women and their concealment/display of tattoos. Sarah has dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Theater and in English from the Robert E. Cook Honors College at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

PHD Students

Tracey Elaine Chessum is a first year Ph.D. student from Los Angeles, California. She has taught theater and music on all levels of education, winning awards for curriculum design and performance, and has worked as a director, producer, technical director, music director and conductor for schools, colleges, community theater groups, and performing artists in the southern California area. She holds a M.M. in Choral Conducting from Azusa Pacific University, where she held a conducting assistantship and studied with Duane Funderburk, David Hughes, and John Sutton of the Angeles Chorale.  Additionally, she holds a MA in Humanities from CSU Dominguez Hills where her research focused on performances of women in Shakespearean film.  Currently, her work focuses on the politics of transatlantic transformations of musical theater between 1720 and 1890.  In April 2008, she will be presenting at The West End Musical, 1880-1930 conference in London on the transatlantic productions of John Phillip Sousa musicals. 

Carrie J. Cole is a fifth year Ph.D. candidate whose work focuses on nineteenth and early twentieth century American amateur and popular theatre within the changing context of femininity of the era. Cole's dissertation focuses specifically on author, playwright and educator Kate Douglas Wiggin and autobiographical performance. Cole has received a graduate research fellowship from the University of Maryland, as well as a summer research grant from the Department of Theatre. In addition, Cole received funding from the Maine Women Writers' Collection at the University of New England to perform research in their archives. She has presented work on a variety of topics at conferences including the Southeastern Theatre Conference, the Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies Conference, and the international Society for Eighteenth Century Studies conference. Cole is a director, dramaturg and fight choreographer, and a former producer of the Department's student-directed Off Center season.

Ashley Duncan is a first year PhD student.   She received her BA in Theatre from Texas Christian University and her MA in Theatre History and Criticism from Texas State University-San Marcos, where she was named Outstanding Graduate Student in the Department of Fine Arts and Communication. Her research interests include theatre education and trends in modern Shakespeare performance. She has recently presented papers at the Ohio Shakespeare Conference and the Shakespeare: Page, Stage, Engage Conference at NYU. In addition to her academic work, she has worked as a director, dramaturg, and stage manager for various university and community productions.

Simon du Toit is a PhD candidate presently writing his dissertation, "The Antitheatrical Body: Puritans and Performance in Early Modern England, 1577-1620." Du Toit held a University of Maryland Open Fellowship, and is a recipient of the Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship for 2007. Du Toit's research is focused on the implications of religious culture for theatre performance method. He has presented papers and workshops at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the American Society for Theatre Research. Du Toit has substantial teaching experience in Canada and the U. S., having taught at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa, for eleven years. A Canadian citizen, du Toit has an M.F.A. in Theatre Performance from York University in Toronto, and five years of professional acting and directing experience in the Canadian theatre business, including work at the Toronto Free Theatre, Toronto Workshop Productions, and two seasons at the Stratford Festival.

Elizabeth Forte is a doctoral candidate in the Theatre and Performance Studies Program writing her dissertation on the early history of the Folger Theatre in Washington, DC. Her areas of specialization and interest include Shakespeare in performance and performance pedagogy. She has presented papers at the International Federation of Theatre Research, Mid-America Theatre Conference and Hawaii International Conference for Arts and Humanities. She is a Shakespeare's Globe Fellow and a Cosmos Club Foundation Scholar. In 2005 and 2006 she spent residencies at Shakespeare's Globe (London) studying the company's performance practices in the Globe reconstruction. As a theatre practitioner, Ms. Forte has extensive experience as an actor, director and performance consultant. She has appeared in over one-hundred productions nationally at such prestigious theatres as Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Round House Theatre, Cleveland Play House, New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, the Studio Theatre, among others. In 1999, she became an Acting Company Member at the Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) in Washington, DC where she had the pleasure of working with directors Michael Kahn (The Duchess of Malfi, Don Carlos, Coriolanus) Jo Anne Akalaitis (Trojan Women) , Rachel Kavanaugh (Romeo and Juliet), and Keith Baxter (The Country Wife). Since 2000 she has taught for the Shakespeare Theatre Company's cornerstone educational programs Master Acting Classes, TextAlive! and Camp Shakespeare. In 2007 she was promoted to the title of Master Teaching Artist at STC. She has directed over a dozen studio productions at STC including Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night. In 2005, she directed a production of Again for Cydnus, (her adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra that explores and expands Cleopatra's journey through Shakespeare's text) for the UMD College Park's Off-Center series. Since 2000, she has served as a Performance Consultant (addressing performance issues of acting, text, voice, speech, dialects and movement) on productions at Round House Theatre (Retreat from Moscow, Orson's Shadow , Treasure Island, Lord of the Flies) the Kennedy Center (Mr. Roberts) , Rep Stage (Hamlet) , Everyman Theatre (The School for Scandal) , among others. As an instructor of performance she has taught at Catholic University of America, the Academy for Classical Acting/George Washington University, the University of Maryland College Park and currently teaches at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Ms. Forte maintains a private practice of performance consulting in the Washington-metro area. Her professional memberships include Actors' Equity Association, Voice and Speech Trainers Association, Shakespeare Association of America, and Kitchen Member at Round House Theatre. She is currently an Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework Candidate and completes the Sixth Fitzmaurice Voicework Certification Program in June 2008. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Performance from the Professional Actor Training Program at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival/University of Alabama and Bachelor of Arts in Performance from Illinois State University.

James Hesla is a second year PhD student with a research interest in twenty-first century Indonesian theatre. He is interested in exploring questions of authenticity and hybridity in the work of contemporary Indonesian theatre artists. In 2006 James contributed several essays on Indonesian theatre to the Encyclopedia of Asian Theatre, edited by Samuel L. Leiter, and published by Greenwood Press. The Encyclopedia of Asian Theatre was named "Outstanding Reference" by the American Library Association, and "Outstanding Academic Title" of 2007 by Choice magazine. He will present his paper "When is a Gamelan not a Gamelan?" at the IFTR conference in Seoul, South Korea, and at the Association for Asian Performance Conference in 2008. James is also a playwright and dramaturg. His plays have been produced in Seattle, New York, Honolulu, and Washington, DC. He was named a Semi-finalist for the prestigious O'Neill Center Playwrights Conference for his play Graves' Rule in 2007. He will present his short play, titled Soap Lake, at the Mid-America Theatre Conference in 2008. James has also participated in the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive, the Playwright-Director Collaboration Workshop at the Playwrights' Center, and was an artist in residence at the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in Woodstock, NY.

Casey Kaleba is a doctoral candidate whose research interests focus on the impact and legacy of nineteenth century spectacle theatre and staged violence, as well as general representations of violence and corporeality on stage and other media. Casey has worked professionally as a stage combat choreographer, most recently with Signature Theatre, the Studio Theatre SecondStage, National Players, Rorschach Theatre, Molotov Theatre, and nearly fifty shows for universities - including Maryland (College Park and Baltimore County), American, Davidson, McDaniel, Gallaudet, James Madison and Catholic. He recently taught at the Paddy Crean International Stage Combat Workshop, served as the stunt coordinator for the documentary "A Prince Among Slaves," and has put his Grand Guignol training with the Dell'Arte School to use on several recent productions. Conference presentations include Blackfriars, MATC, ASTR, and CTE. He teaches for the Folger Library and the Shakespeare Theatre, as well as adjunct work at UMBC, Old Dominion, and the Community College of Baltimore County. At UMD he served on Faculty Search and Season Selection committees, in addition to four years as a GCAST officer during which the organization earned the coveted Golden Geese Award. This spring he will serve as the Head Intern for the Virginia Beach Bash workshop and has been invited to teach for Fight Directors Canada's workshops at Rapier Wit Studios in Toronto.

Chris Martin holds a Master of Arts degree in American Dance History from Florida State University, and is pursuing a PhD in Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland. His research interests center on the formation and transmission of cultural aesthetics. His dissertation investigates the modifications made to partner dances as they were brought into the field of Euro-American performance from subaltern populations, mediated by the "Waltz Aesthetic."  He has presented papers at the 2006 and 2007 PCA/ACA conferences, the 2007 ATDS Graduate Student Pre-conference, and participated in the "Performing Race, Performing Nation" panel discussion at the 2007 ASTR conference.

Gina Pisasale is a second year PhD student and a graduate assistant in the Department of Theater and the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland.  She received a BA in Theater Arts from the University of Richmond and an MA in Theater from Villanova University. Her research focuses on Asian-American Theater at points of cultural intersections and the Korean-American diaspora. She has presented papers at the University of Maryland's August Wilson Conference and ASTR 2007. Gina has worked professionally as a dramaturg, director, designer (set and lighting), stage manager, theater technician, scenic artist, and actor for companies such as the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, A&E Biographies, Catholic Relief Services, the Arden Theatre Company, Hedgerow Theater, Green Light Productions, and the Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival.  She is currently guest dramaturg at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Justin Poole is an independent producer, director, and a professional actor. He currently runs Cross Cultural Theatre Initiative, an independent theatre company near Philadelphia dedicated to exploring ways of using theatre as a means of cross cultural exchange. His research interests involve contemporary European theatre traditions including tanztheater and other forms of physical theatre. His dissertation will focus on how cultural networks developed by the European Union are affecting contemporary European performance trends, particularly within Austria.    

AnnMarie T. Saunders is a second-year PhD student. Following ten years as a professional actor and director, Saunders returned to academics, receiving her MA from Texas State University in 2004. During her tenure there, she received the Texas Educational Theater Association's Debut Scholars Panel award for her paper entitled "Beth Henley: Southern Feminist?" in 2003. The paper was subsequently published in the premiere edition of Texas Theatre Journal in 2005. In her first two years at UMD, Saunders has presented papers at the American Society for Theatre Research Conference and Tell Your Story: An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Work of August Wilson; and directed a Shakespeare Camp for the Maryland National Capital Parks and Planning Commission. Her current work focuses on the development of early theatres in Washington D.C. (1800-1836) and their struggle to define what it means to be a "national" theatre in a new nation.

Lindsey D. Snyder , a PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies, is currently working on her dissertation entitled "Sawing the Air Thus: American Sign Language Translations of Shakespeare and the Echoes of Rhetorical Gesture."  She is a recipient of the Shakespeare's Globe Fellowship and has taught a range of classes in the theatre department. Lindsey is an RID certified ASL interpreter as well as an actor and director. She currently serves on the Board of the Molotov Theatre- a theatre company dedicated to the style of Grand Guignol.

Natalie Tenner is a first year PhD student.  She received her bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame, and her MA in English Literature, focusing on Shakespeare in performance, from the University of Warwick in Coventry, England.  During that year she was able to work in the Royal Shakespeare Company archives, exploring her interests in representations of madness and the print history of Shakespeare's work.  She is presenting a paper at the Mid-America Theatre Conference on the Tiny Ninja Theater's productions of Shakespeare and is currently exploring the production history of Shakespeare's plays in 19th century England and Germany. Aaron Tobiason graduated from the MA program in Theatre and Performance Studies and is pursuing the PhD degree.  His research examines the various ways in which theatre has influenced (and may yet influence) both the specific communities it serves and the broader social fabric in which it is presented. He earned his BA from Western Washington University, where he was the College of Fine and Performing Arts Presidential Scholar and the Department of Theatre Arts' Outstanding Scholar during his final year. He was also regional winner of the Critic's Section of the annual Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival for two consecutive years.