News - Regional Editors

Regional News

This column helps VASTA members network. Let everyone know your special projects, awards, promotions, research plans and results and/or need for assistance. Also members would enjoy hearing significant news in your personal life. Respond when your Regional Editor calls or contact her/him with your news.

For the name of your Regional Editor, see the list at the top of the page or contact Paul Meier (see contact information on page 2).

Newsletter Regional Editors

New England (ME, VT, NH, CT, MA, RI.)
Marya Lowry
60 Tolman Street
West Newton, MA 02165
H (617) 244-7838 W (617) 736-3341
FAX: (617) 244-2487
E-Mail: lowry@binah.cc.brandeis.edu

Mid-Atlantic (NY, PA, NJ, DE, MD D.C.)
Donna Snow
109 Warfield Rd.
Cherry Hill, N.J. 08034
609-354-8750 (home)
Chair, Department of Theater
School of Communication & Theater
Temple University
1301 W. Norris St.
Philadelphia, PA l9l22-6075
215-204-8652
FAX 215-204-8566
E-Mail dsnow@unix.temple.edu

South East (WV, VA, NC, SC, GA, AL, FL, TN, KY)
Christine Anne Morris
1330 Mordecai Drive
Raleigh, N.C. 27604
919-839-6255 (home)
E-Mail: CMorris.acpub.duke.edu
Work address:
Program in Drama
Box 90680
Duke University
Durham, NC 27709
(919)660-3348
(919)684-8906 Fax
E-Mail: cmorris@duke.edu

East Central (OH, MI, IN, WI, IL)
Karen S. Ryker
16902 W. Porter Rd.
Evansville WI 53536
H (608) 249-9979 W (608) 263-2329
FAX: (608) 263-2463
E-Mail: ksryker@facstaff.wisc.edu

West Central (MN, IA, ND, SD, NE, KS)
Shawn Muller

Southern (MS, LA, MO, AR, OK, TX)
Deborah Kinghorn
E-Mail: dkinghorn@UH.EDU

Western (MT, WY, ID, UT, CO, NV, AZ, NM, WA, OR, CA, AK, HI)
Kathryn Maes
Theater Department
School of the Arts
University of Colorado at Denver
Campus Box 177, P.O. Box 173364
Denver, Colorado 80217-3364 Voice: 303-556-4797
Fax: 303-556-2335
E-Mail kmaes@carbon.cudenver.edu
(Home) 1530 S. Quebec Way, #23
Denver, CO 80231
(303) 283-8398

Canada
Anne Scrimger
1431 Carlyle Rd SW
Calgary, ALB T2V 2V2
Canada
403-259-3274 (home)
403-240-8940 (work)
E-Mail: ascrimger@Admin.MtRoyal.AB.CA
Mount Royal College
Dept of Theatre and Speech
4825—Richard road S.W.
Calgary, T3E—6K6, Alberta
Canada
Fax:—work—403-240-6215
E-Mail—ascrimger@mtroyal.ab.ca

International
Linda Cartwright
7 Raines Ave.
Forrest Hill, Auckla 1310
NEW ZEALAND
H (64-9) 410-8243 W (64-9) 815-4337 x 7106
FAX: (64-9) 815-4347
E-Mail: geocar@clear.net.nz

Regional News

INTERNATIONAL

Melissa Agnew, Queensland, Australia, has started a Ph.d this year at the National Voice Centre, University of Sydney. She will also be attending the British Council Theatre Voice Seminar to be held in January 2000 at Stratford-Upon-Avon led by Cicely Berry and Andrew Wade.

Linda Cartwright, Voice tutor in the Acting major at UNITEC Institute of Technology’s School of Performing & Screen Arts, Auckland, New Zealand, acted as coorninator for Jo Estill’s course known as VoiceCraft in North America (but not in New Zealand, because of copyright) in July and will co-ordinate another course to be held in January 2000. Linda is also working on a MA (Visual and Performing Arts) degree by distance learning with an Australian University.

CANADA

Betty Moulton coached The Last Night of Ballyhoo with Joyce De Witt at the Mayfield dinner theatre (Edmonton) in September and starts work on Doc and Zastrozzi with the graduating class of actors at the University of Alberta in October. She continues her collaboration with Lynda Adams on “Laban drives and their application to action.” She, Lynda and GerryTrentham conducted a workshop at ATHE in Toronto this summer on their collaborative work.

Susan Stackhouse is an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She teaches voice and speech to years 2, 3 and 4 of the Acting Programme. She is presently directing the graduating class in a production of 7 Stories, a play by Morris Panych (a Canadian playwright). She was in residence at The Shaw Festival, North America’s second-largest repertory company (Niagara-On-The-Lake, Ontario, Canada), where she is a voice coach. She has been associated with the Festival as an actor and coach for seventeen seasons.

MID ATLANTIC
Mary Baird is currently teaching and acting at Cornell University. She had a wonderful time performing in The Cripple of Inishmaan and in Holiday Memories. She did the text and vocal coaching on Romeo and Juliet for NCSF. Life is good, and until May she can be reached at 304 Stewart Ave. #4 Ithaca, N.Y. 14850 (Phone: 607-275-9722, E-mail: meb44@cornell.edu).

Catherine Fitzmaurice is teaching at the Moscow Arts Theatre with the Harvard University/American Repertory Theatre Program. Along with her associates, Catherine led her workshop on Destructuring/Restructuring this past June at A.R.T. Focusing on the singer, Joan Melton will join her in a workshop this December in New York. Then in January Catherine will give another workshop at the University of Miami, hosted by Michael Barnes. In June, 2000 a second certification program will be held in New York.

Barry Kur, Penn State University, School of Theatre, after a vacation in Hawaii celebrating 25 years of wedded bliss with wife, Judi, began a busy Fall semester coaching at Penn State The Love of a Nightingale; and at Bucknell University, Tea in a China Cup ( a lovely Belfast Irish play with significant women’s roles). Will be dialect-coaching Communicating Doors for the Asolo Theatre, Sarasota, Fl, and teaching workshops in the Asolo Conservatory, Jan/Feb. His outreach theatre company, the University Park Ensemble, began a new program addressing alcohol use and binge drinking. This effort was featured on a National Public Radio Morning Edition Story.

Elizabeth Van Den Berg, Western Maryland College, served as dialect coach for the Olney Theatre (MD) production of Equus this past spring. During the summer she was busy as a voice consultant with Theatre on the Hill, a summer stock company in MD. This summer she served as dialect coach at The Studio Theatre (DC) for Indian Ink and will be there this fall for Blue Heart. For her off-campus professional work as a dialect coach and actor, at their Introductory Convocation, WMC honored Elizabeth with their Faculty Creativity Award.

Robert Neff Williams conducted three workshops in N.Y.C. during the past summer. A Theater for a New Audience workshop on Shakespeare’s King John explored the possibilities of collaboration between a director, Karin Coonrod, and a text coach. A workshop on Restoration and 18th-Century Comedy for sixteen New York actors met thrice weekly for three weeks and considered background material on the periods as well as texts. A week of training sessions for the company members of The Pearl Theater concentrated on voice and text work for the classic plays of their new season.

SOUTH EAST

Lynx Brammer, in her third year in the MFA Theatre Education: Voice and Speech program at Virginia Commonwealth University, vocal-coached Hotel Paradiso at VCU last spring; did the 5-week Lessac Summer workshop this past summer; and during the fall coached Equus while working on her thesis, The Value of the I.P.A. in Actor Dialect Training.

Michael Bruckmueller, in his first year in the MFA Theatre Education: Voice and Speech program in Virginia Commonwealth U., did an internship at A.R.T. over the summer, and served as assistant vocal coach on VCU’s mainstage production of As You Like It.

Marcia Mary Cook, Sewanee University, attended the VASTA conference in Toronto, which she found a battery re-charger, meeting and working with VASTA colleagues and benefiting from the workshops, especially those led by David Smukler and Judith Koltai. At Sewanee, she appeared in Horton Foote’s Lily Dale as Mrs. Coons, and looks forward to playing Mammy in The Cripple of Inishmaan this winter.

Mary Coy recently moved to Virginia, where she is happily at work: teaching Linklater privately; as voice and text coach for Camp Shakespeare (the brainchild of VCU dept. chair David Leong, created to introduce high school drama and English teachers to techniques for making Shakespeare fun and physical); dialect-coaching Loot in Charlottesville; as adjunct faculty teaching acting at VCU; and as a student in Janet Rodgers’ dialects class at VCU. She says, “It has reacquainted me with the pains and rigors and, of course, joys of being a student and I highly recommend it for every one of us who has been too long on the other side of the desk.”

Derek Gagnier, Greensboro College, directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Greensboro in October and looks forward to dialect-coaching Dancing at Lughnasa there in December.

Wendy Hagenow, in her second year in the MFA Theatre Education: Voice and Speech program at Virginia Commonwealth University, participated in the 1999 Summer Intensive at Shakespeare & Co., and also did the one-week Catherine Fitzmaurice Workshop at A.R.T. in Cambridge. During the fall, she vocal coached Lonely Planet and played Jaques in As You Like It at VCU.

Marlene Johnson recently relocated from Pennsylvania to Virginia, where she has begun the M.F.A program in Voice and Speech at Virginia Commonwealth. Before leaving Pa., she voice coached A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Lafayette College, directed Comedy of Errors for PA Youth Theatre as well as two one-acts for Spring on Fourth in Bethlehem, Pa. Current and upcoming voice coaching projects include As You Like It (at VCU) and Communicating Doors and The Heiress (at Theatre Virginia). Recent voiceovers include From American Earth, a documentary on Stephen Vincent Benet for PBS which won Best New Documentary by Pennsylvania Broadcasters Association. During the summer she attended Judith Koltai’s authentic movement classes “The Pleasure of the Text” on Salt Spring Island, BC, and in September she performed in a reading of John Brown’s Body with James Earl Jones and with her husband, Edwin Booth.

Elisa Lloyd, Emory University, recently completed her fifth year as vocal coach for the Georgia Shakespeare Festival, coaching Hamlet, Comedy of Errors, and St. Joan. She is teaching voice and speech in the Dept. of Theatre Studies at Emory U., and coaching the season for Theatre Emory. In October she played Mrs. Solness in Theatre Emory’s production of Ibsen’s The Master Builder, newly adapted by Steve Murray and directed by Vinnie Murphy.

Christine Morris, Duke University, served as dialect coach for the interactive CD-ROM, The Ellis Island Experience, produced by Southpeak Interactive in association with The History Channel.

Ellen O’Brien now teaches fall semester at Guilford College (in Greensboro, NC) and spring quarter at UC-Santa Cruz. Last spring, she coached Heartbreak House for The People’s Light and Theatre Company and offered a workshop on her physical approach to teaching iambic pentameter for the national meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America. This summer, she served as Dramaturg/Voice and Text Coach for Shakespeare Santa Cruz, coaching Romeo and Juliet, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Arms and the Man. A second R&J followed shortly at the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival, along with Comedy of Errors and Henry IV: Part I. During the fall, she directed Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) at Guilford.

Carol Pendergrast has moved to Wrightsville Beach, NC, off the coast of Wilmington, NC, and is teaching part-time at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She plans eventually to do some freelance voice-over and voice coaching work there but for now is enjoying daily walks on the beach (in between hurricanes) and is still struggling with getting 11 year’s accumulation of stuff moved from her former office and home in Greenville, NC, and getting settled. New email is pendergrastc@uncwil.edu.

Bonnie Raphael continues to heal, slowly but surely, while returning to work at the University of North Carolina. In addition to coaching Constant Star for PlayMakers and Love’s Labour’s Lost for the students at UNC, she acted in a staged reading of In the Lake of the Woods and coached a production of Anthony and Cleopatra for Old Dominion University in Norfolk.

Janet Rodgers, head of Voice and Speech at Virginia Commonwealth University, tells us there are now four students enrolled in the Theatre Education: Voice and Speech MFA program. If anyone is looking for an MFA program with an emphasis in Voice and Speech, please contact her. The program is accepting one student each year. Also, the second VASTA-endorsed book, The Voice and Speech Exercise Book and audiotape is underway and will be published by Applause Books. If you would like to contribute an exercise, please contact Janet at jrodgers@saturn.vcu.edu

Erica Tobolski, University of South Carolina, coached Ah, Wilderness!, Romeo & Juliet, and Much Ado About Nothing for USC, Scotland Road at Workshop Theatre and Taking Sides at Trustus Theatre, all in Columbia, SC. She also performed in Taking Sides, playing the role of Tamara Sachs. This past summer she spent two and a half weeks in London, participating (with fellow VASTA members Kathleen Campbell and Micah Espinoza) in the fabulous workshop with Patsy Rodenberg at the National Theatre. She was in Toronto for ATHE, presenting on two panels: “The graduate school audition process,” and “Faculty collaboration in the graduate training programs at USC and UMKC.”

WESTERN

Deena Burke continues to be obsessed by the Argentine Tango! Last March/April she spent a month in Buenos Aires studying and dancing. This summer she traveled around the country dancing, studying and even performing the Tango. She also attended the VASTA conference in Toronto. Since last October, Deena has coached The Glass Menagerie, Last Night of Ballyhoo and The Royal Family at The Intiman. In addition, she coached Beauty Queen of Leenane, Oh Coward, Design for Living and Golden Child for The Seattle Rep, and provided some dialect support on Side Man at A Contemporary Theatre (where she is presently rehearsing the role of Jessica in Ayckbourn’s Community Doors. Deena continues to teach 23 hours a week at Cornish and this year received an official appointment at the University of Washington (where she has taught off and on for 8 years) to teach Speech in the PATP Master’s program.

Kathryn Maes is currently serving as Chair of the newly formed Department of Theatre, Film and Video Production at the University of Colorado-Denver. She directed a production of Ibsen’s Ghosts for UC-D which opened October 6. In September, Kathy participated in a cooperative venture between the Wilbur James Gould Voice Research Center (Denver Center for the Performing Arts) and the Department of Theatre, Film and Video Production, presenting a two-hour voice clinic titled “Preventing Vocal Meltdown”. It featured such notable voice professionals as Dr. Ingo Titze (Voice Scientist), Dr. Mona Abaza (Laryngologist/Voice Care Specialist), Kate Emerich (Vocalogist/Singing Voice Teacher), John Nix (Voice Teacher), and Kathryn (Voice for the Actor Specialist). This is planned to be an on-going project focusing on various vocal needs.

Joan Melton taught a five-day workshop with Catherine Fitzmaurice in New York City in late December—early January, focusing Catherine’s work on the Singing Voice. In February, she led a workshop “Integrating Theatre Voice with Singing” for the American College Theatre Festival, Humboldt, CA. In May-June, she did the second Intensive Voice Workshop “Focusing the Voice on Musical Theatre” with David Nevell, at Cal State Fullerton. She assisted Catherine Fitzmaurice in a workshop for the Voice Foundation Conference in Philadelphia, and took a three week Pilates Intensive in June-July. During the spring term, Joan coached The Crucible, The Fantasticks, and Beautiful Bodies for CSUF; and Tartuffe for South Coast Rep.

Rod Menzies is appearing in Cyrano de Bergerac at A Noise Within, California’s Classical Theatre Company, recently designated Resident Professional Theatre Company at California State University, Los Angeles. The theater is housed in the beautiful, new Luckman Fine Arts Complex. This is Rod’s third consecutive show as a guest artist with the company. He is an Assistant Professor in his sixth year at the School of Theatre, University of Southern California, where he teaches voice, dialect and acting courses, and is up for tenure this year. He also teaches classes and coaches professional actors at his Santa Monica Studio.

Kimberly Mohne (A.C.T.) is currently assisting Deborah Sussel in the Speech portion of the Graduate Training program in the MFA program at A.C.T. in San Francisco. She is simultaneously coaching three shows in the Bay Area: Trust (the American premiere of Gary Mitchell’s fabulous play) at the Eureka Theater in SF; Translations at Center Rep of Walnut Creek; and Desire Under the Elms at San Jose Rep in San Jose. Kim is also finishing work on two anthology books for Smith & Kraus Publishers due to be published early next year. In mid-October the Young Conservatory resumes where she will be teaching Acting and heading the Voice & Speech department.

Barbara Sellers-Young, Univ. of California Davis, besides directing Cleveland Raining and Talk Story for the University theatre, had two articles published on movement training: “Technique and the Embodied Actor,” Theatre Research International 24/1 (Spring 1999), pp. 89-102; and “Somatic Processes: Convergence of Theory and Practice,” Theatre Topics 8/2 (September 1998), pp.173-187. She also received a Pacific Rim Planning Grant for a project titled “Performing the Pacific Rim.”

Sandra Shotwell, University of Utah, was awarded the rank of full professor as of July 1st! She is presently dialect coaching Summer and Smoke with the university and will coach The Cripple of Inishmaan with Pioneer Theatre Company, resident equity company, in December. She will be coaching two shows with Ashland Oregon Shakespeare in January/February of next year. The family film, The Long Road Home, in which Sandy has a supporting role won the Houston Film Festival this summer and she has a featured role in the NBC movie-of-the-week Anya’s Bell, with Della Reese, that aired at the end of October.

Gail Springer, College of Santa Fe, coached voice and dialect this fall for The Greer Garson Theatre production of You Can’t Take It With You, directed by Denise Ford. Also at the Greer Garson Theatre, she is now coaching voice and movement for Three Sisters, directed by Clare Davidson. In addition to her teaching and coaching, Gail is in rehearsal for an evening of Italian food, wine, and song with pianist Kelvin McNeal. Puccini, Handel, Tosti and others will introduce each delectable course at Santa Fe’s Cafe Espiritu.

Jennifer Thomas will be officially opening her new studio, “The Complete Voice Studio”, at the end of October. She teaches private and group lessons in both the singing and speaking voice. She also teaches at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and the Denver School of the Arts, and is the voice-over artist for “The Endless Advantage.”

Lynn Watson, UC-Irvine, was voice and dialect coach for South Coast Repertory productions of Norman Conquests and Shaw’s The Philanderer. She taught in a Fitzmaurice Voicework workshop at A.R.T./Harvard and worked with Cornerstone artistic director, Bill Rauch, as voice/movement coach for the Cal State Summer Arts Festival. Lynn chaired a VASTA committee on outreach to theatre directors for California State, Pomona; she also did vocal coaching for Arms and the Man.

WEST CENTRAL

Paul Meier has been busy with IDEA (International Dialects of English Archive), recruiting new associate editors, editing the dialect samples they send and placing them on the web at http://www.ukans.edu/~idea/index.html. He begins his appointment as associate editor for Pedagogy for the Voice and Speech Review. He also begins his two-year term as assistant editor of the VASTA Newsletter. Ride With the Devil, Ang Lee director, which Paul dialect coached and in which he has a small role, is due in theatres in November and has been getting raves on the festival circuit, while the North American premiere of Father Damien, (Paul dialect-coached) received a standing ovation at the Toronto Film Festival. Quest Books and Tapes published his reading of “The Baghavad Gita” in a two-audiocassette collector’s edition this summer. Also this summer Paul returned to North Carolina after a twenty-five year absence to dialect coach The Lost Colony.

Shawn M. Muller is the Technical Director and Webmaster for IDEA (International Dialects of English Archive). This summer he began the first of IDEA’s special collections, “Voices of Holocaust Survivors.” He is also serving as the Kansas associate editor for IDEA and regional VASTA newsletter editor for West Central. Shawn has also been keeping busy with two dialect-coaching jobs, Last Night of Ballyhoo, which he is co-coaching with Paul Meier, and A Shayna Maydel.

SOUTHERN

Rena Cook vocal-coached Merry Wives of Windsor, Richard III, and Wild Oats for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival this past summer.

Deborah Kinghorn is currently directing The Last Night of Ballyhoo at the University of Houston.

Jane MacFarlane, Southern Methodist University, vocal-coached Romeo and Juliet and Merry Wives of Windsor for the Shakespeare Festival of Dallas; Night of the Iguana for Sage Theatre in Taos, NM; acted the role of Deeny in Old Neighbourhood for the New Theatre in Dallas; and is currently coaching Dark Ride and The Illusion at SMU.

Marti Runnels, Wayland Baptist University, will be travelling to Germany this summer with several short plays she has written.

NEW ENGLAND

Candice Brown, Brandeis U., having received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor, is now currently on leave from New York State University at Fredonia and is teaching at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. There she has coached dialects and physical direction for Alan Ayckbourn’s Absent Friends and provided Vocal/Dialect Direction for Bertolt Brecht’s Three Penny Opera. She writes, “A special thanks to all VASTA’s membership for your support during the planning and celebration of the 1999 Summer Conference in Toronto. All of you who were unable to attend were genuinely missed. Also, a heartfelt thanks for all your expressions of love and concern for my mother and myself during this very difficult time.” Candice’s new e-mail address is voices@brandeis.edu

Alex Davis dialogue-coached select actors in NYC for a first reading of a screen play by Seth Friedman entitled East Side Story, based on the novel of the same name by Gregory Abbott. On the other side of the camera, he did a commercial for WCSH-TV, Portland.

Kate Devore is moving to Chicago to freelance as a voice and speech trainer, actor, speech pathologist specializing in voice disorders, personal success coach, and practitioner of complementary healing techniques. If inclined, please send her good thoughts and/or clients! Happy autumn to all.

Nancy Houfek, American Repertory Theatre, coached several shows for the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University: Hypatia by Mac Wellman directed by Bob McGrath; Sarita by Maria Fornes, directed by Meg Eginton; and Authur Miller’s All My Sons, directed by Scott Zigler. At the American Repertory Theater, she coached Don DeLillo’s new play Valparaiso with Will Patton; Cripple of Inishmaan directed by Scott Zigler; and Boston Marriage, David Mamet’s new play, directed by Mamet with Felicity Huffman, Rebecca Pidgeon and Mary McCann. Nancy also hosted the June 1999 Fitzmaurice Workshop at the A.R.T., attended by 35 voice professionals from the U.S. and Canada. She continues to teach for the Institute and presented a series of workshops for the Kennedy School of Government on “The Art of Storytelling” and for the Bok Center for Teaching at Harvard on “Teaching as Performance.”

Gillian Lane-Plescia, coached Sweeney Todd and The School for Scandal at the Guthrie during the summer; The Clearing at Hartford Stage and again for the Blue Light Theatre in New York; she recently coached An Ideal Husband at Baltimore’s Center Stage; The Last Hurrah at the Huntington; diction-coached the new opera of A View from the Bridge at the Lyric Opera; and The Beauty Queen of Leenane at Hartford’s Theatreworks. She will be coaching Shaw’s Misalliance at the Guthrie this December and January. Her new tape “Accents of the American South Volume 2,” will be available by the end of October.

Marya Lowry, Brandeis U. During the summer Marya joined her voice, as a featured narrator, with the Boston Pops (Keith Lockhart, conductor) in With Voices Raised, a new composition for orchestra, mixed chorus and speakers, with music by Stephen Flaherty and text by Lynn Ahrens (Ragtime). In addition, she played the title role in The Flight of Betsey Lane, a radio drama, adapted from the short story by Sarah Oren Jewett, to be broadcast on National Public Radio for “The Scribbling Women Series.”

Peter Jack Tkatch, U. of Vermont, just coached dialects for an adaptation of Emma at the Royall Tyler Theatre.

Vol. 13 No.3	VASTA NEWS	Fall 1999 p. 10


News - Regional Editors Regional News This column helps VASTA members network. Let everyone know your special projects, awards, promotions, research plans and results and/or need for assistance. Also members would enjoy hearing significant news in your personal life. Respond when your Regional Editor calls or contact her/him with your news. For the name of your Regional Editor, see the list at the top of the page or contact Paul Meier (see contact information on page 2). Newsletter Regional Editors New England (ME, VT, NH, CT, MA, RI.) Marya Lowry 60 Tolman Street West Newton, MA 02165 H (617) 244-7838 W (617) 736-3341 FAX: (617) 244-2487 E-Mail: lowry@binah.cc.brandeis.edu Mid-Atlantic (NY, PA, NJ, DE, MD D.C.) Donna Snow 109 Warfield Rd. Cherry Hill, N.J. 08034 609-354-8750 (home) Chair, Department of Theater School of Communication & Theater Temple University 1301 W. Norris St. Philadelphia, PA l9l22-6075 215-204-8652 FAX 215-204-8566 E-Mail dsnow@unix.temple.edu South East (WV, VA, NC, SC, GA, AL, FL, TN, KY) Christine Anne Morris 1330 Mordecai Drive Raleigh, N.C. 27604 919-839-6255 (home) E-Mail: CMorris.acpub.duke.edu Work address: Program in Drama Box 90680 Duke University Durham, NC 27709 (919)660-3348 (919)684-8906 Fax E-Mail: cmorris@duke.edu East Central (OH, MI, IN, WI, IL) Karen S. Ryker 16902 W. Porter Rd. Evansville WI 53536 H (608) 249-9979 W (608) 263-2329 FAX: (608) 263-2463 E-Mail: ksryker@facstaff.wisc.edu West Central (MN, IA, ND, SD, NE, KS) Shawn Muller Southern (MS, LA, MO, AR, OK, TX) Deborah Kinghorn E-Mail: dkinghorn@UH.EDU Western (MT, WY, ID, UT, CO, NV, AZ, NM, WA, OR, CA, AK, HI) Kathryn Maes Theater Department School of the Arts University of Colorado at Denver Campus Box 177, P.O. Box 173364 Denver, Colorado 80217-3364 Voice: 303-556-4797 Fax: 303-556-2335 E-Mail kmaes@carbon.cudenver.edu (Home) 1530 S. Quebec Way, #23 Denver, CO 80231 (303) 283-8398 Canada Anne Scrimger 1431 Carlyle Rd SW Calgary, ALB T2V 2V2 Canada 403-259-3274 (home) 403-240-8940 (work) E-Mail: ascrimger@Admin.MtRoyal.AB.CA Mount Royal College Dept of Theatre and Speech 4825—Richard road S.W. Calgary, T3E—6K6, Alberta Canada Fax:—work—403-240-6215 E-Mail—ascrimger@mtroyal.ab.ca International Linda Cartwright 7 Raines Ave. Forrest Hill, Auckla 1310 NEW ZEALAND H (64-9) 410-8243 W (64-9) 815-4337 x 7106 FAX: (64-9) 815-4347 E-Mail: geocar@clear.net.nz Regional News INTERNATIONAL Melissa Agnew, Queensland, Australia, has started a Ph.d this year at the National Voice Centre, University of Sydney. She will also be attending the British Council Theatre Voice Seminar to be held in January 2000 at Stratford-Upon-Avon led by Cicely Berry and Andrew Wade. Linda Cartwright, Voice tutor in the Acting major at UNITEC Institute of Technology’s School of Performing & Screen Arts, Auckland, New Zealand, acted as coorninator for Jo Estill’s course known as VoiceCraft in North America (but not in New Zealand, because of copyright) in July and will co-ordinate another course to be held in January 2000. Linda is also working on a MA (Visual and Performing Arts) degree by distance learning with an Australian University. CANADA Betty Moulton coached The Last Night of Ballyhoo with Joyce De Witt at the Mayfield dinner theatre (Edmonton) in September and starts work on Doc and Zastrozzi with the graduating class of actors at the University of Alberta in October. She continues her collaboration with Lynda Adams on “Laban drives and their application to action.” She, Lynda and GerryTrentham conducted a workshop at ATHE in Toronto this summer on their collaborative work. Susan Stackhouse is an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She teaches voice and speech to years 2, 3 and 4 of the Acting Programme. She is presently directing the graduating class in a production of 7 Stories, a play by Morris Panych (a Canadian playwright). She was in residence at The Shaw Festival, North America’s second-largest repertory company (Niagara-On-The-Lake, Ontario, Canada), where she is a voice coach. She has been associated with the Festival as an actor and coach for seventeen seasons. MID ATLANTIC Mary Baird is currently teaching and acting at Cornell University. She had a wonderful time performing in The Cripple of Inishmaan and in Holiday Memories. She did the text and vocal coaching on Romeo and Juliet for NCSF. Life is good, and until May she can be reached at 304 Stewart Ave. #4 Ithaca, N.Y. 14850 (Phone: 607-275-9722, E-mail: meb44@cornell.edu). Catherine Fitzmaurice is teaching at the Moscow Arts Theatre with the Harvard University/American Repertory Theatre Program. Along with her associates, Catherine led her workshop on Destructuring/Restructuring this past June at A.R.T. Focusing on the singer, Joan Melton will join her in a workshop this December in New York. Then in January Catherine will give another workshop at the University of Miami, hosted by Michael Barnes. In June, 2000 a second certification program will be held in New York. Barry Kur, Penn State University, School of Theatre, after a vacation in Hawaii celebrating 25 years of wedded bliss with wife, Judi, began a busy Fall semester coaching at Penn State The Love of a Nightingale; and at Bucknell University, Tea in a China Cup ( a lovely Belfast Irish play with significant women’s roles). Will be dialect-coaching Communicating Doors for the Asolo Theatre, Sarasota, Fl, and teaching workshops in the Asolo Conservatory, Jan/Feb. His outreach theatre company, the University Park Ensemble, began a new program addressing alcohol use and binge drinking. This effort was featured on a National Public Radio Morning Edition Story. Elizabeth Van Den Berg, Western Maryland College, served as dialect coach for the Olney Theatre (MD) production of Equus this past spring. During the summer she was busy as a voice consultant with Theatre on the Hill, a summer stock company in MD. This summer she served as dialect coach at The Studio Theatre (DC) for Indian Ink and will be there this fall for Blue Heart. For her off-campus professional work as a dialect coach and actor, at their Introductory Convocation, WMC honored Elizabeth with their Faculty Creativity Award. Robert Neff Williams conducted three workshops in N.Y.C. during the past summer. A Theater for a New Audience workshop on Shakespeare’s King John explored the possibilities of collaboration between a director, Karin Coonrod, and a text coach. A workshop on Restoration and 18th-Century Comedy for sixteen New York actors met thrice weekly for three weeks and considered background material on the periods as well as texts. A week of training sessions for the company members of The Pearl Theater concentrated on voice and text work for the classic plays of their new season. SOUTH EAST Lynx Brammer, in her third year in the MFA Theatre Education: Voice and Speech program at Virginia Commonwealth University, vocal-coached Hotel Paradiso at VCU last spring; did the 5-week Lessac Summer workshop this past summer; and during the fall coached Equus while working on her thesis, The Value of the I.P.A. in Actor Dialect Training. Michael Bruckmueller, in his first year in the MFA Theatre Education: Voice and Speech program in Virginia Commonwealth U., did an internship at A.R.T. over the summer, and served as assistant vocal coach on VCU’s mainstage production of As You Like It. Marcia Mary Cook, Sewanee University, attended the VASTA conference in Toronto, which she found a battery re-charger, meeting and working with VASTA colleagues and benefiting from the workshops, especially those led by David Smukler and Judith Koltai. At Sewanee, she appeared in Horton Foote’s Lily Dale as Mrs. Coons, and looks forward to playing Mammy in The Cripple of Inishmaan this winter. Mary Coy recently moved to Virginia, where she is happily at work: teaching Linklater privately; as voice and text coach for Camp Shakespeare (the brainchild of VCU dept. chair David Leong, created to introduce high school drama and English teachers to techniques for making Shakespeare fun and physical); dialect-coaching Loot in Charlottesville; as adjunct faculty teaching acting at VCU; and as a student in Janet Rodgers’ dialects class at VCU. She says, “It has reacquainted me with the pains and rigors and, of course, joys of being a student and I highly recommend it for every one of us who has been too long on the other side of the desk.” Derek Gagnier, Greensboro College, directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Greensboro in October and looks forward to dialect-coaching Dancing at Lughnasa there in December. Wendy Hagenow, in her second year in the MFA Theatre Education: Voice and Speech program at Virginia Commonwealth University, participated in the 1999 Summer Intensive at Shakespeare & Co., and also did the one-week Catherine Fitzmaurice Workshop at A.R.T. in Cambridge. During the fall, she vocal coached Lonely Planet and played Jaques in As You Like It at VCU. Marlene Johnson recently relocated from Pennsylvania to Virginia, where she has begun the M.F.A program in Voice and Speech at Virginia Commonwealth. Before leaving Pa., she voice coached A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Lafayette College, directed Comedy of Errors for PA Youth Theatre as well as two one-acts for Spring on Fourth in Bethlehem, Pa. Current and upcoming voice coaching projects include As You Like It (at VCU) and Communicating Doors and The Heiress (at Theatre Virginia). Recent voiceovers include From American Earth, a documentary on Stephen Vincent Benet for PBS which won Best New Documentary by Pennsylvania Broadcasters Association. During the summer she attended Judith Koltai’s authentic movement classes “The Pleasure of the Text” on Salt Spring Island, BC, and in September she performed in a reading of John Brown’s Body with James Earl Jones and with her husband, Edwin Booth. Elisa Lloyd, Emory University, recently completed her fifth year as vocal coach for the Georgia Shakespeare Festival, coaching Hamlet, Comedy of Errors, and St. Joan. She is teaching voice and speech in the Dept. of Theatre Studies at Emory U., and coaching the season for Theatre Emory. In October she played Mrs. Solness in Theatre Emory’s production of Ibsen’s The Master Builder, newly adapted by Steve Murray and directed by Vinnie Murphy. Christine Morris, Duke University, served as dialect coach for the interactive CD-ROM, The Ellis Island Experience, produced by Southpeak Interactive in association with The History Channel. Ellen O’Brien now teaches fall semester at Guilford College (in Greensboro, NC) and spring quarter at UC-Santa Cruz. Last spring, she coached Heartbreak House for The People’s Light and Theatre Company and offered a workshop on her physical approach to teaching iambic pentameter for the national meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America. This summer, she served as Dramaturg/Voice and Text Coach for Shakespeare Santa Cruz, coaching Romeo and Juliet, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Arms and the Man. A second R&J followed shortly at the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival, along with Comedy of Errors and Henry IV: Part I. During the fall, she directed Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) at Guilford. Carol Pendergrast has moved to Wrightsville Beach, NC, off the coast of Wilmington, NC, and is teaching part-time at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She plans eventually to do some freelance voice-over and voice coaching work there but for now is enjoying daily walks on the beach (in between hurricanes) and is still struggling with getting 11 year’s accumulation of stuff moved from her former office and home in Greenville, NC, and getting settled. New email is pendergrastc@uncwil.edu. Bonnie Raphael continues to heal, slowly but surely, while returning to work at the University of North Carolina. In addition to coaching Constant Star for PlayMakers and Love’s Labour’s Lost for the students at UNC, she acted in a staged reading of In the Lake of the Woods and coached a production of Anthony and Cleopatra for Old Dominion University in Norfolk. Janet Rodgers, head of Voice and Speech at Virginia Commonwealth University, tells us there are now four students enrolled in the Theatre Education: Voice and Speech MFA program. If anyone is looking for an MFA program with an emphasis in Voice and Speech, please contact her. The program is accepting one student each year. Also, the second VASTA-endorsed book, The Voice and Speech Exercise Book and audiotape is underway and will be published by Applause Books. If you would like to contribute an exercise, please contact Janet at jrodgers@saturn.vcu.edu Erica Tobolski, University of South Carolina, coached Ah, Wilderness!, Romeo & Juliet, and Much Ado About Nothing for USC, Scotland Road at Workshop Theatre and Taking Sides at Trustus Theatre, all in Columbia, SC. She also performed in Taking Sides, playing the role of Tamara Sachs. This past summer she spent two and a half weeks in London, participating (with fellow VASTA members Kathleen Campbell and Micah Espinoza) in the fabulous workshop with Patsy Rodenberg at the National Theatre. She was in Toronto for ATHE, presenting on two panels: “The graduate school audition process,” and “Faculty collaboration in the graduate training programs at USC and UMKC.” WESTERN Deena Burke continues to be obsessed by the Argentine Tango! Last March/April she spent a month in Buenos Aires studying and dancing. This summer she traveled around the country dancing, studying and even performing the Tango. She also attended the VASTA conference in Toronto. Since last October, Deena has coached The Glass Menagerie, Last Night of Ballyhoo and The Royal Family at The Intiman. In addition, she coached Beauty Queen of Leenane, Oh Coward, Design for Living and Golden Child for The Seattle Rep, and provided some dialect support on Side Man at A Contemporary Theatre (where she is presently rehearsing the role of Jessica in Ayckbourn’s Community Doors. Deena continues to teach 23 hours a week at Cornish and this year received an official appointment at the University of Washington (where she has taught off and on for 8 years) to teach Speech in the PATP Master’s program. Kathryn Maes is currently serving as Chair of the newly formed Department of Theatre, Film and Video Production at the University of Colorado-Denver. She directed a production of Ibsen’s Ghosts for UC-D which opened October 6. In September, Kathy participated in a cooperative venture between the Wilbur James Gould Voice Research Center (Denver Center for the Performing Arts) and the Department of Theatre, Film and Video Production, presenting a two-hour voice clinic titled “Preventing Vocal Meltdown”. It featured such notable voice professionals as Dr. Ingo Titze (Voice Scientist), Dr. Mona Abaza (Laryngologist/Voice Care Specialist), Kate Emerich (Vocalogist/Singing Voice Teacher), John Nix (Voice Teacher), and Kathryn (Voice for the Actor Specialist). This is planned to be an on-going project focusing on various vocal needs. Joan Melton taught a five-day workshop with Catherine Fitzmaurice in New York City in late December—early January, focusing Catherine’s work on the Singing Voice. In February, she led a workshop “Integrating Theatre Voice with Singing” for the American College Theatre Festival, Humboldt, CA. In May-June, she did the second Intensive Voice Workshop “Focusing the Voice on Musical Theatre” with David Nevell, at Cal State Fullerton. She assisted Catherine Fitzmaurice in a workshop for the Voice Foundation Conference in Philadelphia, and took a three week Pilates Intensive in June-July. During the spring term, Joan coached The Crucible, The Fantasticks, and Beautiful Bodies for CSUF; and Tartuffe for South Coast Rep. Rod Menzies is appearing in Cyrano de Bergerac at A Noise Within, California’s Classical Theatre Company, recently designated Resident Professional Theatre Company at California State University, Los Angeles. The theater is housed in the beautiful, new Luckman Fine Arts Complex. This is Rod’s third consecutive show as a guest artist with the company. He is an Assistant Professor in his sixth year at the School of Theatre, University of Southern California, where he teaches voice, dialect and acting courses, and is up for tenure this year. He also teaches classes and coaches professional actors at his Santa Monica Studio. Kimberly Mohne (A.C.T.) is currently assisting Deborah Sussel in the Speech portion of the Graduate Training program in the MFA program at A.C.T. in San Francisco. She is simultaneously coaching three shows in the Bay Area: Trust (the American premiere of Gary Mitchell’s fabulous play) at the Eureka Theater in SF; Translations at Center Rep of Walnut Creek; and Desire Under the Elms at San Jose Rep in San Jose. Kim is also finishing work on two anthology books for Smith & Kraus Publishers due to be published early next year. In mid-October the Young Conservatory resumes where she will be teaching Acting and heading the Voice & Speech department. Barbara Sellers-Young, Univ. of California Davis, besides directing Cleveland Raining and Talk Story for the University theatre, had two articles published on movement training: “Technique and the Embodied Actor,” Theatre Research International 24/1 (Spring 1999), pp. 89-102; and “Somatic Processes: Convergence of Theory and Practice,” Theatre Topics 8/2 (September 1998), pp.173-187. She also received a Pacific Rim Planning Grant for a project titled “Performing the Pacific Rim.” Sandra Shotwell, University of Utah, was awarded the rank of full professor as of July 1st! She is presently dialect coaching Summer and Smoke with the university and will coach The Cripple of Inishmaan with Pioneer Theatre Company, resident equity company, in December. She will be coaching two shows with Ashland Oregon Shakespeare in January/February of next year. The family film, The Long Road Home, in which Sandy has a supporting role won the Houston Film Festival this summer and she has a featured role in the NBC movie-of-the-week Anya’s Bell, with Della Reese, that aired at the end of October. Gail Springer, College of Santa Fe, coached voice and dialect this fall for The Greer Garson Theatre production of You Can’t Take It With You, directed by Denise Ford. Also at the Greer Garson Theatre, she is now coaching voice and movement for Three Sisters, directed by Clare Davidson. In addition to her teaching and coaching, Gail is in rehearsal for an evening of Italian food, wine, and song with pianist Kelvin McNeal. Puccini, Handel, Tosti and others will introduce each delectable course at Santa Fe’s Cafe Espiritu. Jennifer Thomas will be officially opening her new studio, “The Complete Voice Studio”, at the end of October. She teaches private and group lessons in both the singing and speaking voice. She also teaches at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and the Denver School of the Arts, and is the voice-over artist for “The Endless Advantage.” Lynn Watson, UC-Irvine, was voice and dialect coach for South Coast Repertory productions of Norman Conquests and Shaw’s The Philanderer. She taught in a Fitzmaurice Voicework workshop at A.R.T./Harvard and worked with Cornerstone artistic director, Bill Rauch, as voice/movement coach for the Cal State Summer Arts Festival. Lynn chaired a VASTA committee on outreach to theatre directors for California State, Pomona; she also did vocal coaching for Arms and the Man. WEST CENTRAL Paul Meier has been busy with IDEA (International Dialects of English Archive), recruiting new associate editors, editing the dialect samples they send and placing them on the web at http://www.ukans.edu/~idea/index.html. He begins his appointment as associate editor for Pedagogy for the Voice and Speech Review. He also begins his two-year term as assistant editor of the VASTA Newsletter. Ride With the Devil, Ang Lee director, which Paul dialect coached and in which he has a small role, is due in theatres in November and has been getting raves on the festival circuit, while the North American premiere of Father Damien, (Paul dialect-coached) received a standing ovation at the Toronto Film Festival. Quest Books and Tapes published his reading of “The Baghavad Gita” in a two-audiocassette collector’s edition this summer. Also this summer Paul returned to North Carolina after a twenty-five year absence to dialect coach The Lost Colony. Shawn M. Muller is the Technical Director and Webmaster for IDEA (International Dialects of English Archive). This summer he began the first of IDEA’s special collections, “Voices of Holocaust Survivors.” He is also serving as the Kansas associate editor for IDEA and regional VASTA newsletter editor for West Central. Shawn has also been keeping busy with two dialect-coaching jobs, Last Night of Ballyhoo, which he is co-coaching with Paul Meier, and A Shayna Maydel. SOUTHERN Rena Cook vocal-coached Merry Wives of Windsor, Richard III, and Wild Oats for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival this past summer. Deborah Kinghorn is currently directing The Last Night of Ballyhoo at the University of Houston. Jane MacFarlane, Southern Methodist University, vocal-coached Romeo and Juliet and Merry Wives of Windsor for the Shakespeare Festival of Dallas; Night of the Iguana for Sage Theatre in Taos, NM; acted the role of Deeny in Old Neighbourhood for the New Theatre in Dallas; and is currently coaching Dark Ride and The Illusion at SMU. Marti Runnels, Wayland Baptist University, will be travelling to Germany this summer with several short plays she has written. NEW ENGLAND Candice Brown, Brandeis U., having received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor, is now currently on leave from New York State University at Fredonia and is teaching at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. There she has coached dialects and physical direction for Alan Ayckbourn’s Absent Friends and provided Vocal/Dialect Direction for Bertolt Brecht’s Three Penny Opera. She writes, “A special thanks to all VASTA’s membership for your support during the planning and celebration of the 1999 Summer Conference in Toronto. All of you who were unable to attend were genuinely missed. Also, a heartfelt thanks for all your expressions of love and concern for my mother and myself during this very difficult time.” Candice’s new e-mail address is voices@brandeis.edu Alex Davis dialogue-coached select actors in NYC for a first reading of a screen play by Seth Friedman entitled East Side Story, based on the novel of the same name by Gregory Abbott. On the other side of the camera, he did a commercial for WCSH-TV, Portland. Kate Devore is moving to Chicago to freelance as a voice and speech trainer, actor, speech pathologist specializing in voice disorders, personal success coach, and practitioner of complementary healing techniques. If inclined, please send her good thoughts and/or clients! Happy autumn to all. Nancy Houfek, American Repertory Theatre, coached several shows for the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University: Hypatia by Mac Wellman directed by Bob McGrath; Sarita by Maria Fornes, directed by Meg Eginton; and Authur Miller’s All My Sons, directed by Scott Zigler. At the American Repertory Theater, she coached Don DeLillo’s new play Valparaiso with Will Patton; Cripple of Inishmaan directed by Scott Zigler; and Boston Marriage, David Mamet’s new play, directed by Mamet with Felicity Huffman, Rebecca Pidgeon and Mary McCann. Nancy also hosted the June 1999 Fitzmaurice Workshop at the A.R.T., attended by 35 voice professionals from the U.S. and Canada. She continues to teach for the Institute and presented a series of workshops for the Kennedy School of Government on “The Art of Storytelling” and for the Bok Center for Teaching at Harvard on “Teaching as Performance.” Gillian Lane-Plescia, coached Sweeney Todd and The School for Scandal at the Guthrie during the summer; The Clearing at Hartford Stage and again for the Blue Light Theatre in New York; she recently coached An Ideal Husband at Baltimore’s Center Stage; The Last Hurrah at the Huntington; diction-coached the new opera of A View from the Bridge at the Lyric Opera; and The Beauty Queen of Leenane at Hartford’s Theatreworks. She will be coaching Shaw’s Misalliance at the Guthrie this December and January. Her new tape “Accents of the American South Volume 2,” will be available by the end of October. Marya Lowry, Brandeis U. During the summer Marya joined her voice, as a featured narrator, with the Boston Pops (Keith Lockhart, conductor) in With Voices Raised, a new composition for orchestra, mixed chorus and speakers, with music by Stephen Flaherty and text by Lynn Ahrens (Ragtime). In addition, she played the title role in The Flight of Betsey Lane, a radio drama, adapted from the short story by Sarah Oren Jewett, to be broadcast on National Public Radio for “The Scribbling Women Series.” Peter Jack Tkatch, U. of Vermont, just coached dialects for an adaptation of Emma at the Royall Tyler Theatre.
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