Alumni List

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Margaret "Megs" Booker (PhD '01) directed A Night at the Alhambra Café, conceived by herself and Shem Guibbory with a text by Rinde Eckert (just nominated for the Pulitzer Prize) at Harlem Stage/Aaron Davis Hall, Inc. in Manhattan in January, with lead commissioning support by the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The show is slated for national touring. She is also teaching a new course for UC Santa Cruz entitled Black Theatre USA and leads a group theater tour of Bay Area theaters called "Bay Area Theater Immersion" which includes performances, artist discussions, and lectures.

Kyle Gillette (PhD '07) spent the summer after graduation running academic programs at UC Berkeley and Stanford and acting in Harry Elam's production of Lorraine Hansberry's Les Blancs. In August, he was a teaching assistant for a Shakespeare seminar in Oxford, and in the fall he will teach a class called “Cultural Research” to MFA actors at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.  During the winter and spring quarters, Kyle will teach “Art and Ideas” with Alice Rayner and Janice Ross as a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Stanford's Introduction to the Humanities program.  Kyle's most recent article, "Loco Motion: Railway Perception, Relativity, and the Stage," appears in the June issue of Performance Research.

Audrey Dundee Hannah ('04) is living in San Francisco, where she is represented by J.E. Talent, and is out auditioning every week for film, commercial, print, and voiceover. She has been developing her one-woman show, Workhorse, at the Marsh for the past two years, and it is set to be completed this summer.

Daniel Jackson ('04) is currently working as an Artistic and Education Associate at Jump-Start Performance Co. in San Antonio, Texas. He received the TCG New Generations: Future Leaders grant to support a two-year mentorship with the company.

Shawn Kairschner (PhD '07) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theater at Villanova University.

Barry Kendall (PhD '07) has been named the new Executive Director of the Commonweal Institute (www.commonwealinstitute.org), a Silicon Valley think-tank that leads strategic promotional campaigns for progressive ideas. He also continues his scholarly research into the historical roots of the Protestant evangelical movement and its influence on American culture and politics.  He recently presented excerpts from his dissertation, "Changing American Minds: Performances of Evangelism in the Early Republic," at the annual conferences of the American Studies Association (ASA) and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE).

Alma R. Martinez (PhD '06) returned this September from a Fulbright grant in Lima, Peru. While there, she worked with renowned theater company Yuyachkani. She acted recently in a workshop production of Sweet 15: Quinceñera by Rick Najera at San Diego Repertory. She performed in Anna in the Tropics at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto. She is serving as board member and theater consultant for the National Latina Heath Network, and in September presented Senators Ted Kennedy and Congressmen Patrick Kennedy with the first comprehensive Latina Health Policy Agenda in Washington.

Malavika Mohanan ('03) writes, "After a couple years of travel/living in India and Singapore I'm dropping back into the States on May 3, starting with the Bay Area and moving on, to take around an evolving set of projects called Spirit Plays, which is a traveling dance-theater-poetry meditation project in search of universal liberation through truth and love. That sounds kind of heavy, but it's all just a game, really. Anyone want to play?"

Risa Okamoto ('01) is working as a director and producer of documentary films and is based in Singapore. Projects she has directed/produced include True Asian Horror for Discovery Channel (Asia), about the true stories behind blockbuster Asian horror movies; and Japanese Cowboy for National Geographic about a Japanese guy who dreams of becoming a rodeo bullrider and that airs internationally after July. She writes, "It's my 'baby' that I've been working on for four years so please catch it!" In addition, she is currently directing and producing a seven-part series for Discovery Travel on the seven wonders of China, due to air next year. She still think back fondly to her Stanford days and her days in theater "which remains my first love."

Lisa Rowland ('05) is living in San Francisco with Stanford alums (and Stanford Improvisor alums) Brynn Utley and Ian Slattery (both '04). She is currently a guest member of the mainstage company at BATS Improv and also work at the BATS school of Improv as the registrar. (She writes, "I am the Roger Printup of BATS!") Lisa was recently in Hamlet with No Nude Productions along with fellow drama alum Kendra Arimoto ('03) and Alexis Boozer ('04).

Kris Salata (PhD '07) presented his work on Grotowski in Turin, Italy; Wroclaw, Poland; New York, and Toronto. He has an article and several translations accepted for publication by TDR. He also has an article published in a book on the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards.

Evan Winet (PhD ’01) recently returned from six months as a Fulbright senior scholar to Indonesia. While there, he worked on his book, Indonesian Postcolonial Theatre: Spectral Genealogies and Absent Faces, which will be published in the Palgrave Studies in International Theatre series in 2008.  He also completed editing Guan Hanqing's thirteenth-century play, Dou E Yuan (the injustice to Dou E) for The Norton Anthology of Drama.  The Grolier Encyclopedia of Asian Theatre, for which Evan contributed most of the articles on modern Indonesian theater, appeared in print earlier this year. His article, “Spectres of Hamlet in Colonial and Postcolonial Indonesia,” presented at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference in New Orleans in August, has been accepted for inclusion in Shakespeare in Asia, Hollywood and the Cyberspace, an anthology forthcoming from Purdue University Press. Evan currently serves as co-convener of the National Identities/National Cultures research group of the American Society for Theatre Research and emerging scholar adjutant for the Association for Asian Performance. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with his wife, Anne Campisi.

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Tom Clyde ('91, History) wrote that the Drama website: "brought back all those days and nights in rehearsals with Humphrey Gyde and David Saltz, et al." He has stayed in the arts-first as an actor in the Bay Area, then as a director, then founding a theater in Berkeley (Transparent Theater-now the Ashby Stage). In 2002 he started making short films (and wrote that he realized "that I am a film director at heart.") His first feature, Hog Island, is just winding up its festival run. His wife wrote the screenplay and he directed. They are now working on the financing of their new feature film, with the working title, Berkeley Story.

Chelsea Eng ('98, French, minor Drama; MA '99, Education) danced in the world premiere of the Leading Ladies of Tango, an all-women performance in San Francisco in December 2006. She currently teaches dance at City College of San Francisco.

Bubba Gong (MA '92, Dance) is featured at the Chinese Historical Society of America, San Francisco for his work as Director/Choreographer. He celebrates his twenty-first season as Chair of Dance Department, Foothill College, and Founder and Artistic Director of the Foothill Repertory Dance Company. A Bay Area Critics' Circle and Dean Goodman Honoree, Bubba resides on three Jury Panels for Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

Lisa Kirazian ('92, English) writes that her independent study playwriting/screenwriting projects in the Drama Department with mentor Anna Deavere Smith were the highlights of her Stanford academic life. That experience continues to inform her writing today-she is a professional freelance writer and playwright, with seven productions of her plays in California and New York and two plays published. Additionally, she serves on the boards of Playwrights Project (www.playwrightsproject.com) and the Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance/ADAA (www.armeniandrama.org), and will now serve as ADAA's Contest Administrator for its William Saroyan Prize for Playwriting, starting in 2008, the year of William Saroyan's centennial.

James Loehlin (PhD '93) had his book, Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard, published by Cambridge University Press this past summer, and was pleased to give a talk on the play at Stanford as part of the Alumni Lecture Series. He is currently directing both parts of Shakespeare's Henry IV as well as working on a book on the play. He is Director of the Shakespeare at Winedale program at the University of Texas, Austin, which is producing Richard II, Measure for Measure, and The Comedy of Errors this summer.

Anne McNaughton (’92, MA ’00) directed five world premieres for Andak Stage Company of Los Angeles in the last three years, including her own translation/adaptation of Molière’s Scapin set in the San Francisco Gold Rush (San Fran Scapin); a new translation of Tirso de Molina’s El burlador de Sevilla (Don Juan, The Trickster of Seville), which also toured to the international Siglo de Oro Festival at the Chamizal Theatre in El Paso; and three of Dakin Matthews’ original plays: A Magic Christmas, The Savannah Option, and the award-winning verse drama The Prince of L.A., which was later remounted at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. She also directed the Los Angeles premiere of David Hare’s The Bay At Nice, and a production of Agustín Moreto’s El desdén con el desdén in an award-winning translation (Spite for Spite) which played in Los Angeles, and later at the Siglo de Oro Festival in El Paso.

Chris Tate ('99) is in his second year as Associate Minister at Second Congregational Church in Greenwich, Connecticut. His first child, Henry Butler Tate, was born on March 14, 2007. His most recent theater-related work included directing youth in a production of When God Comes to Breakfast You Don't Burn The Toast. He writes that he is still driving his MINI Cooper!

Tina Van Berckelar ('94) will be performing in a Grand Guignol show in Los Angeles at the end of May and into June: www.grandguignolers.com.

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Mark Carter's (PhD '87, Physics) theater company, Mystic Bison, mounted the California premiere of the play Purgatorio by Ariel Dorfman at the Next Stage in San Francisco. He directed and starred in the show.

Lindsay Chag ('84, Speech and Drama, Psychology) is currently a casting director and producer working in Los Angeles.

Reid Edelman ('86, Drama and English) is teaching theater and directing plays in Mendocino College in Ukiah, California. He and his wife Deborah have two wonderful children, Eli (5) and Noah (1).

Simone Genatt ('88) is Chairman of Broadway Asia Entertainment and President of Broadway Asia Company, the largest Broadway producing, touring and licensing companies in the Asia Pacific Region. Recent productions include The Producers, Hairspray, Movin' Out, The Sound of Music, West Side Story, and the Chinese production of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change in Shanghai. Shows produced by Simone that opened in May include The King and I in China; Spongebob Squarepants Live! in Singapore; the Chinese production of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change off-Broadway; and Legally Blond, the musical, on Broadway.

Heather McAvoy ('83) was the theater consultant for The Armory Building renovation, the new home for Portland Center Stage which opened in September 2006. It is the first historic renovation and first performing arts facility to receive a LEED Platinum rating for sustainable design by the U.S. Green Building Council. The building opened with a production of West Side Story, featuring lighting design by Peter Maradudin ('82). She currently serves as a trustee for the La Honda-Pescadero Unified School District, and, along with her husband, Bruce Krempetz, is running after-school drama programs for students in the local public schools. She is also working on the recent renovation of the Drama Department's own Nitery Theater in Old Union and a new front-of-house lighting position for Memorial Auditorium.

Doug ('81, Speech and Drama) and Liz (Rossi) Schuetz ('79, Speech and Drama) live in Lake Bluff, Illinois (north of Chicago) and have three daughters (Nicole, 23, Chloe, 21, and Jorie, 19). Doug writes, "Two are Stanfordites-they got Doug's brain. Nicole has even acted in a Stanford Department production, though she still doesn't know what it was about. Liz teaches sixth grade social studies and I am in insurance. I am the leader of his local community theater and unfortunately (because Mike Ramsaur was such a good teacher) do a lot of lighting design as well as directing. I just finished Erasmus Montanus does Dallas...not! Actually I just did a children's show The Velveteen Rabbit which was a great time. Liz hits the boards once in a while if it is a good part. She is in the midst of directing The Wiz at the middle school where she has resurrected the famous beach scene that was cut from the original musical. Don't ask! Come see us, we have lots of beds now."

Brent Shaphren ('80) lives in Chicago and teaches high school broadcasting classes and directs one of the play productions each year. This year, he directed a production of a new play called Testing, Testing dealing with all the high stakes testing in schools today. He also continues to work as an actor in the area.

Ginger Tsun ('82, Statistics, MS '86, Computer Science) is currently working at Yahoo! as a director of software engineering in the data mining department. She writes that she is still very passionate about dance, especially hip hop, salsa, and jazz.

Steve Vineberg (PhD. '85) has been appointed the first Monsignor Murray Professor of Arts and Humanities at College of the Holy Cross. His third book, High Comedy in American Movies, came out in 2005.

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Stephen Book (MFA '73, Speech and Drama) recently had his book, Book on Acting: Improvisation Technique for the Professional Actor in Film, Theater & Television (Silman-James Press, 2002), translated and published in Poland in 2007. In 2006, Silman-James Press published his newest book, The Actor Takes A Meeting: How to Interview Successfully with Agents, Managers, Producers, and Casting Directors. After long tenures at Juilliard and USC, he continues running his workshop for actors in Hollywood-now in its twenty-second year. His website is www.stephenbook.com.

Eric Booth (formerly Eric Miller, MFA '72) is a frequent keynote speaker on creativity and arts learning, attending twenty to thirty events per year, including to UNESCO's first-ever Worldwide Arts Education Conference in 2006, where he was the only American asked to speak. He is the author of The Everyday Work of Art (Book of the Month Club selection), founder of the Juilliard Art and Education Program, and Founding Editor of the Teaching Artist Journal.

Rebecca Daniels ('71) is still connected to theater and performance. Since completing her PhD in Theater at University of Oregon in 1992, she has been teaching acting, directing and playwriting at St. Lawrence University. She is also an active member of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) and has served as an officer for the Directing Focus Group. She has had one book published (Women Stage Directors Speak: Exploring the Influence of Gender on Their Work, 1996) her full-length play, The Famous Mrs. Beach (about late nineteenth-early twentieth century American composer, Amy Beach), produced twice: once in a full production with student actors at St. Lawrence and once in a professional staged reading at Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, Oregon. She is currently on leave from teaching and working on two new plays. On the personal front, after many years of going solo after her divorce, she married Harold "Skip" Stoughton in the fall of 2005, and they are looking forward to being first-time grandparents this spring!

Ralph Garrow ('74) has joined the founding Board of Directors for the Hapgood Theatre Company in Antioch, California, a new small professional company (Actor's Equity) planning its first season for this fall. He owns a real estate business in Antioch.

Deborah Breen Smith ('77, Spanish) is Executive Director and Co-founder of Wing & A Prayer Dance Company. She is also the authorized biographer of "the Mother of Mexican Modern Dance," Waldeen von Falkenstien.

Eric Warren ('72, MFA, Speech and Drama) just completed his tenth season on "ER" as Set Designer. He also just finished Winter's Tale at Caltech, his thirty-fifth year working with the same director in their extracurricular drama program. He also very active in his community as President of the Eagle Rock Valley Historical Society. He writes that he is looking forward to seeing Mike Ramsaur at Prague Quarenielle  this summer (his third PQ).

Charles Weeks (MFA ’70) recently retired from CBS after twenty-five years as an audio technician. “I mixed soap operas and football games, worked on several political conventions, a space shuttle launch, Emmy Awards and Super Bowls.”

Kurt Zischke ('78) has been a New York-based professional actor since graduation. He worked with Neighborhood Playhouse with Sanford Meisner right after Stanford, and then every venue from Broadway to over eighty productions in regional theater. Currently he lives in Beacon, New York (sixty miles north of NYC), with his wife, actress Victoria Adams-Zischke (they met playing Arthur and Guinevere in Camelot at The Pioneer Theatre in Salt Lake in 2001) and their two and a half year old daughter, Alexandra.

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Susan Robinson Anderson ('67) received her MFA in directing at the University of Minnesota in 1976. She teaches Drama in Education in schools in Bainbridge Island, directs plays with children ages six through thirteen, and works with teachers in their classrooms. She directed Die Fledermaus last winter. In addition, she sings with two jazz bands and has an agent for commercial work. She just spent two days with Lesley Liddle ('67) on Orcas Island, Washington, and saw her as Lottie in Enchanted April at the Orcas Art Center. They had reconnected at a week-long acting workshop in January.

Sondra Gynkiss ('60, Speech and Drama) writes of many fond memories of her "non-career in film and theater," including: meeting one-on-one with Betty Davis and Gary Merrill; shaking hands backstage and chit- chatting with Burt Lancaster; trying out for the Ashland Shakespeare Festival; having a hamburger pool side at Harrah's Reno with Dick Van Dyke seated across the way; kissing Peter Falk on the cheek after his presentation on the UC Berkeley campus; and hanging out with Ken Kesey, a fellow Stanford alum, at the local Dairy Queen in Pleasant Hill, Oregon.

John Hutchinson (MA '61, Speech and Drama) has formed "Times Two Productions" with Marilyn Kamelgarn. Their company produces plays in the community-based theater network in the Bay Area. He is an award-winning actor and playwright, receiving his mentorship under the late Stanley Donner.

Richie Meyer (MA '61) has completed a new book Ruan Ling-yu: The Goddess of Shanghai published by Hong Kong University Press and distributed by The University of Washington Press in the United States. It is bundled with a DVD of her most famous film, The Goddess, which Richie restored and produced himself. Ruan was the most famous movie star in pre-war China. Richie is currently Distinguished Fellow at the Film and Media Studies Center at Arizona State University.

Gordon M. Wickstrom (PhD '68) is Alumni Professor of  English Belles Lettres and  Literature, emeritus, Franklin and Marshall College. During his twenty-three year career at Franklin and Marshall, he served as the Department Chair, Director and Producer of seasons of plays, and Professor of dramatic literature and theory. He founded the first undergraduate program in Performance Studies in the nation. Upon retirement to hometown Boulder in 1991, Gordon became co-founder, director and actor for The Shakespeare Oratorio Society of Colorado (a company that took its inspiration and form from a performance of Bach's "St. John's Passion" in Stanford Memorial Church). It produces Shakespeare annually in its "new" way. He is publisher and writer of two quarterly gazettes: The Bouldercreek Actor: a gazette for those who make theater and The Bouldercreek Angler: a gazette for those who fish. Gordon is the author of two monographs on history and sociology of angling and many articles in leading angling journals after retirement. He is author, director and producer of the only dramatic entertainment intended specifically for anglers: The Great Debate 2005 (A London  performance is in the planning.) In addition, he is a director and actor for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.

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Gari Andreini ('59) retired in 1999 after a thirty-seven-year career with Dean Witter/Morgan Stanley investment firm-mainly on the West Coast with twenty of those years managing the Anchorage,  Alaska, office. He is now living in Bellevue, Washington, in the summer season and Corona Del Mar, California, in the winter months so that he and his wife, Milli, may play golf, contract bridge and visit with their four grandchildren. They have also gone on a number of Stanford travel trips including a trip to China and the Around the World Trip in 2002.

Dr. Russell Barber (MA '59) has retired to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to teach at Nova Southeastern University and work with the Peace Meditation at the United Nations in support of world peace, after seventeen years and three Emmys as on-air NBC-TV New York Religion & Ethics Editor.

Ronald Bazarini ('55) had his play Quarry produced by the Main Stage, Asolo in Sarasota, Florida. Now his collaborator, Corinna Manetto, and he have turned it into a musical drama titled Oliver's Idea. The York Theatre in Manhattan, recent winner of a Drama Desk Award, gave it a developmental reading in last September and plans to take it to the next stage, a workshop, this spring. He is also collaborating with Tony Winner Anthony Crivello on a piece titled 2B Caesar.

Richard (Dick) Hay ('52, Architecture, MA '55, Speech and Drama) writes, "Into my fifty-first season designing at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland I find myself thinking back on my undergraduate years as a theater groupie (Ram's Head president, 1949-51); on my Master's degree production design thesis (in the then Little Theater), David Belasco's The Girl of the Golden West; on my five years (1957-62) teaching scene design as an instructor in Speech and Drama; and on my four years (1965-69) as Associate Professor during the Stanford Repertory Theater and MFA program period. Are there any other old folks from those times out there?"

Sue (Alter) Wolf ('52) has a baby boy to add to her three granddaughters. Her son does freelancing and is a graduate of The Art Center in Pasadena, while his wife works for EMI in the Music Department. Sue and her husband Bennett live across the street from the Fox Studios in Century City (Los Angeles), and she writes that she has been tempted to start working again. She will attend her fifty-second reunion in October.

David L. Woods (MA '55, Speech and Drama), once Wally the fullback in Robert Loper's production of The Male Animal (with personal coaching from Bob Mathias ['52, Physical Education]) now balances two retirements (naval civilian and Navy Reserve captain) with annual holiday plays. He has been an Adjunct Professor in Communication for forty years: a decade each at the University of Maryland, the University of Virginia, George Washington University, and currently Marshall University. Three years ago, he was Senior Angel Joseph in the musical version of It's a Wonderful Life and last year he played Kris Kringle in The Miracle on 34th Street—both at the Old Opera House in Charles Town, West Virginia. In the mid-year, he appeared at the equity Wayside Theatre in Middletown, Virginia as The Ghost of Christmas Present in a modern, musical version of A Christmas Carol. He writes, "No doubt, F. Cowles Strickland is turning in his grave." He is the current theater editor for The Main ARTery, quad-state (Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia), a bi-monthly arts journal. He is the author/editor dozen books-half communication, half naval/military signal systems.

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Adolfo Arias ('42) acted in First Patrol after graduating from Stanford. He then entered his country's Diplomatic Service. He was first Minister from Panama to Israel and Greece, and Ambassador to the Holy See during the reigns of Pius XII and John XVIII. Since returning, he has done much work in theater: playing the leading roles in Man of La Mancha, The King and I, Whose Life is it Anyway?, Dial M for Murder, Fiddler on the Roof, and many others, as well as the film The Taylor of Panama. He has four children, nine grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. He writes, "I am now eighty-six-I still miss the 'Little Theater.'"

Keith de Folo ('48, English) is currently working on "Memories of Burma," a recollection of stories on his experiences as a photojournalist during his years in Burma before the revolution (1962-1965). He was Public Affairs Officer for the United States Information Service (USIS) and filed material with papers in Europe and the United States.

Bill Hoak ('48) writes, "Notice my diploma signed by Norman Philbrick/N. Wallace Sterling." He spent a few years in the merchant marine (WWII) as radio officer, then worked at his family raisin business in Fresno. After retiring in 1982, he moved to Cambria in 1987. He has three children, one granddaughter from his first marriage, and two children and two grandchildren from his second marriage to his wife, Mary Lou.

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Janet Dole Tuffli ('38) writes, "My son and daughter-in-law hosted a beautiful party at the Menlo Country Club to celebrate my ninetieth birthday in the fall. Fun! For now, my three cats still let me live with them, and I still make dog biscuits for my many doggie friends, many of whom I meet on my daily walks. Also active in church, playing bridge in AAUW groups, and occasionally ushering at our Paradise Performing Arts Center-conveniently right across the street from where I live. I graduated in 1938 and often think fondly of those days."