Faculty

Each of our faculty members has a short research and teaching synopsis below. For more information about career achievements, recent creative credits and publications, please click on the faculty member's name.

Faculty

Beau COLEMAN
Associate Professor
Email: beau.coleman@ualberta.ca

A theatre director and multidisciplinary artist specializing in interdisciplinary performance creation, contemporary performance and revisioning the classics. Her international artistic practice is one of continual movement between various art disciplines, encompassing the mediums of theatre, performance art/live art, site-specific performance, digital media, dance, video and installation.

Primary Teaching Areas: MFA Directing, BFA Acting, Performance Creation. Graduate Seminars in Directing and Performance. Graduate Supervision.

Dr. Selena COUTURE
Associate Professor; PhD and MA Program Coordinator
Email: couture2@ualberta.ca

Research focuses on Canadian Indigenous Theatre, Performance and Decolonizing practices; Land, Place Names and Performance; Indigenous Language Revitalization Practices; Colonial Performance and the Construction of Whiteness; Archival Practices, the Repertoire and Historiographic Method; Resource Extraction and Refusal.

Primary Teaching Areas: Theoretical Approaches to Theatre and Performance; Canadian Theatre; Canadian Indigenous Performance; Theatre and Colonial Modernity; Theatre and Performance Historiography; Decolonizing Research Methodologies in Performance Studies and Settler Responsibilities.

Dr. Piet DEFRAEYE
Professor; MFA Theatre Practice Coordinator
Email: defraeye@ualberta.ca

Research focuses on Reception Theories and Theatre of Provocation.

Primary Teaching Areas: Dramatic Theory, Introduction to Theatre Arts, Play Analysis. Graduate Seminars in Production Dramaturgy, Audience Reception Theory, Brecht, Research Tools. Graduate Supervision.

Dr. Melanie DREYER-LUDE
Professor
Email: M.DreyerLude@ualberta.ca

Research areas: International theatre collaboration, bilingual performance, interdisciplinary art projects using multiple modalities, Ugandan performance techniques, Performance as Research, Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, directing, acting, producing.

Teaching areas: directing, acting, empathy, interdisciplinary critical thinking, study abroad, cultural awareness.

T. Erin GRUBER
Assistant Professor, Lighting Design
Email: tgruber@ualberta.ca

A scenographer working in set, lighting, costume and projected media design, Erin is a proven specialist in the area of integrating live performers and digital material. Her special emphasis on visual dramaturgy and her passion for developing effective methods of communicating across disciplines makes Erin an innovative and collaborative voice in any creation process. New work, collaborative creation, musical theatre and dance are a few of her areas of concentration. Collaborating with diverse teams to raise the voices of her fellow artists infuses her values into the work she creates. She is committed to combining the powers of visual communication with the passion and emotion of live performance. The projects which excite her the most connect her core values of human compassion, empathetic awakening and joyful experience with the audience - the community of people she strives to serve.

Teaching areas: BFA and MFA Theatre Design, Lighting Design for the Theatre

Michael KENNARD
Associate Professor; ABBEDAM Advisor; Off the Cuff Festival Advisor
Email: kennard@ualberta.ca

Uses the clown techniques to explore performer impulse, truth and vulnerability in relationship to the audience. Creates imaginative worlds without literal boundaries.

Primary Teaching Areas: Performer-Created Theatre, Movement and Physical Theatre, Collective Creation, Clown. Graduate Supervision.

David KENNEDY
Professor; MFA Directing Program Coordinator
Email: david.kennedy@ualberta.ca

A director and artistic producer with wide experience in the not-for-profit regional theatre. Specializes in re-imagining the classics and the modern canon in production. Also has a considerable background in the creation of works of devised performance.

Primary teaching areas: MFA Directing, BFA Acting, Performer Created Theatre, Graduate Seminars in Dramatic Structure and Playwriting and Performance on the Contemporary American Stage

David LEY
Professor; MFA Theatre Voice Pedagogy Coordinator
Email: dley@ualberta.ca
Web site: vibrantvoicetechnique.com

Creator of the Vibrant Voice Technique, which uses external vibration to aid in voice production. Explores tools for dialect acquisition. Research also explores vocal variation and its relationship to meaning in the presentation of classical text. Applies new discoveries and skills to his own practice as an actor in theatre and film.

Primary Teaching Areas: BFA Voice, Speech in Rehearsal and Performance, Dialects and Accents, BFA Acting, MFA Voice Pedagogy. Graduate Supervision.

Dr. Donia MOUNSEF
Professor, BA Honors Program Coordinator
Email: mounsef@ualberta.ca

Playwright, Dramaturge, and Performance Poet.

Research focuses on modern and contemporary French and Francophone theatre, politics, gender and performance, theories of the body, intermediality and adaption theory, performance as research.

Primary Teaching Areas: Introduction to Dramatic Arts, Play Analysis, Critical Theory, Playwriting, Media and Performance, Digital Theatre and Emerging Technologies. Graduate Seminars in Contemporary French and Francophone Theatre, Gender, Desire and the Modern Stage, Theatre of War, Intermediality. Performance Theory. Graduate Supervision

Dr. Stefano MUNERONI
Associate Professor; MA Program Coordinator; PhD Program Coordinator
Email: Stefano.muneroni@ualberta.ca

Research is grounded in post-colonial theory and includes the study of both intercultural and border theatre. Looks specifically at how socio-economic factors affect cultural and artistic conditions, and how such conditions are negotiated in new plays.

Primary Teaching Areas: Play Analysis, Modernist Stage, Performance Theory. Graduate Seminars in Border Theatre, Intercultural Theatre, Post-Colonial Theory, Research Tools. Graduate Supervision.

Dr. Jean O'HARA
Assistant Professor
Email: jeohara@ualberta.ca

A theatre director with research and practice areas in multicultural theatre, devised theatre, social justice theatre, gender performance, Two-Spirit/Indigenous theatre and queer theatre/performance.

Primary Teaching Areas: directing, acting, performer creator theatre, physical theatre, performance studies, critical theory of the intersection of race, gender, sexuality (dis)abilities, and class in performance and theatre literature.

Jon PRICE
Associate Professor
Email: rjprice@ualberta.ca

Research centred in new approaches to and furthering the application of engineering to set construction. Particular interest in stage mechanics and new automation techniques for theatre production. Currently investigating sustainable production techniques for the theatre.

Primary Teaching Areas: Technical Theatre, Stagecraft, Production Crew.

John RAYMOND
Professor, BFA Production Coordinator
Email: john.raymond@ualberta.ca

Research is situated in the exploration and development of the stage manager's role in a theatrical production. Formulating tools for extending the communication between the director, the actor and the stage manager within the context of a show rehearsal and performance.

Primary Teaching Areas: Stage Management, Production Management.

Jan SELMAN
Professor
Email: jan.selman@ualberta.ca

Directs contemporary and original theatrical work. Also a dramaturge and director of new theatre and performance, working with playwrights and theatre teams. Specializes in participatory and community-based theatre, as a facilitator and director, and publishes based on this long standing practice.

Primary Teaching Areas: Directing, Performer-Created Theatre, BFA Acting. Graduate Seminars in Directing, Popular and Community-Based Theatre. Graduate Supervision.

Robert SHANNON
Associate Professor
Email: rps@ualberta.ca

Research is dedicated to the philosophy of total production design. Practice encompasses intuitive, observational and conceptual drawing as the core of design development. Creative Activity integrates contemporary and historical visual culture into dynamic production designs.

Primary Teaching: MFA and BFA Theatre Design, Historic Dress and Décor, Costume Design and Construction, Technical Drawing for Theatre Design.

Lin SNELLING
Professor; MFA Theatre Practice Program Coordinator; Director of Graduate Programs
Email: snelling@ualberta.ca
Web site: rewritingdistance.com
Vimeo channel: vimeo.com/channels/1463320

Research is the honing of musical, experiential, intuitive, technical, energetic and anatomical intelligence the body offers through dancing. By listening to the practical and paradoxical intelligence of the body, the dancer becomes scholar as the body's intelligence and intuition is a vibrant and sensual library. Making dance, dancing and discussing dance creates an open field for cross-pollination in art.

Primary Teaching Areas: BFA Movement for Actors. Graduate Supervision.

Guido TONDINO
Professor; Theatrical Design Program Coordinator
Email: gtondino@ualberta.ca

Defines theatrical spaces as an extension of the inner meanings of text (and recently dance) in contrast to a practice which sets out to define theatrical space as a reflection of a play's givens and a play's narrative necessities. The setting of a play becomes a metaphor for the play itself. The architecture of the space is driven by the play's themes.

Primary Teaching Areas: BFA and MFA Theatre Design, Studio Techniques for Theatre Design, 3D CAD for the Theatre. Graduate Supervision.

April VICZKO
Professor; Department Chair
Email: aviczko@ualberta.ca

A performance designer with 25 years of professional theatre experience, accomplished in 4 disciplines: set, costumes, lighting, and projection design. April is committed to investigation, collaboration, and creating a theatre community that embraces difference, celebrates all abilities, and looks for ways to create sustainable solutions to a world full of challenges.

Primary Teaching Area: Theatre Design

Kathleen WEISS
Professor; BFA Acting Coordinator
Email: kathleen.weiss@ualberta.ca

Develops innovative performance techniques that reveal character through extended imagery. Explores a performance language that emphasizes the physical playing of the actor moving in space, in varied kinds of audience relationship.

Primary Teaching Areas: Directing, BFA acting, Performer-Created Theatre. Graduate Seminars in Directing, New Play Dramaturgy, Emergence of the Director. Graduate Supervision.

Kenneth T. WILLIAMS
Associate Professor; Director of Undergraduate Programs; BA Program Coordinator
Email: kenneth.williams@ualberta.ca

Playwright and dramaturge, primarily focused on new play development.

Primary Teaching Areas: Playwriting, Theatre Practice, Indigenous Theatre History.

Academic Staff

Larry CLARK
Technical Director, Timms Centre for the Arts; Faculty Service Officer
Email: larry.clark@ualberta.ca

After touring and performing with every avenue of live performance Larry is passionate about collaboration and adept at assessing the feasibility of designs. He promotes the position that technical production is part of theatre creation and is not an "off the shelf" product.

Research in the development of automated technology for the stage with emphasis on innovation in rigging design and integration of current and proven safe techniques in lighting, video, sound and stage mechanics in live performance. He also devotes time and energy into developing and adapting sustainable processes for theatre production.

Dissolving the rift between performers, designers and technicians for the advancement of the final production is the mission and safe, repeatable events are the mandate.

Primary Teaching Areas: Production Crew, Technical Production. Graduate Supervision.

Jeff OSTERLIN
Lighting Supervisor; Faculty Service Officer
Email: jeffo@ualberta.ca

Research focuses on light, theatre lighting, colour mixing, projection systems, projection mapping and the integration of sound or light using multi-parameter triggers.

Primary teaching areas: technical lighting, technical theatre, computer media, best practices in theatre. Supervision of technical students in productions, advising design students on the technical uses of lighting equipment.

Matthew SKOPYK
Sound Supervisor; Head of Audio & Sound Design; Faculty Service Officer
Email: mskopyk@ualberta.ca

Matthew Skopyk is an Edmonton based Sound Designer and Composer.

Research areas: Original music composition for theatre, sound design for theatre, elasticity of musical as a parameter, sound reinforcement, psychoacoustic effects on audiences, object orientated programming for technical control of audio, video and lighting components.

Teaching areas: Sound system engineering & design, sound foley and digital manipulation, basic music composition for theatre, supervision & design advising of technical students in sound practicums.