Drama 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.
David Barnet
Professor; BA Drama Academic Advisor (Winter 2013 term)
Email: david.barnet@ualberta.ca
Telephone: (780) 492.2472
Research considers the realization of creative aging through theatre. His specialization is in the development of senior's theatre. He also teaches Shakespeare as a base for theatre practice by liberal arts students.
Primary Teaching Areas: Performer-Created Theatre, Collective Creation, Scene Study (Shakespeare), Intergenerational Theatre.
Larry Clark
Technical Director
Email: larry.clark@ualberta.ca
Telephone: (780) 492.2486
Attuned to the feasibility of designs and risk management. Research in the development of systems for the integration of automated technology for the stage with emphasis on innovation in rigging design and integration of current and proven techniques in lighting, video, sound and stage mechanics in live performances.
Primary Teaching Areas: Production Crew, Technical Production. Graduate Supervision.
Beau Coleman - on sabbatical Fall 2012 and Winter 2013 terms
Associate Professor
Email: beau.coleman@ualberta.ca
Telephone: (780) 492.1086
Research encompasses the mediums of theatre, live art, digital media, installation and site-specific performance. Her artistic practice is one of continual movement between the various art forms, seeking ways in which to dissolve the borders between. There exists in all her works a sense of performance and presence, whether or not a performer is actually present. Themes of isolation, suspension, identity, memory and intimacy are interrogated through the use of distillation, rhythm, time and space.
Primary Teaching Areas: MFA Directing, BFA and BA Acting, Performer-Created Theatre. Graduate Seminars in Intercultural Theatre, Performance Studies. Graduate Supervision.
Dr. Piet Defraeye
Professor; BA Honors, MA and PhD Programs Coordinator
Email: defraeye@ualberta.ca
Telephone: 780-492-1097
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.
Jane Heather - on sabbatical Fall 2012 and Winter 2013 terms
Associate Professor
Email: jheather@ualberta.ca
Telephone: (780) 492.8721
Research examines the process and practice of theatre as a path to individual community and social change with a particular focus on global methodologies. Explores the key creative partnership between director and playwright. Work as a playwright features community-based participatory research and participatory theatre.
Primary Teaching Areas: BA, Community-Based Theatre, Directing, Scene Study. Graduate Supervision.
Michael Kennard
Associate Professor; BA Drama Program Coordinator
Email: kennard@ualberta.ca
Telephone: (780) 492.8717
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 Ley
Professor; MFA Theatre Voice Pedagogy Program Coordinator (Winter 2013 term)
Email: dley@ualberta.ca
Telephone: (780) 492.8720
Looks at ways to work with breath connecting it to impulse and the release of emotion. Develops ideas around vocal variation and its relationship to meaning. 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.
Lee Livingstone
Professor; BFA and MFA Theatre Design Programs Coordinator
Email: lee.livingstone@ualberta.ca
Telephone: (780) 492.8726
Emphasis on innovation in lighting design and integration of video within theatrical performance.
Primary Teaching Areas: Theatre Design, Lighting Design, Technical Drawing in BFA and MFA Theatre Design. Graduate Supervision.
Kim McCaw
Professor; Director of the Canadian Centre for Theatre Creation; New Play Festival Faculty Advisor
Email: kim.mccaw@ualberta.ca
Telephone: (780) 492.1095
Research is about generating, developing and producing new works of theatre with a primary focus on text-based, character driven material.
Primary Teaching Areas: Directing, BFA Acting. Graduate Seminars in Directing, New Play Dramaturgy. Graduate Supervision.
Betty Moulton
Professor; MFA Theatre Voice Pedagogy Program Coordinator (Fall 2012 term)
Email: betty.moulton@ualberta.ca
Telephone: (780) 492.8728
Committed to the creation of new knowledge arising from verbal and vocal expression. Looks into how body/voice awareness and dramatic technique affect communication and vocal development for performers.
Primary Teaching Areas: BFA Voice, Speech, Text, Dialects, Character Voice, Commercial Broadcast Voice, MFA Voice Pedagogy. Graduate Supervision.
Dr. Donia Mounsef
Associate Professor
Email: mounsef@ualberta.ca
Telephone: (780) 492.8711
Web site: https://sites.google.com/a/ualberta.ca/donia-mounsef/
Research focuses on modern and contemporary French and Francophone theatre, politics, gender and performance, theories of the body, intermediality and adaption theory.
Primary Teaching Areas (Cross Appointment with Campus Saint Jean): Introduction to Dramatic Arts, Play Analysis. Graduate Seminars in Contemporary French and Francophone Theatre, Gender, Desire and the Modern Stage, Theatre of War, Intermediality. Graduate Supervision.
Dr. Stefano Muneroni
Assistant Professor; MA Drama Program Coordinator
Email: Stefano.muneroni@ualberta.ca
Telephone: (780) 492.8734
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.
Sandra Nicholls
Associate Professor; BFA Acting Coordinator
Email: sandra.nicholls@ualberta.ca
Research is dedicated to the development of new methodologies for actor training; specifically applied to new work and reinvented classics. Particular emphasis on kinesthetic connectivity, furthering the actors' ability to connect with their own psychophysical beings and the spectators.
Primary Teaching Areas: BFA Acting, Performer-Created Theatre, Directing. Graduate Seminars in Directing. Graduate Supervision.
Jon Price - on sabbatical Fall 2012 and Winter 2013 terms
Associate Professor; ABBEDAM Faculty Advisor
Email: rjprice@ualberta.ca
Telephone: (780) 492.8718
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
Associate Professor; BFA Technical Theatre Production and Stage Management Programs 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 Crew.
Jan Selman
Professor; MFA Directing Program Coordinator
Email: jan.selman@ualberta.ca
Telephone: (780) 492.8799
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, Community-Based Theatre. Graduate Supervision.
Robert Shannon
Associate Professor; Graduate Programs Coordinator
Email: rps@ualberta.ca
Telephone: (780) 492.8725
Research is dedicated to the concept of total production design. Integrates architecture, silhouette, textural surface and projections to support performance.
Primary Teaching Areas: BFA and MFA Theatre Design, Dress and Decor, Costume Techniques. Graduate Supervision.
Lin Snelling
Assistant Professor; MFA Theatre Practice Program Coordinator
Email: snelling@ualberta.ca
Telephone: (780) 492.1094
Web site: http://rewritingdistance.com/
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
Contact via Lee Livingstone, BFA and MFA Theatre Design Program Coordinator
Email: lee.livingstone@ualberta.ca / Telephone: (780) 492.8726
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.
Kathleen Weiss
Associate Professor; Chair of the Department of Drama
Email: kathleen.weiss@ualberta.ca
Telephone: Please call Chair’s Executive Assistant, Ruth Vander Woude (780) 492.2274
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.
Gerry van Hezewyk
Production Manager
Email: gerry.vanhezewyk@ualberta.ca
Telephone: 780.492.1088
Research includes: Foundations of project management – involving the exploration of the stages of development of a project and the standards, tools and control systems used to manage it. Competency-based training models – the identification of skills, their objectives, standards of practice, and methods of assessment that deem us proficient in each craft of our industry. Performing arts venue architecture and engineering – including auditorium design, technical systems design, backstage infrastructure, and acoustics.
Primary Teaching Areas: Technical Theatre/Design practicum assignments, supervision of Independent projects.