Alumni

Advisory Board – Producing Artistic Director at People’s Light & Theatre, PA

Zak has over 30 years of experience producing theatre and developing new plays and musicals. He joined People’s Light as Associate Artistic Director in 2011, became Producing Director in 2013, and was promoted to Producing Artistic Director in 2022. Prior to People’s Light, Zak was Associate to Broadway producer Margo Lion, and the Founding Executive Director of Artistic Programming with Epic Theatre Ensemble, a multi-award winning Off-Broadway theatre company. Highlights include the World and U.S. Premieres of Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole by Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor, Mud Row by Dominique Morisseau, Project Dawn by Karen Hartman, Barcelona by Bess Wohl, No Child… by Nilaja Sun, Palace of The End by Judith Thompson, and Hannah and Martin by Kate Fodor, as well as the highly acclaimed New York Premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play and multiple Barrymore Award winning revival of Paul Osborne’s Morning’s At Seven. Zak is a multifaceted artist—writer, composer, director, and dramaturg, His plays include The Harassment of Iris Malloy, Beauty on the Vine, and A Breath Short of Breathing. He was the adaptor/composer for a new music-filled version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol that People’s Light produced in 2021 and 2023, as well as the co-author/composer of Such Things As Vampires, which received a Barrymore Award for original music. A former soap writer for NBC’s Days of Our Lives, Zak also wrote two episodes of People’s Light’s Covid-era digital series America 2am. Zak has published articles on Howlround.com and spoken at numerous conferences about the New Play Frontiers Residency & Commission Program at People’s Light as well as other subjects.

Advisory Board – three-time TONY Nominated Actress and native Detroiter

Keenan-Bolger is a three-time TONY Award-nominated actress and an alumna of the Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit and the Detroit School of Arts High School (formerly the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts). She is a graduate of the University of Michigan’s musical theatre performance program. Just a few of Celia’s Broadway credits include The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Les Miserables, Peter and the Starcatcher, and The Glass Menagerie. Keenan-Bolger recently starred in the Lincoln Center production of Sarah Ruhl’s The Oldest Boy at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.

Advisory Board – Associate Artistic Director at Second Stage Theatre, NYC

Christopher Burney serves as both the Associate Artistic Director of NewYork’s Second Stage Theatre and Curator of 2ST Uptown. He has worked with Second Stage since 1997. At Second Stage, he has shepherded productions of Bachelorette, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Trust, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Next to Normal, Becky Shaw, and Let Me Down Easy (conceived, written and performed by Anna Deavere Smith). While at Second Stage he has worked with such writers as Douglas Carter Beane, Paul Weitz, Craig Lucas, Lanford Wilson, William Finn, Stephen Sondheim, Sam Shepard, David Ives, Kenneth Lonergan, Albert Innuarto, Cheryl West, Martin Sherman, Wallace Shawn, Jason Miller, Wendy Kesselman, August Wilson, William Finn, Michael John LaChiusa and Stephen Sondheim. He has worked with many leading directors such as Trip Cullman, Peter Dubois, Mark Brokaw, Scott Ellis, Michael Greif, Gary Hines, James Lapine, Marion McClinton, and Kathleen Marshall. As curator for 2ST Uptown he has developed numerous emerging writers and directors including Rajiv Joseph, Marisa Wegrzyn, Roberto Aguirre Sacasa, Brooke Berman, Adam Bock, Carly Mensch, Trip Cullman and Joe Calarco, among others.

Christopher worked from 1991-1997 at The Lincoln Center Theater as the Assistant to the Director of Musical Theatre. He has consulted for organizations including the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative, the Kesselring Prize, the KurtWeill Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Jerome Fellowship. He teaches at Columbia University in the School of the Arts and has lectured at Barnard College, The Einhorn School for the Performing Arts at Primary Stages, The Juilliard School, Bard College, The Boston School of Music, Marymount Manhattan College and the New England Theatre Conference. Christopher is a graduate of Brandeis University, B.A., and Columbia University, M.F.A.

Advisory Board – TONY Nominated Actress

Kathleen Chalfant is an award-winning stage, film, and television actress recognized for both her high level of artistry and her deep involvement with social and cultural issues. Chalfant earned a TONY nomination for her role in the New York premiere of Angels in America, and won Drama Desk, OBIE, Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics Circle awards for starring in the original Broadway production of Wit.

Chalfant’s other New York stage credits include the New York premiere of Racing Demon, M. Butterfly, Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell, Talking Heads (for which she won a second OBIE Award), Great Expectations, Guantanamo, and Henry V at the New York Shakespeare Festival. Her film work includes Tony Gilroy’s Duplicity, Whit Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco and Bill Condon’s Kinsey. Her most recent television work includes House of Cards and The Affair.

In addition to her Drama Desk, OBIE, and Lucile Lortel honors, Chalfant has received the Drama League and Sidney Kingsley Awards for her body of work, as well as a 1996 OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance. A founding member of the Women’s Project, Chalfant is a board member of The Vineyard Theatre and Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights AIDS, and an advisory board member of the NewYork Foundation for the Arts. Chalfant has served as Artist in Residence at the Weill College of Medicine of Cornell University (2005 — 2006) and a Beineke Fellow at the Yale School of Drama (spring 2006, fall 2008, fall 2010). She was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Cooper Union in June 2010.

Advisory Board

Named a 2005 MacArthur Fellow, President Obama’s first appointment to the National Council on the Arts and Governor Snyder’s appointment to the Michigan Council for Arts & Cultural Affairs, Aaron P. Dworkin served as dean of the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD), which is ranked among the top performing arts schools in the nation. He is currently a tenured full professor of arts leadership and entrepreneurship at SMTD as well as serving as a Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. In addition, Aaron is a successful social entrepreneur having founded The GinBo Cup which focuses on diversity in eSports as well as The Sphinx Organization, the leading arts organization with the mission of transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts. He is the producer and host of AaronAsk, a weekly online mentoring show on creativity and leadership. As a successful writer, Aaron has authored The Entrepreneurial Artist: Lessons from Highly Successful Creatives published by Rowman & Littlefield, a science-fiction novel, Ethos: Rise of Malcolm published by MorganJames, as well as his memoir titled Uncommon Rhythm: A Black, White, Jewish, Jehovah’s Witness, Irish Catholic Adoptee’s Journey to Leadership released through Aquarius Press, a poetry collection, They Said I Wasn’t Really Black, and a children’s book The 1st Adventure of Chilli Pepperz. A lifelong musician, Aaron is a spoken-word performing artist represented by Jensen Artists with a current national tour of his American Rhapsody with a national consortium of orchestras. He has collaborated with a breadth of artists including Yo-Yo Ma, Damien Sneed, Anna Deveare Smith, Damian Woetzel, Lil Buck and others. His visual digital art project, Fractured History, has been exhibited at multiple galleries and museums to rave reviews. He recorded and produced two CDs, entitled Ebony Rhythm and Bar-Talk, in addition to writing, producing, and directing the independent film Deliberation.

Advisory Board

Nicole Eisenberg is a respected philanthropic leader in Detroit and nationally. Nicole serves on the Board of Directors at the Detroit Institute of Arts as Chairman of the Development Committee and on the Collections Committee. She is a trustee on the board of the College for Creative Studies and also serves on its Fashion Accessories Board. Nicole’s other board service includes Friends of the Arts at Detroit Country Day School and the National Board of GLAAD. Nicole has been honored for her work in various local and national publications, most notably being named “Detroiter of the Year” by Hour Magazine in their Philanthropy Issue. Nicole and her husband Stephen have deep ties to Detroit and the surrounding counties and have supported the University of Michigan Health System for many years with a focus on Mott and the Cardiovascular Center.

Advisory Board – General Manager at The Fisher Theatre, MI

James currently works as the General Manager at The Fisher Theatre. Before moving to the Fisher he served as Tipping Point Theatre’s Producing Artistic Director for 13 years. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Theatre from Alma College and his Master of Fine Arts in Acting from Wayne State University. He completed The Purple Rose Theatre Apprentice Program, as well as a two-year internship with Alma College, where he helped teach classes. James is a past winner of the Heck Rabi Playwriting Competition for The Kings of Unionville, which was later performed at Tipping Point as its first world premiere play. James is a Wilde Award Winner for his performance of Every Brilliant Thing. James has been a Michigan Actor and Director with The Purple Rose Theatre, Williamston Theatre, The Michigan Shakespeare Festival, Boarshead Theatre, Spotlight Theatre, Croswell Opera House, and the Summer Studio Theatre in Illinois. He has also been a member of The Detroit Public Theatre’s Advisory Board since its inception in 2015. James has served as an adjunct professor at Eastern Michigan University, and a Part Time Faculty member at Wayne State University in the Department of Theatre and Dance. James is a proud father of 3 and loving partner of 20+ years to his wonderful wife Hallie. James is committed to a lifelong career of supporting and advocating for the wellbeing of artists and the art of theatre.

Advisory Board – Professor of Theatre & Drama, the Residential College, the Penny Stamps School of Art & Design, and English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan

Ashley Lucas is Professor of Theatre & Drama, the Residential College, the Penny Stamps School of Art & Design, and English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan (UM). For six years, she also served as Director of the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP) and is currently one of the faculty leads on a large-scale humanities archival project called Documenting Criminalization and Confinement. She holds a B.A. in Theater Studies and English from Yale University and a joint Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies and Theatre and Drama from the University of California, San Diego. She is a fellow of the Ford Foundation, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Faculty Engaged Scholars Program, UNC’s Institute for Arts and Humanities, and UM’s Institute for the Humanities. Her research and teaching interests include U.S. Latina/o theatre, prison theatre, theatre for social change, and related topics in acting, playwriting, and comparative ethnic studies. Lucas is also the author of an ethnographic play about the families of prisoners entitled Doin’ Time: Through the Visiting Glass, which she has performed as a one-woman show throughout the U.S. and in Ireland, Brazil, and Canada. Her forthcoming book Prison Theatre and the Global Crisis of Incarceration (Bloomsbury, Sept. 2020) examines the ways in which incarcerated people use theatre to counteract the dehumanizing forces of the prison. Her scholarly publications include articles in the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, the Journal for the Study of Radicalism, Latin American Theater Review, American Music, and Revista de Literatura Contemporania de México. Together with sociologist Jodie Lawston, Lucas guest edited a special issue of the National Women’s Studies Association Journal on the topic of “Women and Criminal Justice: Policing, Prosecution, and Incarceration” (Summer 2008). Lucas and Lawston also collaborated on an edited volume entitled Razor Wire Women: Prisoners, Activists, Scholars, and Artists (SUNY Press 2011) and write a blog by the same title: http://razorwirewomen.wordpress.com. Lucas also runs the PCAP Brazil Exchange—an exchange program with the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro and the Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina—taking students to Rio and Florianópolis each summer to do theatre work inside prisons, hospitals, and favelas.

Advisory Board

Maureen S. Martin is a fundraising professional with experience in institutional giving and individual giving across several decades. She served multiple roles at the University of Michigan – primarily focusing on foundation relations but serving twice in interim roles in corporate relations. She offered counsel and support to leadership, faculty and fundraisers across the University in their relationships with professional foundations and smaller, more specialized, or regional foundations. Ms. Martin also worked closely with leadership in strategic initiatives such as sustainability and engaged learning, working with foundations as well as individual donors. Across 22 years at UM, the Foundation Relations teams recruited and stewarded some $2 billion in awards for the work of faculty.

An alumna of Michigan twice, Ms. Martin received her B.A. in women’s studies and journalism, and an M.B.A. in corporate strategy and marketing. She has been a professional fundraiser since 1988, including a beginning in theater at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and then Ensemble Studio Theatre on New York’s west side; and increasingly responsible roles for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, The Nature Conservancy in Michigan, and The Henry Ford, prior to joining UM in 2001. Ms. Martin is a board member with Waterfront Alliance and serves as board member with the Michigan Humanities Council, and has volunteered on several boards and committees, including environmental, women’s and arts organizations in southeastern Michigan and beyond.

Advisory Board – Founding Director of Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit

Marsha was the art critic at The Detroit Free Press from 1974-1995. From 1995 she was the Architectural Historian at Cranbrook Educational Community in Bloomfield Hills. She was the Founding Director and Board President of MOCAD (Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit) from 2006.

Advisory Board – Founding Director of Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit

Erik came to the United States in 1996 to continue his musical education. A classical saxophonist by trade, Rönmark has extensive performing experience in both chamber music and orchestral settings. He has performed in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra on several occasions, as a guest in Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings, and regularly appears in the contemporary group New Music Detroit, of which he is also co-founder and Executive Director. Recently, Rönmark was featured with the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, culminating a national tour with the Pacifica String Quartet. A native of Sweden, Rönmark is a first-prize winner of both the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the Coleman Chamber Music Competition. He is also the recipient of the American-Scandinavian Foundation’s award for establishing valuable relationships between Sweden and America. Using his diverse talents and skills within the music field, he has collaborated and assisted artists such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Terry Riley, Matthew Barney, Shara Worden, and Branford Marsalis, and has commissioned and premiered over 30 new works for saxophone. Rönmark has been a part of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra administration since 2005. In his new role as General Manager, Rönmark combines his administrative experience with degrees in fine arts and music performance from Northern State University, SD and Bowling Green State University, OH, as well as a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan. He lives in Birmingham, MI with his wife Adrienne Rönmark, violinist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and their three children.

Advisory Board – Director of Off-Site Programs, Lark New Play Development Center, NYC

Lisa Rothe was recently nominated for SDC’s Joe A. Callaway Award for Direction for Hold These Truths by Jeanne Sakata.The play was also nominated for a Drama Desk award for Best Solo Performance by actor Joel de la Fuente (and produced by Epic Theatre Ensemble in NYC). The play has had productions at the Honolulu Theatre for Youth, the SoloNova Festival in NYC, Playmakers Repertory Theatre in NC and ACT in Seattle. Favorite recent work is Dear Elizabeth by Sarah Ruhl with People’s Light & Theatre Company, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Chautauqua Theater Company and Penelope by Ellen McLaughlin & Sarah Kirkland Snider with Playmakers Repertory Theatre. Along with composer Kim Sherman and librettist Margaret Vandenburg, Lisa has been developing a new opera about Ada Byron (Ada) by which was presented last spring as a part of the Center for Contemporary Opera’s Development Series.

Lisa has workshopped, developed and directed over one hundred new plays and musicals, working with many award- winning writers. For the last four years, she has also been the Director of Offsite Programs and Partnerships at the Lark Play Development Center in NYC, where she deals with providing expanded opportunities for playwrights, aimed at advancing new work to production nationally and globally. Lisa has also taught and directed at many theatre programs around the country including NYU’s Graduate Acting Program,Yale School of Drama,The Juilliard School, Chautauqua Conservatory, and the Einhorn School of Performing Arts (ESPA) at Primary Stages. She is a graduate of NYU’s Graduate Acting Program and Director’s Lab, as well as a Drama League alum, Fox Fellow, member of the Women’s Project Director’s Lab and is currently serving on the boards of the League of Professional Theatre Women as the VP of Membership. One of her favorite organizations is Dr.Jane Aronson’s World Wide Orphan Foundation (WWO), where she has spent time in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia creating theatre with children and teens and for local communities.

Advisory Board – Executive Director, Epic Theatre Ensemble, NYC

Ron Russell is an accomplished Off-Broadway director and the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the nationally recognized education leader Epic Theatre Ensemble. While working with leaders from England’s Royal Shakespeare Company, Brazil’s Theatre of the Oppressed, and political action leaders across the U.S., Ron has amassed an arsenal of tools for participant empowerment, communication, and improving personal practice. His singular training style is a result of 20 years experience conducting over 5,000 workshops with over 40,000 students, teachers, conference participants, and industry professionals. Ron’s work is always individualized and responsive to the group’s goals and dynamics, and has been recognized by the highest awards in his field, from the OBIE Awards to civic citations from Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg.

Advisory Board – Co-founder, The MITTEN Lab

Rachel Sussman is a Tony Award-nominated producer committed to cultivating dynamic, inclusive theatrical work through meaningful collaboration. She is a co-founder of The MITTEN Lab, an emerging theatre artist residency program in her native state of Michigan, as well as The Business of Broadway, a new educational venture designed to democratize commercial producing knowledge. She currently works as a Producer with Plate Spinner Productions in addition to working as an independent producer. Broadway and national tour: co-producer on Heidi Schreck’s Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award-nominated play, What the Constitution Means to Me. Other producing credits include: the Obie Award-winning production of The Woodsman (New World Stages/ 59E59), Saturday Night Seder (Story Course), The Peculiar Patriot (Audible Theater), and Eh Dah? Questions for My Father (Next Door at NYTW). In development: Suffragist by Shaina Taub, Devotion by Mark Sonnenblick. A past Women’s Project Lab Time Warner Foundation Fellow, Rachel was the recipient of the 2019 Geraldine Stutz T. Fellowship in Creative Producing, founded by Hal Prince in conjunction with Columbia University. She is a graduate of the Commercial Theater Institute and a University Honors Scholar alumna of NYU Tisch. She is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor in Theatre at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. www.rachel-sussman.com

Advisory Board

Dr. Heather Ann Thompson is a historian at the University of Michigan, and is the Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (Pantheon Books, 2016). Blood in the Water won the Ridenhour Prize, the J. Willard Hurst Prize, the Public Information Award from the New York Bar Association, the Law and Literature Prize from the New York County Bar Association, the Media for a Just Society Award from the National Council for Crime and Delinquency, and the book also received a rarely-given Honorable Mention for the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association.

Blood in the Water was also long listed for the Cundill Prize in History, and was a finalist for the National Book Award as well as the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Upon its release Blood in the Water was prominently reviewed and profiled in the New York Times in four different sections, and Thompson herself was profiled in the highly-coveted “Talk” section in the New York Times Magazine. Blood in the Water ultimately landed on fourteen “Best of 2016” lists including the New York Times Most Notable Books of 2016 list, and ones published by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Newsweek, Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, and others.