Last revised February 12, 2004

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"I thank my lucky stars for such an amazingly well-rounded education I got and officially I can say that I apply it to my work EVERY SINGLE DAY - building sets, costuming understudies, making props, networking, recalling some obscure reference to theatrical antiquity, or even how to efficiently throw an opening night party (didn't think they taught that at school did you?)" -- Ben Calvert '02

• Erin Liston '03 is working at Florida Repertory Theatre. Rebecca Anderson '03 is at Baltimore Stage in Maryland. Dominic Cattero '03 is at Quincy Community Theatre, where he's taken a position as Associate Director of Theatre and head of Education.

• Alison Vesely '79 of Clarendon Hills, IL, launched her own theatre company, First Folio Shakespeare Festival, in Chicago's western suburbs. They produced Vesely's adaptation of Antigone and Twelfth Night, which was Jeff Recommended. Audiences range between 5,000 and 6,000 per summer season, from all over the country. They also produce 4-5 educational touring productions each fall. A large building on the Peabody Estate (where they produce their shows) is currently being renovated by the DuPage County Forest Preserve into a Performing Arts Center, which will be their permanent year-round home. During the summer of 2003 they produced The Comedy of Errors. Projected productions for Summer, 2004 are Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Their web address is www.firstfolio.org. 

• Lisa Marie Gigante D'Amico '87 recently got the chance to reprise one of her favorite roles in the Theatre Conspiracy production of Sylvia, a comedy about a stray dog (played by D’Amico) that changes the dynamics of a marriage. The production ran for two weeks in August at the Foulds Theatre in Fort Myers, Fla. Half of all of the ticket sales for Sylvia were donated to the Animal Refuge Center. D’Amico has performed many times with the Theatre Conspiracy, as well as other Fort Myers area troupes, and occasionally sings professionally.

 

• Gretchen Schaefer '01 is currently working in Phoenix, AZ as Associate Production Manager for a professional children’s theatre : Childsplay, Inc (www.childsplayaz.org). She spends a lot of time working on school van tours. She writes, "The largest lesson I’ve learned about TYA [Theatre for Young Audiences] is that children’s theatre is not necessarily all 'fake fur and goofy messages.' The work I do here is very serious; the props are just a bit larger, costumes a bit brighter and sets a bit funkier. That AND working in TYA means you can only entertain when there are children available to be entertained – I’m as close to a 9 to 5 job as I’ll ever be!" 

• Richard Jenkins '69 of Cumberland, Rhode Island has over 40 screen credits including Hannah and Her Sisters, Flirting With Disaster, There's Something about Mary, and The Mod Squad. He also starred in HBO's series, Six Feet Under.

• Larry Neumann Jr. '81 of Chicago, was featured August 2002 in Performink, Chicago's bi-weekly entertainment trade paper. The article focused on Neumann's "omnipresent" career on the Chicago stage, "with a talent for humanizing a range of off-kilter characters." In addition to his theatre work, Neumann has appeared in numerous film and TV productions.

• Robert G. Smith '79 was the presenter of the Scenic and Lighting Design Awards at the Joseph Jefferson Citations 25th anniversary awards ceremony in the summer of 2003. He was given this honor because he is one of only two people to have received seven Jeffs over the years. This fall he designed A Lesson Before Dying and Orange Flower Water for Chicago's Tony Award winning Steppenwolf Theatre Company. He is currently an ensemble member of four Chicago theater companies: Famous Door Theatre, Stage Left Theatre, A Red Orchid Theatre and Plasticene. His designs have been seen on the stages of most of Chicago's major theaters as well as in New York (Off Broadway), Los Angeles, Edinburgh, Dublin, London (West End), Singapore, Jerusalem and across the nation on the A&E Cable network. In addition to the Jeffs, his designs have won three After Dark Awards and have been nominated for an Emmy Award. 

• James Sutorius '67 of Sherman Oaks, CA, was cast to star in the world premiere of a play by Arthur Laurents, who penned The Way We Were and Gypsy. Titled 2 Lives, the play ran through April 12, 2003 at Boston's Lyric Stage Company, and had a September run at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in NYC.

• Sheila Stasack '73 of Milton, Mass., is a working actress, director, and acting teacher. She was in Maine this fall performing at the Public Theater of Leaviston/Auburn in a production of Michael Hollinger’s satiric comedy Red Herring, and then planned to direct Timberlake Wertenbaker’s historical drama Our Country’s Good for the University of Scranton in Scranton, Pa. She also continues to teach private acting classes at the Boston Playwrights Theatre. 

• Cynthia Gendrich '84 of Winston-Salem, NC, has co-edited and updated Stephen Archer’s well-known theatre appreciation text, Theatre, Its Art and Craft, now in its fifth edition. Gendrich, who is an assistant professor of theatre at Wake Forest University, has also published several articles on interdisciplinary projects between theatre and sociology, and a few on theatre in Madrid, Spain. She also recently directed The Marriage of Bette and Boo, and the musical Into the Woods.

• Ben Calvert '02 of Chicago, IL, is the Managing Director at Live Bait Theatre. His duties include literary management, dramaturgy, assistant directing, props, graphic design, marketing, press releases, website maintenance, benefit planning, book-keeping, payroll and more. His most recent production position was as dramaturg for Blind Tasting, a great summer play about Italian wine, love, and discovery. Visit www.livebaittheatre.org for more information. 

• Ben Stephenson '00 of Bay St. Louis, MS, is working for NETworks Productions as the technical director of the national tour of Kiss Me Kate.

• Nic Dimond '93 of Chicago returned to Chicago's Strawdog Theatre Company in the fall of 2002 for their 15th-season opener: a bold, new interpretation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. He was joined by Carm Grisolia '91 as Octavius and Shannon Hoag '00 as Portia. Bel Calvert '02 functioned as the play's dramaturg. Dimond's next project was directing Lonnie Carter's Ring-o-Levio at Victory Gardens in the spring of 2003.

• Mary Heaton Carrick '94 lives in Omaha, NE where she is the Associate Director of Development for the Omaha Symphony. She is active in the theatre community both as a singer and an actress and serves on the Board of Directors of the Theatre Arts Guild. Mary has co-founded her own production company, Little Apple Productions, which recently produced Menotti's one-hour opera The Medium at The Shelterbelt Theatre, a small 50 seat venue in midtown Omaha. She is the recipient of an award for Outstanding Featured Actress from the Theatre Arts Guild in 2003 for her role as Joan Brennan in The Marriage of Bette and Boo. Mary reports that the Omaha theatre community is thriving with over 50 production companies, some large and some small, and over 250 productions launched in 2003 alone. It's a great place to be - one of the Midwest's best kept secrets. 

• Harlan Hogan '68 of Chicago, IL, is a very successful voice-over actor. You may have heard his voice in radio and TV commercials for companies such as Kraft, Cadillac, Ameritech, McDonald's, and Budweiser. His voice is also heard on educational films, movie trailers, and recorded books.

• D. William Duell '49 of NYC, appeared as a retired scientist, Klinglehoff, in a production of Steve Martin's The Underpants (March to May 2002), which garnered great reviews and sold out for its entire run. Duell was also busy with television work, including a promo for the Comedy Central cable channel and a role in an episode of the NBC series Ed that ran in October. He also filmed a scene with actor Matthew McConaughey for the film How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. To start out 2003, Duell returned to the stage to take on the role of the Caretaker in Comedians, an English play about a school for comedians. The show had a limited run through February at the Beckett Theatre.

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School of Theatre Arts
Illinois Wesleyan University
P.O. Box 2900, Bloomington, IL 61702-2900
Telephone: 309.556.3944
Fax: 309.556.3411
Theatre Box Office: 309.556.3232
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