About Us
| Meet our Staff |
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Philip C. Sneed Producing Artistic Director
Mr. Sneed joined The Colorado Shakespeare Festival in 2006 after serving for 12 years as artistic director of The Foothill Theatre Company/Sierra Shakespeare Festival, based in Nevada City, California, and also producing in Incline Village, Nevada as the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival. As a director, Sneed’s recent work includes Around the World in 80 Days and A Child’s Christmas in Wales for CSF, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Raisin in the Sun (starring Steve Harris of the ABC series “The Practice”) for the Sacramento Theatre Company, and over 20 productions for The Foothill Theatre Company. Philip’s professional acting credits include three seasons at CSF in the late 1970s (when he was a student at CU), as well as productions at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, Atlanta's Alliance Theatre Company, the Indiana Repertory Theatre and multiple seasons with the Tony Award-winning Oregon Shakespeare Festival; he also played the title role last summer in CSF's Macbeth, and appeared recently in Guys and Dolls with Hal Linden (TV's Barney Miller). Sneed initiated a cultural exchange program with the Maxim Gorky Theatre of Vladivostok, Russia, which has so far resulted in six projects, including a bilingual Hamlet in Russia (in which Sneed played the title role) and a new adaptation of Dracula, which he directed at the Gorky. Sneed currently serves as President of the Shakespeare Theatre Association of America. (6 seasons)
Lynn Nichols
In addition to his duties as General Manager and Casting Director, Lynn directed the the 2001 production ofAs You Like It and the 1996 production of Othello for CSF. He is a senior instructor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at CU, Boulder, where he has directed The Learned Ladies, Frankenstein, Mother Courage and Her Children, The Cripple of Innishman, A Midsummer Night's Dream (all female cast), The Curse of the Starving Class, Shakespeare's Women, The Illusion, Tartuffe, Dancing at Lughnasa, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and A Flea in Her Ear. He also directed for Actors Ensemble theatre company of Boulder, where his credits include Cloud 9, On the Verge, The Nerd, Return to the Forbidden Planet and, for the Boulder Chautauqua's 100th Anniversary, the musical Quilters. His Ph.D. dissertation is titled "The Evolution of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival." This is Lynn's nineteenth year with the Festival.
Ray Kemble
Ray, a native New Yorker, has been active in Colorado regional theatre since 1970, as a theatre administrator and as an actor. He served as Administrative Director of the Compass Theatre Company and performed in various theatres, to include Germinal Stage Denver, RiverTree Theatre, Aurora Fox Theatre, Arvada Center for the Arts and Theatre-Under-Glass. Ray became the CSF Business Manager in 1995 and has appeared on the Festival stage in the CSF '97 season as Agamemnon in Troilus and Cressida and as Lord Montague in Romeo and Juliet, in the CSF '98 season as the Duke of York in Richard II, in the '00 season in the title role in Julius Caesar, and most recently, as Adam in the '01 CSF production of As You Like It. As a playwright, Ray is the author of Libbie, a one-actor dramatization of the life of Elizabeth Bacon Custer; also, Frankenstein (an adaptation; directed at the University of Colorado at Boulder in '05 by CSF General Manager Lynn Nichols), and All That I Have Lost, a dramatic compilation of war poetry (to be presented in the CU '06 season, directed by CSF's Lynn Nichols).
Irene Weygandt
Irene is thrilled to be joining the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Prior to joining CSF, Irene was a member of the team at Nederlander Worldwide Entertainment as the Director of Operations at the Bethesda Theatre, an off-Broadway style theatre in Bethesda, Maryland. She also worked at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for four years where she was responsible for producing original plays and concerts in addition to special event planning and program management for VSA arts. Irene has worked for other reputable arts organizations including Florida Studio Theatre and Arena Stage. In 2006 Irene was named one of 20 emerging arts leaders in the U.S. by Americans for the Arts. Irene holds a B.A. in Theatre Arts from the University of Redlands in Redlands, California. She lives in Denver with her husband and two dogs.
Teresa Chamberland
Teresa is the newest member of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival team. She started January 2010 as the Director of Development. She has spent the last three years working in development at University of Colorado in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School. Prior to this, Teresa was the development director for the "I Have a Dream" Foundation of Boulder County. Teresa also has been a grants writer for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and a reporter for the Houston Chronicle. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Houston. She left Texas in 2003 to come to the Centennial State.
Mell McDonnell
Mell McDonnell began her career as a teacher of English at the Univeristy of Cincinnati and the University of New Orleans, where she taught drama, poetry and writing. She then worked for 15 years as a public relations/marketing writer and consultant in the financial industry. Mell fell in love with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in 1982—the year she moved from New Orleans to Colorado. A long-term Festival volunteer and twice president of the CSF Guild, she finds providing public relations and marketing skills to the Festival to be the ultimately fulfilling job.
Steven McDonald
Steven is production manager for the University of Colorado at Boulder's Department of Theatre and Dance where, as a member of the theatre design and technology faculty, he regularly designs and teaches sound, lighting and stage management. Mr. McDonald, who earned his M.F.A. from the University of California-Irvine, previously worked for CSF in marketing, stage management and as the audience services director and production manager.
Kerry Cripe Kerry holds an M.F.A. in Technical Theatre from Florida State University and a B.F.A. from the University ofEvansville, Indiana. He has been teaching technical theatre on the university level for nine years and is currently a technical director and senior instructor for the University of Colorado at Boulder. Some of Kerry's other professional credits include five seasons at the New Harmony Theatre in New Harmony, Indiana, and eight seasons at the Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, Utah.
Melinda J. Scott
Melinda has served as CSF's Education Outreach Director since September 2001, cultivating programs that use a comprehensive approach to engage learners and teachers in Shakespeare’s text and times. Recently she directed The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged for Poudre High School in Fort Collins. As a member of the Shakespeare Oratorio Society she directed Twelfth Night for their twelfth year and portrayed Lady Macbeth in their thirteenth production. She is the voice of Ann Morris in the audiotour of “Temple of the Warriors: Rebuilding a Maya Monument,” on exhibit at the CU Museum until February 2008. She was a faculty member of Boulder Conservatory Theatre — serving two years as a member of their artistic team. Her directing credits with BCT include The Lady's Not for Burning, an adaptation of The Phantom Tollbooth — performed at the National Conference of the American Alliance for Theatre & Education, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Miracle Worker — interpreted for the Deaf by ASL student interpreters from New Vista High School. She also created the set and sound design. Melinda has worked at New Vista High School with students in a touring production of a Shakespearean collage and also taught “Shakespeare in Production.” Among her favorite performance credits: Sarah in Quilters, excerpts from Romeo & Juliet with Colorado Music Festival Director Michael Christie conducting Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet, and work with Jack Crouch and Robert Benedetti in CSF’s 30th Anniversary Season. Melinda, who has acted in four seasons for CSF, received her B.F.A degree in theatre performance from CU–Boulder.
Pam Johnson
Pam Johnson is from Ft. Worth, Texas, where she was a U.S. Postal Service employee for 15 years. She now works for the University of Colorado at Boulder's box office as the Colorado Shakespeare Festival's Box Office Co-Manager.
Amanda Holden
Amanda joined CSF after two years of teaching Shakespeare, drama, and yoga in Hong Kong. A Massachusetts native, Amanda holds a B.A. from Trinity College, Conn. in Theater and French, and has directed children/teenage productions for the Rebel Shakespeare Company in Salem, Mass. since 2000. She received her M.A. in Theater at CU Boulder in 2006, and is currently pursuing her doctorate in theater at CU.
Greg Thorson
In addition to his duties as Assistant to the General Manager and Casting Associate, Gregory Thorson was the Dramaturg/Assistant Director on recent productions All’s Well That Ends Well and Love’s Labour’s Lost. Currently, he is the Assistant Director on this season's The Two Gentleman of Verona. A PhD student at CU, Thorson worked professionally directing in New York City, at NYU, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Abingdon Theatre and Vital Theatre. He is a member of Lincoln Center’s Directors Lab. (3 seasons)
Amber Wojcik
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