Guest Artists at ULVDoTA

Guest Artist Program

Michele George Workshop

Guest Artists are an essential feature of the Theatre program. Visiting Artists spend a semester or an interterm directing productions and teaching, bringing international exposure and fresh perspectives. Guest Workshops provide students with access and exposure to contemporary theatre pioneers and working professionals. Guest Artists provide invaluable, fresh perspectives and insights into theatre studies.

Georgij Paro
Director, Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb

Directing credits at ULV:
All's Well That Ends Well ('87)
Scapino! ('88)
The Dumb Waiter ('88)
The Wedding ('91)
The Seagull ('93)
A Flea In Her Ear ('94)
Medea ('95)
The Marriage ('97)
Pains of Youth ('98)
An Italian Straw Hat ('99)
La Ronde ('00)
Don Juan ('01)
Pericles ('02)
Liola ('03)

Luis Alfaro
Performance artist

Luis Alfaro is a performance artist who writes poetry, plays, and short stories. Born and raised in the Pico-Union district of downtown Los Angeles, Luis has been published in various anthologies. He is the author and performer of twelve performance art works, including Down/Town, which has been seen nationally, includingbeing performed at the Smithsonian. He recently recorded Down/Town, a solo spoken-word CD on New Alliance records. Luis recently toured with Lollapalooza.

Odin Theatre Eugenio Barba and Julia Varley
The Odin Teatret in Denmark

Hazel Carey

Michele George
Actress and vocal teacher

Michele George is a voice specialist in private practice as well as a singer, performer and keynote speaker at psychology and self-development conferences in Canada, the U.S.A. and Europe. She has worked with thousands of men and women in private and group sessions, helping them express themselves more completely and effectively through the voice. Her bestselling tapes, Drink from the Well and River of Song, River of Life, have reached many more.

Michele is a founding member of Peter Brook's International Centre for Theatre Research in Paris, France. Along with Jungian analyst Marion Woodman, Michele also leads mind/body workshops through the C. G. Jung Foundation in Toronto.

Karup Shishir Karup
Actor/Director/Writer/Composer
Cornerstone Theatre

Shishir holds an MFA in acting from The Conservatory at University of California at San Diego. He has studied the Suzuki actor training method in Japan with the internationally acclaimed Tadashi Suzuki and was a student of Anne Bogart. Shishir wrote and directed Ghurba, Cornerstone's Arab residency production, as part of the Los Angeles Festival, and directed and composed songs for the site-specific hit Candude or the Optimistic Civil Servant. He also wrote and composed songs for the Watts production of Sid Arthur and the company's tenth anniversary production of Birthday of the Century. He is a recipient of the Princess Grace Award for Theater, as well as Garland awards for acting and composing. Shishir's many film and television credits as an actor include ER and the recent film City of Angels.

Michael Kearns
Actor, director and author

Keck Michael Keck
Composer and performer

Michael co-created and performed in Junebug Theater Project's national tour of Ain't No Use In Going Home, Jodie's Got your Gal And Gone, and Junebug/Jack with Roadside Theater. Other favorite roles include Spider Evans in Fred Gamel's Wasted, (American Critic's Award). Hodman Bryant in Miss Ever's Boys, and Tonio/Victor/Camilo in Dreams Against The State. In New York City where he currently resides, he performed the roles of Willie Morton & Java in Lonnie Carter's LEMUEL at La MaMa E.T.C., Barney in Charlie Peter's Hollywood Sheherazade at Primary Stages. Michael is co-author, composer and host of the "Holidays For Children" video series, and frequently tours his solo performance of VOICES IN THE RAIN. He is the composer of A Village Fable (book and lyrics by James Still) which was workshoped at Sundance Playwrights Lab and is published by Dramatic Publishing.

Michael's music and soundscapes have been featured at The Kennedy Center, Mark Taper Forum, Arena Stage, Cincinnati Playhouse, The Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis, Alliance Theater, Portland Center Stage, Santa Fe Stages, and many others. At Arena Stage he composed original music and soundscapes for Derek Walcott's The Odyssey, OyamOs, I Am A Man and Cornerstone Theater's A Community Carol. His international credits include original music and soundscape for The National Theater of Croatia's production of A Streetcar Named Desire, and Death Of A Salesman both directed by Steven Kent. Music, sound design and music direction for The Barbican Theatre Center and Bristol Old Vic productions of Miss Evers Boys.

A teaching artist, Michael designs and facilitates workshops in various settings including schools, universities, community centers and correctional facilities. He has served as panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Arts Council, Georgia Council for the Arts and Meet The Composer. He is a member of AEA, AFTRA, ASCAP, and The Dramatists Guild.

Dan Kwong
LA-based performance artist, writer and community activist

Dan Kwong is the curator of the 7th Annual Asian Pacific American Performance & Visual Art Series, and producer at Highways in Santa Monica at the 18th Street Arts Complex.

McMahon Jeff McMahon
NY-based dance artist

Tim Miller
Performance artist

O'Neal John O'Neal
Artistic Director
Junebug Jabbo Jones ('01)
Junebug Productions

Born on Sept. 25, 1940 in Mound City, IL, O'Neal earned his BA degree from Southern Illinois University in 1962. Upon graduation he became a Field Secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. From this involvement came the Free Southern Theater, which began as the Tougaloo Drama Workshop, founded by Mr. O'Neal and Gilbert Moses at Tougaloo College in 1963, and grew to become a theater of national significance. Settling in New Orleans in 1965, the Free Southern Theater combined a touring repertory company, a community engagement program in New Orleans, and training workshops in Black Theater. The FST expired in 1980. That same year ONeal organized Junebug Productions.

Among the plays he has written are Huricane Season; Where is The Blood of Your Father; When The Opportunity Scratches, Itch It; book and lyrics for a musical comedy, Preacher Man! Preacher Man!; and Jerusalem Gallows Dream. As a writer he has also participated in several collaborations: If I Live to See Next Fall, written and directed in collaoration with the Play Group of Knoxville, TN and songwriter/organizer Si Kahn. He has also collaborated on the writing of The Mozamgola Caper with Joan Holden and others from the San Francisco Mime Toupe.

Mr. O'Neal has been the recipient of many awards and fellowships, among them the Louisiana Artist's Fellowship in Theater and grants from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. In 1988 he was awarded a major fellowship for playwriting from the Rockefeller Foundation. He was awarded an NEA Playwriting Fellowship in 1990 for work on a epic poetic drama about the slave insurrectionist, Nat Turner. O'Neal is one of three subjects in Doubleday's biography for young readers by Tom Cohen, Three Who Dared.

His essays and plays have been published in numerous books and journals such as The Black Scholar, Tulane Drama Review, Black World, American Dialog, Yale Theatre, Plays From The Southern Theater and The Black Aesthetic. His poetry has also been published in New Black Voices. He is a regularly featured columnist in Southern Exposure, magazine, and contributed an essay on Junebug's Environmental Justice Project to a forthcoming book on environmental racism.

Rose Portillo
Actress and writer

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar
Artistic Director
Urban Bush Women

"Bird had already raised Cain with the Last of the Blue Devils when Willa Jo came wailing on the set. Her mama was a cabaret singer in the blues tradition; her daddy was a real estate man. Willa Jo, the third of six children,cut her teeth on scat singing in honky tonks resplendent with hip-swiveling, shoulder-shaking, fast-talking exotic dancers who were 'not the least bit vulgar'."

To put it less fancifully, born and raised in Kansas City, MO, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar was steeped from childhood in both sacred and secular aspects of popular African-American culture. She began her dance training with Joseph Stevenson, a student of the legendary Katherine Dunham. She received a B.A. in dance from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and an M.F.A. in dance from Florida State University.

Ms. Zollar established Urban Bush Women in 1984. The company synthesizes the spiritual influences of her upbringing with the technical demands of formal dance training, uniting concern for the history and actuality of African-Americans with her interest in cross-disciplinary theatrical forms. On behalf of Urban Bush Women, she has received a New York Dance and Performance (a/k/a BESSIE) Award in 1992 and was awarded the Capezio Award for outstanding achievement in 1994. Currently, Ms. Zollar is an Artist-in-Residence at Florida State University in Tallahassee.