TheatreBridge and Playwrights Workshop: Faculty
TheatreBridge - Six Weeks of Immersive Theatre Study for High School Students
Mark Cohen, Artistic Director of TheatreBridge, teaches acting for the TheatreBridge Company. He received his BA from Yale and trained in London at the Guildhall School for Music and Drama. Mark has an MA from Brown and an MFA from The Shakespeare Theatre’s Academy for Classical Acting at George Washington University. He was a professional actor, director and dance consultant in New York City. Mark currently directs and teaches acting at Boston University in Boston and has taught at Brown since 1993.
Kenneth Prestininzi, Artistic Director and Apprentice Director of BTPR, Kenneth Prestininzi is also the Associate Chair of Playwriting at the Yale School of Drama and a resident playwright at New Dramatists. His play, Birth Breath Bride Breath Elizabeth was a featured show in Boston's The Next Thing Festival (2013), alongside shows by Mike Daisy, Richard Maxwell, The Debate Society and Daniel Fish. He has taught playwriting and performance courses at ACT of San Francisco, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Cornell University, Intersection for the Arts, Northwestern University, University of Iowa, West Coast Playwrights and here at Brown University. At BTRP he directed boom by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, Reunuon by Greg Moss and In Spite of the Devil by Andy Bragen. He has written and directed new plays for the last twenty years in Brighton (England), Cambridge, Chicago, Edinburgh, Kalamazoo, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York City, Philadelphia, Prague, Providence, and San Francisco and has received theatre awards from the American College Theatre Festival, California Arts Council, Djerassi Artist Program, Gerbode Foundation, Goethe Institute, LEF Foundation, Millay Arts Colony, National Endowment of the Humanities, Rockerfeller Foundation and the San Francisco Cultural Equity Office. His acclaimed play Chaste was recently produced at Trap Door Theatre in Chicago (Kate Hendrickson, director), where previously his play Beholder received a Joseph Jefferson Award for best new play. He has continued his creative working relationship with playwright Peter Sinn Nachtrieb and will be directing the premiere of The Totalitarians at Southern Rep, New Orleans, in 2014. He is an affiliated artist of Sleeping Weazel (Boston). His original plays include: A License to Love, AmeriKafka, As American As, Beholder, Chaste, Love in the Seventh Kingdom of Wrath, The Monkey from Zanzibar, Ria and Bobby, Ugmo and Eenie Go Down the Ruski Hole, , and the chamber operas Ariadne, The Response and Servitude of a King. He has a Bachelor of Science degree (theatre) from Northwestern University, a MFA (playwriting) from the University of Iowa, and did extensive graduate work in theatre and performance studies at Brown University where he was a Pembroke Fellow.
Thom Jones is the Director of Voice and Speech for the Brown University/Trinity RepMFA Consortium program. His research in the area of speech and dialects includes an expanding personal library of more than four hundred dialects/accents of spoken English. His library includes both source speakers and phonetic transcription. Mr. Jones has been the resident voice and speech coach for the Trinity Repertory Theatre for the last six seasons and has worked extensively in professional theatre both regionally and in New York City. He has also been the dialect coach for feature films and television.
Constance Crawford is a core faculty member in the TheatreBridge Company. Connie received her BA from Vassar College and is a graduate of the Juilliard School. She trained with Uta Hagen at the HB Studios in New York City. During the 2006-2007 academic year in Brown's Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance, Connie taught both TA-23 and Brown's freshman course TA-03 (Intro to Acting and Directing).
Carol Abizaid has been a Movement Instructor for TheaterBridge since 2005. She has studied with contemporary masters, Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, Fred Benjamin, and Milton Myers among others, has performed, taught and choreographed in NYC and Europe, was on faculty at Steps on Broadway for 16 years, and later founded Abizaid Arts Performing Arts Studio in Soho. Carol received her BA from Brown University, where she was later on faculty, MA from New York University, and MFA in Experimental Choreography from University of California, Riverside. She is the Artistic Director of Re-Memberings Project Dance Company nationally and internationally performing original and authored works of reenactment, war zones, memory, trauma, and narrativization.
Recent Guest Artists:
Lowry Marshall, Playwriting
Paul Grellong, Playwriting
Stephen Karam, Playwriting
Alice Tuan, Playwriting
Logan Marshall-Green, Acting
Crystal Finn, Acting
Robin Galloway, Acting
Christopher Bayes, Clowning
Ted Hewlett, Sage Combat
Amelia Buescher, Mask
John Lloyd Young – Acting/Musical Performance
Jennifer Haley – Playwriting
Peter Nachtrieb - Playwriting
Andy Bragen - Playwriting
Steven Levenson - Playwriting
Andrew Hertz – Musical Theatre
Diana Fithian - Playwriting
Mia Rovegno - Directing
Ken Prestininzi – Directing