Theater Apprentice Program Faculty
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
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.
Daniel Duque-Estrada from Reunion by Greg Moss
Jane Nichols, currently a lecturer in Acting at the Yale School of Drama, is an actress, director, and teacher. Her work brings together skills and techniques of Improvisation, Mask, Le Jeu, Physical Comedy, Clown, and Bouffon. She has been most influenced by her studies with Philippe Gaulier, Keith Johnstone, and her 25 year association with Shakespeare & Co in Lenox, MA. She was the Founder and Artistic Director of Crosswalk Theatre in Boston. She has taught at Juilliard, Harvard University, American Repertory Theatre, American Conservatory Theatre, Stella Adler Conservatory, the Actors Center, Shakespeare & Co, Emerson College, University of Washington and has coached at Cirque du Soleil. Acting credits: Off-Broadway - En Garde Arts, New Georges, Synapse Co; Regional - Dallas Theatre Center, Portland Stage, Gloucester Stage, Shakespeare & Co, Lyric Stage, Nora Theatre, and Berkshire Public. Film and TV credits: School Ties, Heights, Law & Order SVU, Ed, America's Most Wanted, and Rachels Dinner with Olympia Dukakis. Directing credits include Les Liaisons Dangereux, Feed the Monkey, Noises Off, and A Midsummer Night's Dream at Harvard University; A Night at the Trojan Wall: a Clown version of the Iliad in NYC, and various productions with Crosswalk Theatre. She is the director of Logic Limited, Ltd., a company of former students.
Mark Cohen is Artistic Director of the pre-college TheatreBridge Company and offers a Meisner acting workshop for the Apprentice 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 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. He's taught at Brown since 1993.
Carol Abizaid is a Movement Instructor for both the Apprentice and TheatreBridge Companies. She studied with contemporary dance masters Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, Fred Benjamin, and Milton Myers. A 1984 graduate of Brown, Carol was the founder and CEO of World Arts, a performing arts studio in Soho, and has served on the faculty of NYU’s Tisch School of the Performing Arts. Carol’s choreography has been performed at Carnegie Hall, the Manhattan Center, and throughout Europe. She currently teaches dance in Brown’s Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance and offers movement workshops at the Brown/Trinity Graduate Consortium.
Recent Guest Artists and Past Faculty
Andy Bragen, playwriting
Mark Cohen, acting
Paul Grellong, playwriting
Jennifer Hayley, playwriting
Andy Hertz, musical theatre
Thom Jones, voice
Steven Levenson, musical theatre
Peter Nachtrieb, comedy, playwriting
Lowry Marshall, acting, directing
Logan Marshall-Green, auditioning for film and television
Kym Moore, acting, creative ensemble
Brighde Mullins, playwriting
Eva Nagorski, documentary
T.J. Paolino, acting for camera
Rhea Perlman, television performance
David Razowsky (Second City), improvisation
Alice Tuan, playwriting
The Workhorse Company
Members of the Brown/Trinity Playwrights Repertory Company