End-of-the-Year Portfolio Review 2014

This year Toni Leslie James (Head of Costume Design) and Ron Keller (Head of Design) arranged to have these nationally known Scenic, Costume and Lighting Designers, Technical Director and Stage Manager spend and entire day at Theatre VCU reviewing our Design/Tech students’ portfolios,  - allowing our students to meet some of the nation's finest theatrical design/tech.

Below are their bios:

Scenic Design

Tony Cisek 

Mr. Cisek has created designs for Arena Stage, The Kennedy Center, Wolf Trap Opera, Folger Theatre, Olney Theatre Center, Round House Theatre, Studio Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Signature Theatre and Theatre of the First Amendment, among others. Regionally, his work has been seen at the Guthrie Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Syracuse Stage, Delaware Theatre Company, Arden Theatre Company, Berkshire Theatre Festival and City Theatre. Hewas the theatre consultant on the theater construction for the new Atlas Performing Arts Center in Northeast Washington, D.C., which he designed with Dan Covey. He is the recipient of four Helen Hayes Awards for outstanding set design and holds an M.F.A. in design from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Shannon Robert 

Clemson, Paint Crafts Manager of The Spoon Group Productions : The Grinch, Grease (and national tour), Xanadu, Legally Blonde, Inherit the Wind, The Pirate Queen, Coram Boy, The Color Purple (and Chicago production), Jersey Boys (and national tour and Vegas), Spamalot (London West End and Vegas), Hairspray (and Vegas) and Sponge Bob Squarepants (Asian tour). 

Shannon Robert received the M.F.A. in scene design from Florida State University. While at FSU, she participated in an international exchange with the Moscow Art Theatre Conservatory. Shannon was director of theatre and head of design at William Carey University, where she taught scene design for 14 years. She served KCACTF as Region IV design chair (3 years – managed the design exposition), regional vice chair (3 years – managed the Irene Ryan acting scholarships), regional chair (1 year) and served on national design committees. Shannon has worked internationally in venues in Nairobi, Bratislava, Moscow and Edinburgh and has designed for Mill Mountain Theatre, New Stage Theatre, Auburn University Theatre, Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts (MTSU), Southern Arena Theatre, University of Southern Mississippi, SC Governor’s School for the Arts, The Fine Arts Center, The Peace Center, and ReelRock Productions. She was a consultant for The Saenger Theatre renovation in Hattiesburg, MS for Albert and Associates Architects. 

Shannon has also worked as an evaluator, respondent and adjudicator for a number of productions/projects and has presented several workshops and served on panels throughout the U.S. She is currently the Associate Artistic Director and Scene Designer in Residence for The Warehouse Theatre in Greenville, SC.

James Schuette 

James Schuette’s work at Steppenwolf includes set designs for Time to Burn, Space, Berlin Circle, The Royal Family (Jeff Award) and Homebody/Kabul, as well as costume designs for Mother Courage, Purple Heart and Time of Your Life. Recent work includes set or costume designs for Of Thee I Sing directed by Tina Landau (Papermill Playhouse), Frank Galati’s Oedipus Complex (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Nixon in China directed by James Robinson (Opera Theatre of St Louis), Intimations for Saxophone directed by Anne Bogart (Arena Stage) and Doug Varone’s Deconstructing English. His work has been seen at the Goodman Theatre, Old Globe Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Seattle Rep, A.C.T, Long Wharf, Yale Rep, Prince Music Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, New York Theatre Workshop, Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, The Public Theatre, Glimmerglass Opera, Seattle Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Minnesota Opera, New York City Opera and Santa Fe Opera. Upcoming projects include Rigoletto and Marriage of Figaro at Opera Colorado and After the Quake at Steppenwolf.

Stanley Meyer

Stanley Meyer was the set designer for Disney Theatricals’ Broadway hit, Beauty and the Beast, which was the sixth longest running Broadway show in history, and the designer of the world premiere of Aida at the Alliance Theatre for Disney Theatricals. He was the first receiptient of the League of American Theatre Producers “National Broadway Award” for his North American design of the national tours of Beauty and The Beast. Stanley Meyer has more than four dozen credits as a scenic designer/production  designer/ illustrator that have earned him numerous awards and nominations, including an American Theatre Wing nomination, A National  Broadway Theatre Award Nomination, A LA Ovation Award Nomination, the THEA Award winner-Best Outdoor Nighttime Spectacular (Peter Pan’s Neverland at Universal Studios Japan), and the IAPPA Brass Ring Award Winner for Best Outdoor Daytime Spectacular (Seaworld’s Blue Horizons, Orlando, FL and San Diego, CA). He has also designed the national & world tours of Alice Cooper, The Steve Miller Band, Cindi Lauper, Disney Ice Shows, and The Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus.  He has been a concept designer for Nike, Sony, Inmotion Entertainment, Clear Channel, Thinkwell Design & Entertainment, Mdame Tussand’s NYC and Las Vegas, and Busch Gardens Williamsburg.

CostumeDesign

James Schuette (see bio above.)

Leslie Yarmo  

Leslie Yarmo was the costume designer for the pilot and seasons 1 through 3 of Law & Order: SVU for NBC. USA Television Network and Wolf Films Prod. Other film and television credits include: Empire (Touchstone/CBS), The Rage: Carrie II (United Artists), Cadillac Records (Sony Pictures, costume consultant), Rome (HBO, costume consultant), Lipstick Jungle (NBC, Asst. Designer), The Siege (20th Century Fox, Asst. Designer), I Am Legend (Warner Bros., Asst. Designer), The Eye of the Dolphin(Paradise Productions), History is Made at Night (Shaftsbury Films Inc.), Ricochet River (Dee Gee Entertainment), and Hudson River Blues (The Shooting Gallery), among other credits. She received a dual MFA in Costume & Set Design from NYU, where she was the winner of the S. Seidman Award for Design Excellence. Ms. Yarmo completed her B.A in Theatre Arts from UCLA. and also holds a certificate in French Language & Culture from The Paris Fashion Institute and The Sorbonne in Paris, France.  She is an currently assistant professor of theater, costume design, period production as interdisciplinary study and researcher of Medieval dress codes st Salisbury University in Salisbury, MD.  As a professor of costume design, history of architecture, fashion, and International Studies in Theatre in Italy, Leslie endeavors to inspire her students to create work with integrity, thought and conscience. She has also taught at Theater Conservatory, Design-Tech Department, Purchase College, SUNY, Purchase, and,The Accademia Italiana di Design, Rome, Italy International Design School for Theatre & Film. Ms. Yarmo is fluent in the Italian language. 

Joe Solasavich 

Joe Solasavich is a costume designer and the Costume Director at Arena Stage, where he has worked for thirteen seasons on over 100 productions. Mother Courage and Her Children is his Arena Stage design debut. He has realized designs for Theoni Aldredge, Susan Benson, Linda Cho, Anne Hould-Ward, Toni-Leslie James, Willa Kim, Jess Goldstein, Martin Pakledinaz, Carrie Robbins, ESosa, and Paul Tazewell, among others. In addition to his work at Arena Stage, Joe has served in various capacities in costume departments for the Kennedy Center, Signature Theatre, the Shakespeare Theatre, Virginia Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, NBC, HBO and Disney. His internships were with Williamstown Theatre Festival and Actor’s Theatre of Louisville. Joe studied at the University of Dayton.

Emily DeAngelis 

Emily received her MFA from the University of California San Diego and her BA from Michigan State University. In NYC, she has designed at The Working Theatre, Theatre for the New City, Daryl Roth Productions, The Parsons Dance Company, New Georges, Classical Theatre of Harlem/ HHTF,  The Public Theater Summer Play Festival, Central Park Summer Stage, Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, and for Frankel Green Theatricals. She has also designed productions for the national tour of The Soul Doctor, La Jolla Playhouse, The Hungarian Theatre of Clu in Romania, the Yale Dramatic Association, Pacific Coast Performing Arts Center, SEED, Victory Gardens Theatre, and The EPA Theatre in Chicago. Ms. DeAngelis has also been a costume stylist for various commercials for Netflix and Nickelodeon Music Videos.

Carol Ramsdell

Head Draper at Arena Stage, Washington D.C.

Lighting Design

Ken Billington

Since joining the United Scenic Artists Local 829 in 1968,  Ken Billington has worked as an assistant to such designers to Tharon Musser, Thomas Skelton, William Ritman and Pat Collins. In 1973 he lit his first Broadway show, The Visit, directed by Harold Prince and as of April 2014, Ken has designed 98 Broadway productions including Act One, Chaplin, Don’t Dress for Dinner, Hugh Jackman, Back on Broadway, Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It, The Scottsboro Boys, are among his numerous Broadway credits. Ken works in all forms of theatrical lighting including opera, dance, concerts and spectaculars. He has designed lighting for 13 productions for the NY City Opera. Other companies include Dallas Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera, La Scala, Theatro Real in Madrid and Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. Some of the great entertainers that Ken has lit include Ann Margret, Shirley MacLane, Liberace, Sigfried and Roy, Juliet Prowse, Chita Rivera and Lisa Minelli to name just a few. For 27 years the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular had lighting by Ken Billington as well as the annual Easter Show. Other spectaculars include the relighting of Jubilee at Bally’s Las Vegas in 2004, Fantasmic! at Disneyland, Shamu Rocks at the Seaworld Parks and lluminights at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Ken Billington has been nominated for nine Tony Awards (winning in 1997 for Chicago), and six Drama Desk Awards (once again winning for Chicago in 1997). Ken has been received many awards including the Ace Award for Television Lighting, the Luman Award for Architectural Lighting and many theatre awards including the Tony, NY Drama Desk, Los Angeles Drama Critics and Boston Drama Critics to name a few. A more complete list of his credits can be found at www.kenbillington.com.

David Arch

Lighting Programmer for Broadway including: If/Then; Matilda; Ghost; Lysistrata Jones; Hugh Jackman “Back on Broadway”; Baby Its You; The Book of Mormon; Million Dollar Quartet - On and Off Broadway; Memphis; 9 to 5; West Side Story; Guys and Dolls; “13”; In the Heights; Sunday in the Park with George; Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!; A Bronx Tale; Grease; The Pirate Queen; High Fidelity; Lestat; Ring of Fire; The Color Purple; Lennon; Sweet Charity; Pacific Overtures; Fiddler on the Roof; Never Gonna Dance; Dance of the Vampires; Into the Woods; The Crucible; Dreamgirls; 42nd Street; The Rocky Horror Show; Fame; The Life

Lighting Programmer,  Off Broadway & Theatre Tours: The Book of Mormon - Chicago; The Book of Mormon - 1st National Tour; Fela - Off Broadway; The Drowsy Chaperone - Tour; Memphis - 1st National Tour; High School Musical - Tour; The Wiz (Encores); Merrily We Roll Along (Encores); On your Toes (Encores); “First You Dream” Kennedy Center DC; Wonderland (Tampa); White Christmas - Tour; West Side Story - 1st National Tour; Dreamgirls - Tour.

Lighting Programmer, Concerts/Tours - 1993 – 2012 (19 years)Barbra Streisand - Back to Brooklyn Tour; Hugh Jackman - In Performance; Prince - Musicology; Madonna - Drowned World Tour; Madonna - Don’t Tell Me Promo Tour; Madonna - Girly Show Tour; Barbra Streisand - Timeless Tour; Reba McEntire - 1994 -2000; Michael Crawford - Concert tour; Bette Midler - Experience the Divine; Ricky Martin - Livin La Vida Loca Tour; Shakira - 2001 Sony Record Debut; Yanni - 1997 World tour; Lighting Programmer

TV shows and Special Events 1997 – 2011 (14 years) The Tonight Show (Programming Consultant); Iron Chef America; Who wants to be a Millionaire; Sweet Genius; “Living it Up” with Alley and Jack; The Tony Danza Show; Studio 7; The Boston Pops 4th of July; The Apprentice; Imagination Movers; The Conan Writers Live; The James Beard Awards; Fast Track To Fame; Tyra; 2 Minute Drill; Heisman Awards; Viva Variety

Anthony Pearson 

Anthony Pearson is an Australian lighting designer and a member of KB Associates.  He received his degree in lighting design from The National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney (NIDA).  He has designed off-Broadway and regionally at The New York Musical Theatre Festival, The Asolo Repertory Theatre in FL, and at Busch Gardens Williamsburg  His Broadway credits include: as Associate Lighting Designer on Pippin  (Broadway, 2013), Kinky Boots (Broadway, 2013), Finian’s Rainbow (Broadway, 2009), and Boeing-Boeing (Broadway, 2008). As an assistant designer he has contributed to the productions of Other Desert Cities (Broadway, 2011), Looped (Broadway, 2010), Bye Bye Birdie (Broadway, 2009), High Fidelity (Broadway, 2006) The Drowsy Chaperone (Broadway, 2011.)

Technical Director

John Forsman  

Technical Director.  M.F.A., University of Virginia; B.F.A., Nebraska Wesleyan University. Forsman has worked in a variety of theatres across the country. He has worked as the Assistant Technical Director for the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and as Stage Crew Supervisor at the Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico. Currently the Technical Director for Hollins Universtiy. 

Stage Management 

Cary Lawless  

Production Manager, Arena Stage, Washington, DC; Production Manager, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Milwaukee, WI; Production Manager Actors’ Studio Drama School, New School University, NY; Theater Manager, Graduate Theater Division, Columbia University, NY; Stage Manager, The Utah Shakespearean Festival, Cedar City, Utah; Production Manager, School of Fine Arts, University of California, Irvine, California. Member of the Actor’s Equity Association and the American Guild of Variety Artists. Professional member of the Stage Manager Association. Ms. Lawless received her Master of Science at Illinois State University

GREAT Richmond Times Dispatch article about David Leong & Theatre VCU's involvement with Arena Stage's Mother Courage!

Move Master: VCU veteran fight director coaches actors

VCU veteran fight director coaches actors

BY CELIA WREN Special correspondent | Updated 2 days ago

Here's the link: 

http://www.timesdispatch.com/entertainment-life/arts-literature/theater/move-master-vcu-veteran-fight-director-coaches-actors/article_7a0981ea-93a1-593a-a7bb-0157886a26a3.html?mode=jqm

“Keep wailing, keep wailing! Keep wailing until they go by!” movement director David Leong urges as a satirical pageant of woe unfurls in a rehearsal room in Washington.

Two VCU alums — Cara Rawlings and Jonathan Becker — are depicting mourners-for-hire plying their trade during a 17th-century European war. Over the course of several seconds, the duo sink to their knees, dissolve into deliberately cartoonish sobs, then scramble up and race ahead to keep pace with a cluster of other VCU-trained thespians executing a somber march. Then Rawlings and Becker kneel and wail again.

Leong, the veteran fight director who chairs the theater department at Virginia Commonwealth University, rushes over to talk character motivation with Rawlings and Becker, both of whom hold master’s degrees from VCU’s theater pedagogy program.

Rawlings comes up with the idea that, at one point in the scene, the mourners should be surreptitiously counting their money. “That’s perfect!” exclaims Leong. He kneels and mimes the cash counting — trying out the gesture for size. Then he stands and asks to see the sequence again. “And then we’ll leave it alone,” he says. “We’ll polish it later on.”

This episode in December was just another stage in the construction of “Mother Courage and Her Children,” which begins performances at Washington’s Arena Stage on Friday, with film star Kathleen Turner in the title role. (The production runs through March 9.)

Arena Stage’s artistic director, Molly Smith, has shouldered overall directing duties for Bertolt Brecht’s classic, an antiwar parable about a businesswoman struggling to survive, and profit from, Europe’s Thirty Years War.

But to give the production flow and physical dynamism, Smith turned to Leong, a master fight director and movement coach who has worked on Broadway and elsewhere.

As the movement director for “Mother Courage,” Leong has been responsible for devising nimble, visually catchy sequences that bolster the production’s storytelling while smoothing scene transitions. The task is all the more critical and delicate because the action in “Mother Courage” (first performed in 1941) takes place over the course of more than a decade, with years sometimes elapsing between scenes.

Moreover, Brecht peppered the script with song lyrics that interrupt the narrative — part of his broader attempt to distance audiences from the story and force them to think about the underlying issues. For the Arena production, Leong was charged with crafting movement that would add dynamism and meaning to the songs, several of which will be sung by Turner, who is making her professional singing debut. (Contemporary composer James Sugg authored the production’s original music.)

“This is such a complex piece, so epic in size, and there are so many unknowns — it’s very much like creating a new musical,” Leong said in an interview at Arena last month.

His answer to the challenge was to recruit a group of his former students to help brainstorm movement ideas during two multiday workshops, last July and in December. The invitees now teach at institutions around the country: Rawlings and Becker are on the faculties of Virginia Tech and Ball State University, respectively, for instance.

The team also included a couple of current VCU MFA students: Brad Willcuts, now in the MFA program, worked as Leong’s assistant on the show, for example.

Volunteering their time, the Richmond-trained talents (14 of them in July, a smaller group in December) traveled to Washington. In the workshops, with Leong’s feedback and guidance, they generated scenes of physical storytelling — such as the satirical mourning described above, or the ominous, sole-slapping, weapon-cradling march that Leong informally dubbed “ ‘Stomp’ with rifles.”

Smith subsequently selected the sequences that best fit her vision of the production, leaving Leong and Willcuts to teach the movement sequences to the production’s actual cast — and tailor as necessary — during rehearsals, which started Jan. 2.

Leong says the workshop process worked well because his former students “know my aesthetic.”

Less familiar with that aesthetic, initially, was Turner, who participated in the July workshop, as some other “Mother Courage” cast members did. “She had her T-shirt on; she had bare feet; and she said, ‘I’m jumping right into it,’ ” Leong recalls. “Her input was really important.”

Speaking by phone from Arena Stage this month, Turner said her work with Leong — both during the July workshop, and during the rehearsal process itself, has been helpful and illuminating.

“I’m learning a great deal from David,” she said, calling Leong “extraordinarily knowledgeable” and endowed with the ability to “dream up these wonderful scenarios that tell these big stories without having a text.”

During the rehearsals, especially, she said, “he’s been working on slow-motion movement, on rhythmic movement, on snapping in and out of freezes, on very specific kinds of physical adjustments that tell the story also. It’s really quite fascinating.“

Moreover, she says, during his coaching session with the cast, “he’s making everyone look cohesive” — an important achievement when a production’s actors come from different backgrounds. (Turner’s stage credits include Broadway turns in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”)

By crafting movement that has narrative power, Turner says, Leong has helped lighten her load as she prepares to shoulder a role that is dramatic, comic and demanding on the vocal chords.

“This is my first musical,” Turner says, “I’ve got five numbers! What was I thinking? Anyway, my philosophy is you have to be willing to risk to the point of failure, or you don’t find out what you can do. And I am doing that, I am proud to say!”

But she’s confident enough to predict that “Mother Courage” — with its movement forged by a bevy of VCU-honed talents — will be well worth catching.

“You gotta come,” Turner says of the show. “It’s going to be a monster — in a good way.”

David Leong & Mother Courage - Read what Kathleen Turner has to say!

Kathleen Turner gave an interview On Washington DC's Arena Stage's Blog - GO HERE for the complete interview.

In it she describes the complexity and appeal of Mother Courage and Brecht's work.

She also credits our department chair, David Leong, for his vision and creativity as Movement Director for the production.

Here is what she has to say:

What discovery has surprised you the most during rehearsals?
I’m learning a great deal from our movement director, David Leong. What his creativity through movement is bringing to this production is huge. There are no scripted transitions. The lines are “Scene 1, Sweden, 1624” and then “Scene 2, Poland, 1626.” There has to be something in the movement that gives the audience a sense of the passage of time and distance, and that’s what David is creating. It’s extraordinary. I don’t think I ever realized how powerful that use of movement can be.

Congratulations to David and his crew of Theatre VCU graduate students who have devoted themselves to this production since before Thanksgiving.

We can't wait to see Arena Stage's production of Mother Courage opening january 31st and running through March 9, 2014!