THEATRICAL DESIGN

Jim Bazewicz

MFA, Set Design and Art Direction, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts
Bazewicz teaches classes in all aspects of theatrical design. He has professional experience designing productions in New York City and for professional regional theatres. Production credits range from new plays such as his Off-Broadway success Tibet Does Not Exist to classic plays by Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Moliere as well as musicals and operas. When not teaching or designing, Jim performs with various singing groups and plays the drums in a klezmer band.
Contact him at [email protected].

DRAMATURGY, THEATRE HISTORY & LITERATURE, AND APPLIED PERFORMANCE

Lisa S. Brenner

MFA, Set Design and Art Direction, New York University, Tisch School of the PhD, Columbia University

Brenner has received the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Faculty Civic Engagement Leadership Award at Drew. She holds a Ph.D. in theatre from Columbia University and studied with seminal theatre artists such as Augusto Boal, Anne Bogart, Moisés Kaufman, and Holly Hughes. She is a playwright and dramaturg and past editor of Theatre Topics, an official journal of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. She is also the editor of the book Playing Harry Potter: Essays and Interviews on Fandom and Performance (McFarland), and co-editor of Katrina on Stage: Five Plays (Northwestern UP), and the forthcoming Represent! New Plays for Multicultural Youth (Bloomsbury), and Applied Theatre with Youth: Education, Engagement, and Activism (Routledge). A playwright and dramaturg, her documentary-based play Katrina: The K Word (co-written with Suzanne Trauth) has been presented on campuses in fourteen states. Brenner’s published articles include “Playing Jewish at the National Asian American Theatre Company,” “Beyond Words: Producing Dialogue at the Galilee Multicultural Theatre,” “Storming the Nation: Post-Katrina New Orleans, Documentary Theatre, and Civic Responsibility,” and “How Moment Work Leads to Narrating with the Elements of the Stage.” Her published reviews have been featured in Theatre Survey and Theatre Annual.
Contact her at [email protected]

ACTING AND APPLIED PERFORMANCE

Chris Ceraso

MFA, Florida State University
Ceraso is an actor and playwright who has performed in premieres of work by such prominent writers as John Guare, David Mamet, Joyce Carol Oates, Lanford Wilson, Romulus Linney, Arthur Giron and Christopher Durang, among many others. He has also appeared in independent films as well as on television, including several appearances on Law and Order. Regional work has included classic and modern classic plays by Shakespeare, Moliere and Tennessee Williams. He is a long-time member of New York’s renowned Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST). As a playwright, he has been produced off-broadway and regionally, and has been published by Samuel French and Plays For Living. He has also had work produced for feature film, radio and television.

Contact him at [email protected]

DANCE/CHOREOGRAPHY

Kimani Fowlin

MFA, University of Wisconsin

Fowlin is an internationally recognized dancer, choreographer and educator. Her work abroad includes performing and teaching in Russia as part of the Fifth International Festival of Movement and Dance on the Volga; performing in Ghana for Panafest and choreographing and performing in Greece with funk R&B band Milo Z. Fowlin is dedicated to creating art with a purpose—with social justice being at the core of her dance making. To serve the youngest among us, she is co-founder of Boom!Beep!Bop!, a children’s dance class rooted in the African Diaspora. She has collaborated with Broadway Dancer Nicole De Weever, teaching for her organization, Art Saves Lives. She has also worked with acclaimed playwright Nina Angela Mercer and international visual artist Justin Randolph Thompson. She has performed and/or choreographed for Ronald K. Brown, David Rousseve, Youssouf Koumbassa, Andrea E. Woods, Souloworks, M’Zawa Danz, Umoja Dance, Harambee Dance Company and Antibalis. She has been a Rutgers University Mason Gross Dance faculty member for more than 17 years, and teaches dance residencies throughout New York City for organizations such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music; DreamYard Project; Community Works; and Urban Arts Partnership. As an AFAA Certified Group Fitness Instructor, Fowlin teaches and organizes events for Crunch in New York City. She is also the dance consultant and collaborator for the prestigious Cathedral Arts Program in Jersey City, and serves as an advisory council member for the Field Leadership Fund.

Contact her at [email protected]

PLAYWRITING

Rosemary McLaughlin

MFA, Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts
McLaughlin directs the playwriting program and Plays in Process at Drew. A writer and director, she has received awards from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in Playwriting and Poetry, including the 2015 Playwriting Fellowship; Chicago’s coveted Jeff Award and the Governor’s Award for Arts Education. She is in residence with the New Jersey Women Playwrights project at Writers Theatre of New Jersey. She is currently developing her new play, Pushing the River, a darkly comic exploration of memory, consciousness and eminent domain. Recent plays include A More Opportune Time, a free adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and Paterson Falls, about a silk strike which led to American theatre finding its voice. McLaughlin’s paper on her research, “From Paterson to P’town: How a Silk Strike in New Jersey Inspired the Provincetown Players,” was published in the premiere issue of Laconics. Her plays and poetry have been published in a number of anthologies, including Classroom Scenes and Monologues (Dramatic Publishing); Intimate Acts (Brito Lair); The X-Y Files and Written with a Spoon (Sherman Asher). Other work includes Sensitive, (which premiered at Cincinnati’s SHEtheatre); Can-Can, (Cathedral Arts Live); Totally Not Liam (Speranza Theatre); Standing in the Shadows (Wings Theatre); Motherless Child (Chicago Cooperative Stage); Horsefeathers; The Raw and the Cooked (Hallie Flanagan Play Series) and The Chair (Provincetown Theatre Company).
She is a co-founder of Waterfront Ensemble, the Win Atkins Theatre Project and the Hallie Flanagan Play Series and a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Association of Theatre in Higher Education.

Contact her at [email protected].