The Monan Professorship in Theatre Arts

Bryce Pinkham

An American stage and screen actor, Bryce is most widely known for originating the role of Monty Navarro in the Tony-winning production of A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, for which he was nominated for Tony, Grammy, and Drama Desk awards.  He also notably appeared in the Broadway revival of The Heidi Chronicles as Peter Patrone, for which he was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance.  His other Broadway credits include original roles in Holiday Inn, The Great Society, Ghost, and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and the upcoming Ohio State Murders with Audra McDonald.

Bryce's on-screen appearances include as a series regular on the Civil War drama Mercy Street, guest appearances in HBO's Julia, Baz Lurman's Netflix series The Get Down, and Robert DeNiro's feature film The Comedian, as well as The Good Wife (CBS), Proven Innocent (FOX) Person of Interest (CBS), Blindspot (NBC) The Blacklist (NBC). 

As a singer Bryce has performed in concert venues across the country, most notably Carnegie Hall, The Chicago Lyric Opera, Lincoln Center, and The Library of Congress.   

As a writer, Bryce has published articles in American Theater Magazine and Yale Alumni Magazine.

  In 2012 Bryce helped found Zara Aina, a not-for-profit that uses the power of theatrical storytelling to empower under-resourced youth. In May 2013, Bryce led a team of American artists on Zara Aina’s pilot program to Madagascar.  Bryce is also a frequent collaborator with Outside the Wire, a social impact theater company that serves many communities but particularly focuses on military audiences. His most notable international tours include Guantanamo Bay, Japan, Kuwait, and Qatar.  

A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, Bryce was awarded the Leonore Annenberg Foundation Early Career Fellowship in 2012. 

In 2023 Bryce will serve as the Monan visiting professor at Boston College.

Bryce holds a BA from Boston College and an MFA in Acting and bio-writing from the Yale School of Drama.

Summer L. Williams

Summer L. Williams has been an active artist in Boston’s theatre scene since the 1990s as a director, producer, and educator. As part of her Monan Residency, she will teach directing and direct the Theatre Department's April 2022 production of The Rocky Horror Show.  She is a founding member of Company One Theatre and currently serves as its Associate Artistic Director. She is also on the Board of Directors for both StageSource and the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

Her recent directing credits include Wolf Play (2020), School Girls, or The African Mean Girls Play (2019), MISS YOU LIKE HELL (2019), the world premiere of Leftovers (2018), Wig Out! (2018), Smart People (2017), Barbecue (2017), Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. (2016), Bootycandy (2016), and An Octoroon (2016). She has directed for Company One, SpeakEasy Stage Company, BU's Playwrights' Theatre, Brandeis University, Clark University, the Theater Offensive, and Huntington Theatre Company, among others.

In 2009, 2016, and 2018, Williams won Elliot Norton Awards for Outstanding Director; she has been nominated for three IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England) Awards.

Williams is a teacher of drama and a director at Brookline High School. She holds a B.A. in Theater and an M.A.Ed. in Urban Education.

Paula Plum

Chestnut Hill, MA (August 1, 2020) – The Boston College Theatre Department is thrilled to announce PAULA PLUM as the Rev. J. Donald Monan, S.J. Professor in Theatre Arts for the 2020-2021 academic year.

With over 40 years of teaching experience, Paula Plum is a thrilling addition to the BC Theatre faculty. Plum taught acting, directing, and voice for twelve years at UMass Lowell, and has been a private acting coach for Union and Non-Union actors for nearly twenty years. Since 2009, Plum has also been teaching the “Shakespeare Work Out,” for Actors Shakespeare Project, a six-week acting intensive that focuses on voice, body, and breath.

Plum is a founding member of Actors Shakespeare Project, a Boston theater company that “performs and works in found spaces, schools, and theaters to present and explore the robust language, resonant stories, and deeply human characters in Shakespeare’s plays.” Plum is also an ASP teaching artist and a member of their resident acting company.

Her stage credits include Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth, Phedre (Actors Shakespeare Project); Ivanov, Mother Courage (American Repertory Theater); Top Girls, Tartuffe (Huntington Theatre Company); The Roommate, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Death of a Salesman, 33 Variations (Lyric Stage Company); The Children, Clybourne Park (SpeakEasy Stage Company), and many others.

From drama, comedy, and clowning, to period pieces, Shakespeare, and contemporary plays- Plum has done it all. Ed Siegel, critic-at-large for WBUR’s The ARTery, says that “Paula’s range [as an actor] is extraordinary.” The Theater Mirror stated that “Plum brings tenderness and quiet strength to the role of Hazel” in the 2020 production of The Children. WBUR applauded her 2017 performance in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, stating that “Plum is a warm, vulnerable if convincingly vulgar and brassy Martha.” The Arts Fuse described that same performance as “charismatic, sexy, and shameless,” and her 2014 performance as Linda in Death of a Salesman, as “brilliantly nuanced.”

Plum is the recipient of four IRNE Awards for Best Actress (Wit, Miss Price, The Heiress, and Plum Pudding), as well as three Elliot Norton Awards for Best Actress (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Lost in Yonkers, and Miss Witherspoon). Plum was selected by the Boston Theater Critics Association to receive the 2004 Elliot Norton Award for Sustained Excellence, which pays tribute to the recipient’s body of work and their “outstanding contributions to theater in Boston.”

In 2009, Plum was one of five actors nation-wide to be awarded a three-year grant from the William and Eva Fox Foundation for a resident actor fellowship at SpeakEasy Stage Company of Boston. During her residency, she developed an original workshop called “Handling the Hot Moments” which explores how actors negotiate intimacy on stage. The concept and findings from the workshop led to a published article in American Theater Magazine. The grant also allowed her time to write and perform in What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, an original work about the life of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Her directing credits include productions at Actors Shakespeare Project, Gloucester Stage Company, Lyric Stage Company, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Stoneham Theatre, and others. Since 2003, Plum has been the Artistic Director of the WGBH touring concert, A Christmas Celtic Sojourn. Inspired by Brian O’Donovan’s A Celtic Sojourn, the much beloved annual event draws on “Celtic, Pagan, and Christian traditions to celebrate the music of the season” with music, singing, and dancing (WGBH).

When asked about the longevity of her career, Plum responded: “I really don’t ever give up. There’s so much rejection in this business, but I keep going back. I think persistence is even more important than talent in terms of survival in the theater. You have to be willing to continually put yourself out there.” (Boston University)

During her residency at Boston College, Plum will teach two classes: The Actor and the Mask in Fall 2020, and Directing II in Spring 2021. She will also direct Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night for the Theatre Department.

Plum studied mask, clown, and acrobatics at the Philippe Gaulier School in Paris, and also trained at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. She holds a BFA from Boston University where she was honored with the 2003 Distinguished Alumna Award. 

Maurice Emmanuel Parent

The Boston College Theatre Department announces award-winning actor, director, and arts educator, Maurice Emmanuel Parent, as the Rev. J. Donald Monan, S.J. Professor in Theatre Arts for the 2018-2019 academic year.

Parent is an actor with nearly 15 years of professional experience. He has over 40 acting credits at theatres across the nation and abroad, having performed with some of Boston’s oldest and most respected companies such as Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Huntington Theatre Company, Lyric Stage Company, New Repertory Theatre, and SpeakEasy Stage Company, among others.

On his recent role as Reggie the factory foreman, in Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew (Huntington Theatre Company, 2018), The Arts Fuse called Parent’s performance a “stand out, generating the play’s most emotional moments,” while Broadway World praised his “powerfully emotional” and “authentic” portrayal. Regarding his performance as Mr. Bones inThe Scottsboro Boys (SpeakEasy Stage Company, 2016) Joyce Kulhawik, President of the Boston Theater Critics Association, declared that “…Parent brings his dazzle” to the role, while TheaterMania called his performance “a revelation.” On his title role in Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II (Actors’ Shakespeare Project, 2017), The Boston Globe applauded his performance, calling it “dynamic” and “spellbinding,” adding that “Parent’s portrayal of the titular monarch reaches a level of transfixing intensity.” TheaterMania hailed his performance as “flawless,” and “hypnotic,” stating that Parent’s “…performance of Edward is a unique thrill that cements his status as one of the most astonishing talents on the Boston theater scene.”

Parent won the 2017 ArtsImpulse Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for his role of Mr. Bones in The Scottsboro Boys (SpeakEasy Stage Company). He has been nominated for four Elliot Norton Awards by The Boston Theater Critics Association, winning twice for Outstanding Actor (Midsize Theater): in 2017 for Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s production of Edward II, and in 2008 for three extraordinary performances in the same season: Some Men at SpeakEasy Stage, Angels in America Parts I and II at Boston Theatre Works, and The Wild Party at New Repertory Theatre. He has also been nominated for six Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) Awards, winning for Best Actor in a Drama for The Convert (Underground Railway Theatre, 2017), Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for The Snow Queen (New Repertory Theatre, 2016), and again for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for The Color Purple (SpeakEasy Stage, 2015).

In addition to his regular performance work, Parent is the co-founder and Executive Director of The Front Porch Arts Collective, “a black-led theatre company committed to advancing racial equity in Boston through theater.” In an interview with The Improper Bostonian, Parent explained, “The greater purpose of showing ethnically specific theater is to help people see the world through other vantage points that they may not have access to.” The non-profit will open its second season on November 30, 2018 with a co-production, directed by Parent, with the Lyric Stage Company of Daniel Beaty’s Breath and Imagination which tells the story of the first world-renowned African American classical vocalist, Roland Hayes.

Parent’s history as an educator extends back nearly a decade. Currently he is a Teaching Artist with Actors’ Shakespeare Project and a Performing Arts Specialist at the Martin Luther King School (K-8). He is also an Adjunct Professor at Tufts University, where he teaches acting, and at Boston University, where he teaches music theatre technique.

During his residency at Boston College, Parent will lead two workshops for Theatre students, giving instruction on auditions and Shakespeare performance (both workshops will be offered in October 2018). He will offer creative support to the Theatre Department’s Season productions of Pride and Prejudice (November 2018) and Hamlet (February 2019). Parent will also teach two courses: the first, “Musical Theatre Performance” will be taught in fall 2018 and will explore storytelling in both solos and duets, using tools uniquely available to the music theatre actor; the second, “Devised Theater,” will be offered in the spring of 2019 and will focus on creating a devised piece called The Identity Project, which will explore race, gender, sexuality, and more through live performance. Performances for The Identity Project will take place in April 2019 during the annual BC Arts Festival.

“Maurice Parent embodies boundless energy, enthusiasm and talent that he utilizes to the fullest on stage and off,” says BC Theatre Department Chair, Crystal Tiala. “As a teacher, dancer, actor, singer, director and social activist, he connects effortlessly with everyone in his presence. His talents and creative energy seem to have no earthly limitations. We are honored to have him join our Department this year.”

Nick Scandalios ‘87 and Scott Clyve 

Chestnut Hill, MA (August 23, 2017) – The Boston College Theatre Department is thrilled to announce producer Nick Scandalios ‘87 and designer Scott Clyve as the Rev. J. Donald Monan, S.J. Professors in Theatre Arts for the 2017-2018 academic year.

Nick Scandalios has made an extensive impact in the theatre world. He is the Executive Vice President of the Nederlander Organization, one of the largest owners of legitimate theatres in the world. Now in its 105th year, the Nederlander Organization has produced over 100 Broadway and touring productions, giving a home to several Tony-winning hits including Hamilton, Waitress, Next to Normal, Wicked, The Lion King, Chicago, West Side Story, Cats, and Annie, among others. The company has built an impressive network of historically significant theatres across the country, managing multiple venues around the U.S., and in London’s West End. Scandalios has been with the Nederlander Organization for nearly 30 years.

Scandalios is the Immediate Past Chairman of the Board of Governors of The Broadway League, a full-service trade association dedicated to fostering increased interest in Broadway theatre and supporting the creation of profitable theatrical productions. He is also on the Board of Trustees for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, a nonprofit organization that draws upon the talents, resources, and generosity of the theatre community on Broadway, Off-Broadway and across the country by raising funds for AIDS-related causes across the United States.

Scandalios’ humanitarian efforts also extend beyond theater, as he is the Immediate Past Chair and current member of the Emeritus Board of Family Equality Council (FEC), a national advocacy organization committed to securing family equality for LGBTQ parents, guardians, and allies. He was the 2016 Honoree at FEC’s annual Night at the Pier gala, a celebration of the people and organizations that have made an impact on the LGBTQ community.

Scandalios was the recipient of the 2016 Boston College Arts Council Alumni Award for Distinguished Achievement, which recognizes alumni who have achieved an outstanding level of distinction and public recognition for contributions in art-related professions. And in 2008, Scandalios was presented with the Commercial Theater Institute’s Robert Whitehead Award for “outstanding achievement in commercial theater production.”

In the Fall 2017 semester, Mr. Scandalios will be a guest speaker for the course, “Principles of Theatre Management,” taught by StageSource Executive Director, Julie Hennrikus. The class will join him for an insider’s tour of the Nederlander Organization in NYC, as well as at a backstage tour at one of Nederlander’s theatres, culminating in an evening performance of one of the company’s current Broadway hits.

“It is a great honor to have Nick Scandalios, a man who has been part of the massive revitalization of for-profit theater on Broadway and elsewhere, return to Boston College to interact with our students,” says Crystal Tiala, Chair of the Theatre Department. “A product of the Carroll School of Management and BC Theatre, Nick is as generous and kind a person as he is a brilliant businessman.”

Sheri Wilner

Sheri Wilner, award-winning playwright and arts educator, is the author of more than 20 full-length and one-act plays, most recently a new musical called Cake Off, which premiered in October 2015 at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA and received a Helen Hayes Award nomination for Outstanding Musical Adaptation. Cake Off will be produced this August and September at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, PA.

Wilner currently works as the Director of the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program in NYC, which provides a year-long professional development workshop to a selected group of emerging playwrights and musical theatre writers. Prior to that appointment she was the Master Playwright for the Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs Playwrights’ Development Program, conducting a series of weekend workshops over the span of two years with a small class of professional Miami playwrights. She has also taught playwriting at Vanderbilt University, where she was the Fred Coe Playwright-in-Residence, and Florida State University, where she headed the playwriting division of the MFA Writing for Stage and Screen program.

Her plays have been published in over a dozen anthologies, and have been performed at major regional and national theatres including the Old Globe, the Guthrie Theater, the Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights’ Conference, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and several seasons of the Boston Theatre Marathon at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. Her work has also been produced in Australia, Denmark, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

During her residency, Wilner will teach two courses for the Theatre department. The first, “Writing Wrongs: Writing the Issue-Based Play,” will explore the process of transforming emotional responses to social and political “hot topics” into complex, engaging works for the theatre; and the second, “Contemporary Female Playwrights,” will address the lack of gender parity in American theatre by reading and creatively responding to plays authored by a diverse range of female playwrights. Along with Boston playwrights Melinda Lopez (Playwright-In-Residence at the Huntington Theatre Company) and Kate Snodgrass (Artistic Director of Boston Playwrights Theatre), Wilner will write a new ten-minute play to accompany our Season opening production of Waiting for Lefty (October 13-16, 2016), directed by Assistant Professor Patricia Riggin.

“Sheri Wilner’s expertise extends well beyond her highly acclaimed body of work as a playwright,” Crystal Tiala, Chair of the Theater Department explains. “She has made it her mission to advocate for gender parity in her field. Her participation in research and subsequent publications bring to light how biased choices made by producers have resulted in significantly fewer opportunities for women. Her presence in our department will fuel some fascinating discussions of both gender and racial parity in the entertainment industry.”

The Theatre department will produce her play, Kingdom City, (March 22-26, 2017) directed by Associate Professor, Dr. John Houchin. The play, which premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse outside San Diego two years ago, follows a female theatre director’s struggle to produce a provocative play in a conservative, religious town in the mid-west (based on a real-life incident that occurred in Fulton, MO). The Los Angeles Times declared it a “potentially major new American play.”

She has been the recipient of several prestigious fellowships including the Howard Foundation Fellowship in Playwriting (2008, Kingdom City), the Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship (2007), The Playwrights Center’s Jerome Foundation Fellowship (2005-2007), and the Dramatists Guild Playwriting Fellowship (2000-2001). She has twice been a co-winner of the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Heideman Award for her plays Labor Day (1998) and Bake Off (2001), both of which premiered at the annual Humana Festival of New American Plays. Wilner attended Cornell University (B.A., English), as well as Columbia University where she received her MFA in Playwriting.

Michelle Miller ’98

Michelle Miller, BC class of ’98, has become the consummate modern entertainment professional. As a professional actor and singer, she has performed in off-Broadway shows, in the International Fringe Festival, at Lincoln Center in NYC, and at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, UT. In New York Michelle was a founding member of Any Minute Now Productions with which she performed and produced The Triumph of Love The Musical, John & Jen, and Hello Again! She has also sung with the New Haven Symphony, The Kansas City Jazz Orchestra, as well as the Boston Pops under the batons of John Williams, Marvin Hamlisch and Keith Lockhart.

In recent years Ms. Miller has been working as a producer, photographer, and scriptwriter. Beginning with Project Explorer, an award-winning non-profit educational film company whose mission is to bring the world into the classroom with free multimedia content and lesson plans that improve students’ global awareness and cross-cultural understanding. The Castle Project, a film about Colorado’s infamous “haunted mansion,” was produced, filmed, and story-boarded by Miller and was featured in the documentary film corner of the Cannes Film Festival in 2013. Miller was also nominated for six Heartland Emmy Awards for her work as a producer and photographer on The Rocky Mountain Experience (2014, 2013), a PBS adventure sports series. The series won the 2013 award for Best Television Pilot at the Nevada Film Festival.

Ms. Miller is also active in humanitarian and philanthropic efforts. As the Vice-Chair on the Board of Trustees for ASTEP, a non-profit designed to connect artists with underserved youth around the world, she produced eighteen concerts in NYC with award-winning composers and Tony-nominated performers, highlighting and promoting new musical works, and fundraising to benefit ASTEP’s international service projects. Personally, Ms. Miller has taken five extended service trips to a rural community outside Bangalore, India for the Shanti Bhavan Children’s Project doing fundraising, project development, and teaching some of the country’s poorest children everything from Social Studies and English, to Visual Arts, Music, Theater, and Dance.

"Michelle Miller is an exciting choice for the 2015-2016 Monan Professorship. She is an extraordinary actress, singer, filmmaker, and teacher with enormous compassion for humanitarian causes,” says Theatre department Chair, Crystal Tiala. “Michelle is a shining example of what a Boston College education is all about and the quintessential role model for our students."

In 2009 Michelle was inducted as a Dame of Malta into The Knights of Malta, a thousand year old Catholic organization that invites members based on their commitment to faith, philanthropy and service. Michelle was invited not only for her work with Shanti Bhavan and ASTEP, but for her years of inner city outreach and extensive work with Christmas in October, which has been rehabilitating inner city homes for 30 years and was founded by her father. Through the Knights of Malta Michelle has made eight pilgrimages to Lourdes, France to care for the sick.

As the 2015-2016 Monan Professor in Theatre Arts, Ms. Miller will direct Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel (October 21-25, 2015), hailed by Time magazine as the best musical of the 20th Century. Her compassionate and collaborative teaching style will be put to good use in an advanced musical theater performance class using a one-on-one approach to identify and work through physical and emotional blocks unique to each student in order to capture their true potential. The class will explore how to embody the character through personalizing the text and freeing the natural voice.

Her work will include collaborating with Theatre students, Department professors, and guest artists alike. She will serve as the vocal coach for the fall production of Charles L. Mee’s Big Love (November 19-22, 2015) directed by Dr. Scott T. Cummings, as well as the consultant for the new Irish musical, Learning How to Drown, written by BC Theatre Alumna Patricia Noonan ’07 (February 17-21, 2016), and as a guest lecturer for the Independent Television & Film course. She will also lead a number of vocal performance workshops (open to all interested BC students).

In the last 17 years Michelle Miller has taken her theater training and professional development and merged those skills with her commitment to service and activist work to become a world-class educator and leader in the arts. The Theatre department is proud to welcome her back to Boston College for the 2015-16 academic year.

Tina Packer

Tina Packer is the Founding Artistic Director of Shakespeare & Company, one of the largest and most critically acclaimed Shakespeare Festivals in North America, currently celebrating its 36th season. Packer founded Shakespeare & Company in 1978 with the goal of creating a sustainable and vital program of performance, training, and education of the highest standard that holds language as the center of the theatrical experience. With her vision and leadership, the Company has become a home for theatre professionals from all over the world. It is also one of the largest theatre-in-education programs in the northeast, reaching upward of 50,000 students annually with performances, workshops, and residencies.

Packer is also a published author. Her book, Power Plays: Shakespeare’s Lessons in Leadership & Management (2001), co-written with John Whitney, spent several weeks on the Business Best-Seller charts. Her children’s book, Tales from Shakespeare (2004) received the Parents’ Choice Award. Her forthcoming book, Women of Will (2015) is the result of a lifelong exploration into Shakespeare’s famed yet misunderstood heroines; it is based on her five-part performance piece of the same name which enjoyed critical acclaim in its off-Broadway run this past year. She has also been the subject of TV and film specials; Sex, Violence & Poetry: a Portrait of Tina Packer was produced by WGBH, and Brush Up Your Shakespeare, an hour-long concert special in partnership with the Boston Pops and Boston Philharmonic Orchestra on PBS.

Born in Wolverhampton, England, Packer trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, was an Associate Artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and performed in the West End in over 20 productions for BBC and ITV television. She has lectured or been the keynote speaker at over 30 colleges and universities including Columbia, Harvard, and M.I.T, and has received six honorary doctorate degrees.

She received the 1992 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Direction in Boston, the 1996 Boston Theatre Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre, and the 2001 Elliot Norton Award for Continued Excellence in Theatre. She was also the 1999-2000 Arts Recipient of the Commonwealth Award, Massachusetts’ highest cultural recognition.

Melinda Lopez

Chestnut Hill, MA (July 30, 2019) – The Boston College Theatre Department is thrilled to announce award-winning playwright Melinda Lopez, as the Rev. J. Donald Monan, S.J. Professor in Theatre Arts for the 2019-2020 academic year.

Hailed by WBUR as “one of Boston’s most important writers,” Melinda Lopez was the 2019 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s (MCC) Award in Dramatic Writing, as well as the Boston Theater Critics Association’s (BTCA) Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence for “consistently enriching the Boston theater community as a playwright, actress and educator.”

With a body of work that spans more than two decades, Lopez’s plays have been performed around the country at such notable theaters as Steppenwolf Theatre Company, The Guthrie Theater, Laguna Playhouse, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Shakespeare and Company, The Huntington Theatre Company, and ArtsEmerson, among others. In a 2015 interview with MCC, Lopez explained that as a Cuban-American, she intentionally places “brave, complicated, and uncompromising Latina women” at the center of her work, frequently focusing on the stories of Cuban or Cuban-American characters.

Her most recent work, Yerma (Huntington Theatre Company, 2019), is an adaptation and new translation of Federico García Lorca’s play of the same name. Described as a woman “consumed by her dream of motherhood, Yerma defies her husband and confronts her community” which ultimately “propels her into a collision with the universe that is urgent and terrible in scope.” Arts Fuse affirmed that “Lopez succeeds at putting her own stamp on the work without disrupting or diverting the play’s dramatic contours…[her] translation makes the language of the play approachable without losing the beauty of Lorca’s poetry.”

Her one-woman show, Mala- which Lopez wrote and performed- was presented at ArtsEmerson in 2016. The play is described as “an utterly unsentimental journey towards the end of life-- an irreverent exploration of how we live, cope, and survive in the moment” (melindalopez.com). WBUR’s The ARTery applauded the production as “an exquisitely fashioned theater piece, brimming with humor, frustration, and honesty,” and Boston Magazine called it her “most profound work yet.” Mala won the BTCA Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding New Play, and Lopez earned the Arts Impulse Award for Best Solo Performance. In honor of the world premiere of Mala– and in recognition of her many accomplishments– Mayor Martin J. Walsh, proclaimed October 29, 2016 to be Melinda Lopez Day in the city of Boston for which he urged his “fellow Bostonians to celebrate her enormous contribution to the theatre field both locally and throughout the world.”

From 2013 to 2019 Lopez was the playwright-in-residence at the Huntington Theatre Company as part of the Mellon Foundations National Playwright Residency Program, which provides “salary, benefits, and a flexible research and development fund for a diverse group of American playwrights at selected theaters around the country.” In 2010 she was named a “Woman of Courage Honoree” by La Alianza Hispana, an organization whose mission is to improve the lives of the Latino community of Massachusetts. Her play Sonia Flew won the 2004 Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) Award and the BTCA Elliott Norton Award for Best New Play and Best Production. In 1999 she was the first recipient of the Charlotte Woolard Award, given by The Kennedy Center to “a promising new voice in American theatre” for her play, The Order of Things.

In addition to her work as a playwright, Lopez is also an accomplished actress, having performed at regional theaters across the country. She is also a freelance writer for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a “free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide that amplifies progressive, disruptive ideas about the art form and facilitates connection between diverse practitioners.” Additionally, she has been an Assistant Professor of Playwriting at Boston University since 2008, as well as a visiting lecturer of theatre and performance at Wellesley College since 2001. She has a M.A. in Playwriting from Boston University and a B.A. in Drama from Dartmouth College.

In a 2017 interview with the 50 Playwrights Project, Lopez was asked what advice she had for playwrights at the beginning of their career. She responded: “Surround yourself with people who believe in you. Write what you want to write. Tell the truth. Be good to everyone you work with and work for. Listen to actors. Have faith, have faith, have faith.”

During her residency at Boston College, Lopez will teach two classes: Contemporary American Theatre in Fall 2019, and Playwriting I in Spring 2020. In January 2020, the BC Theatre Department will mount a full production of her play Back the Night, which explores the rise in sexual violence on college campuses, to be directed by Pascale Florestal.

David R. Gammons

David R. Gammons is a director, designer, visual artist, and theatre educator.

Recent directing projects include the Boston premieres of The Motherf**ker with the Hat (2013 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production), Red (2012 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production), and Blackbird at SpeakEasy Stage Company; Medea, The Hotel Nepenthe, The Duchess of Malfi, and Titus Andronicus (2007 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director) for Actors’ Shakespeare Project; the world premieres of The Farm by Walt McGough and The Salt Girl by John Kuntz at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre; the New England premieres of Cherry Docs, The Lieutenant of Inishmore and My Name is Rachel Corrie at The New Repertory Theatre; and The Winter’s Tale as part of the Shakespeare Exploded Festival at the American Repertory Theatre. Other recent directing credits include Marlowe's Doctor Faustus at the Modern Theatre; Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro with Brandeis Theatre Company; Eric Bogosian’s subUrbia at MIT; Romeo and Juliet at The Boston Conservatory; and a revival of Arthur Kopit’s Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad as the inaugural production at Harvard University’s New College Theatre. Mr. Gammons’ recent directing projects have been nominated for twenty-three Elliot Norton Awards and thirty Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) Awards.

Mr. Gammons is a graduate of the Directing Program of the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University, where he directed productions of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Marlowe’s Edward II, Artaud’s The Cenci, Genet’s The Balcony, and Pinter’s Party Time and The New World Order. While a directing student, he assisted on A.R.T. productions directed by JoAnne Akalaitis, Ron Daniels, Robert Scanlan, and David Wheeler.

He was the founder and artistic coordinator of Philadelphia’s No More Masterpieces, a performance collective dedicated to generating original dance-theatre work, and conceived and directed their world-premiere productions Spanking the Maid, A Crying of Bones, and Heaven’s Sake. Other original dance-theatre works he has created include Teen Tragedy Trilogy for Headlong Dance Theatre (winner of a 1999 Bessie Award for Outstanding Choreography as part of St*r W*rs and Other Stories), A Winter’s Tale for Pig Iron Theatre Company, Raising Rapunzel for Phantom Theatre, and Exquisite Corpses for Lorraine Chapman: The Company.

Stage designs for the American Repertory Theatre include Robert Woodruff’s production of Richard II, Robert Scanlan’s production of Beckett Trio: Eh Joe, Ghost Trio, and Nacht und Tråume (which toured to Strasbourg, France), and Spencer/Colton’s original dance work Winter Circus. Other Boston area designs include King Lear, Titus Andronicus, The Tempest, The Duchess of Malfi, and The Hotel Nepenthe for Actors’ Shakespeare Project; and designs for SpeakEasy Stage, Coyote Theatre, and Theatre Offensive among many others. Mr. Gammons has designed numerous sets and costumes for productions at the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theatre Training, Suffolk University, Philadelphia’s Headlong Dance Theatre, Pig Iron Theatre Company, and Concord Academy.

Mr. Gammons has served as the Director of the Theatre Program at Concord Academy for the past fourteen years, where he has taught courses in acting, directing, playwriting, and design, and directs a company of performers devoted to developing original experimental work for the stage. At Concord he has directed plays by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Pirandello, Brecht, and Suzan-Lori Parks, and has conceived and directed the world-premiere productions 3SisTerZ, Beauty Sleeping, Sea of Troubles, LHOOQ, When I look up to the sky I get a scary feeling, Tyger/Tiger, Double Negative, (Her) House, Howl, Permanent Fatal Errors, Flux, Volta, and 4am. He has delivered guest lectures on the craft of drama at Harvard University, Emerson College, Brandeis University, Wellesley College, The Boston Conservatory, and Suffolk University, and taught Continuing Education courses at the Arden Theater in Philadelphia. In the fall of 2011, he was a Visiting Lecturer in Theatre at Suffolk University. In 2013-2014, David will serve as the Rev. J. Donald Monan S.J. Professor of Theatre Arts at Boston College.

Mr. Gammons is a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in Visual and Environmental Studies, and studied sculpture, painting, and photography with Ritsuko Taho, Nan Freedman, Rosamund Purcell, and Christopher James. At Harvard he was awarded the 1992 Peter Sellars Director’s Prize. As an undergraduate, he is best remembered for his production of Antonin Artaud’s Jet of Blood, in which the audience was suspended on swings amidst the action.

Robbie McCauley

Robbie McCauley is an OBIE Award playwright for Sally’s Rape, and an internationally recognized performance artist and director. Her most recent play, Sugar, directed by Maureen Shea at ArtsEmerson in Boston received wide critical acclaim,and for her performance an IRNE Award.

Directing credits include Adrienne Kennedy’s Sleep Deprivation Chamber at Penumbra Theatre Co in Minnesota, and Janet Langhart Cohen’s Anne and Emmett at the Jack Morton Theater in Washington D.C. and at Roxbury Repertory Theater in Boston.

Acting credits include For Colored Girls Who’ve Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf on Broadway, and Fences at the Tyrone Guthrie in Minnesota.

She toured with The Arts Company and with New Performance Video as writer and performer in cities across the country and abroad facilitating dialogues on race between local whites, blacks, and other ethnicities.

Widely anthologized, including Extreme Exposure; Moon Marked and Touched by Sun; and Performance and Cultural Politics, Robbie McCauley recently retired from the faculty of Emerson College, which conferred on her Professor Emerita.

Dr. John Bell

Dr. John Bell is a puppeteer, scholar, and teacher whose interests combine practice and theory. He started performing as a puppeteer with the Bread and Puppet Theater, and as a member of that company for over a dozen years learned about the global breadth of puppetry. Recognized as one of the preeminent historians of puppet theater in the US, he performs, directs, and otherwise collaborates with Great Small Works, a Brooklyn-based theater collective. He is the author of Strings, Hands, Shadows: A Modern Puppet History (Detroit Institute of Art), and edited Puppets, Masks, and Performing Objects (MIT Press). His newest book, American Puppet Modernism, a study of US confrontations with puppet and object theater over the past 150 years, will be published by Palgrave-Macmillan in July 2008.

While studying for his Ph.D. in theater history at Columbia University he began to create shows with the group of friends who became Great Small Works. He conceived and directed the Great Small Works production A Mammal's Notebook: The Erik Satie Cabaret, and with his wife Trudi Cohen and son Isaac Bell has created various Great Small Works projects in Boston, where the family lives. He is the author of Strings, Hands, Shadows: A Modern Puppet History, and edited Puppets, Masks, and Performing Objects; a forthcoming book project is American Puppet Modernism. He is a Contributing Editor to The Drama Review and the Historian of Puppetry International, for whom he edited the Fall/Winter 2006 issue devoted to puppet scripts. He is recognized internationally as an expert on the history of puppet theater.

John's activities at the Center in Spring 2008 include his course "Performance, Art, Technology: Practice and Theory," an undergraduate and graduate class offered through the Music and Theater Arts Department. The class will explore the relationships among technology, culture, and performance in different societies at different times in two ways: by reading, discussing, and writing about texts, films, and images; and by creating performances in different media that respond to the techniques and issues raised in the class. The course will culminate with the design, construction, and performance of site-specific elements around the MIT campus as part of Professor Thomas DeFrantz's Dance All Over MIT performances in May.

Paul Daigneault

Paul Daigneault is the Founder and Producing Artistic Director of SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston, a mid-sized resident regional theater that is currently celebrating its twentieth season. His leadership has made SpeakEasy one of the most successful and respected professional theaters in New England, with a strong reputation for producing regional premieres of contemporary musicals and plays. He has directed more than half of SpeakEasy's roughly one hundred productions over the past twenty years.

Daigneault is a 1987 graduate of Boston College, the first BC alum to hold the prestigious Monan Professorship in Theatre Arts. During his year-long residency, he will direct a production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's critically acclaimed musical Into the Woods as part of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Robsham Theater Arts Center. He will also teach an advanced class in Musical Theater Performance, serve as a mentor to student directors, and guest lecturer in other courses.

Daigneault has not been a stranger to Boston College in recent years. For the Theatre department, he directed Craig Lucas's Blue Window in 2002 and the irreverent musical Urinetown in 2008. In 2007, in recognition of his success with SpeakEasy, Paul received the Alumni Award for Distinguished Achievement from the Arts Council of Boston College.

Founded in 1992 SpeakEasy worked out of St. Augustine's School in South Boston where Paul taught sixth and seventh grade. In 2007, SpeakEasy was named the Pavilion Resident Theater for the Boston Center for the Arts, where it performs in the Nancy and Ed Roberts Studio Theater for more than half the year. In 2008, the company received StageSource's Theater Hero Award, given annually to "an exceptional member of the Greater Boston theatre community who has demonstrated a history of service and commitment to the community through leadership, support, inspiration, innovation and promotion of the art of theatre throughout the region."

The Monan Professorship in Theatre Arts was established in 2007 by a generous gift to Boston College in honor of University Chancellor and former BC President J. Donald Monan S.J.. The position, which also commemorates the late Trustee E. Paul Robsham, enables the Theatre department to bring nationally and internationally known professional theatre artists to Boston College to teach and work with undergraduate students. Daigneault will be the fifth visiting Monan Professor in Theatre Arts, following actor Karen MacDonald in the current 2010-2011 academic year, as well as director Carmel O'Reilly, actor Remo Airaldi, and Broadway music director Mary Mitchell Campbell.

Karen MacDonald

Karen MacDonald is a Boston-based actor who has worked all over the USA and toured to international festivals. She is the recipient of the 2010 Eliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence awarded by the Boston Theatre Critics Association and the 2010 Robert Brustein Award for Sustained Achievement in the Theatre presented by the American Repertory Theatre. During her Monan residency, she will teach master classes in acting and improvisation, serve as an acting coach for Theatre Department productions, and offer workshops in audition technique.

Karen MacDonald is an accomplished actor who has distinguished herself in a wide variety of classic and contemporary roles, from Madame Arkadina in Chekhov's The Seagull and the title role in Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children to cutting-edge new plays by Rinde Eckert, Charles Mee, and Anne Washburn. She is a founding company member of the American Repertory Theatre, where she appeared in seventy productions and worked with such renowned directors as Robert Woodruff, Andrei Serban, Martha Clarke, JoAnne Akalaitis, and Les Waters. Last season, she appeared at the Huntington Theatre Company as Kate Keller in Arthur Miller's All My Sons directed by David Esbjornson, and as Mary Todd Lincoln in Paula Vogel's A Civil War Christmas, at the New Rep in boom and at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre playing all seven roles in Robert Hewett's The Blonde, The Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead.

"We feel lucky to have Karen as a member of our community this year," said Scott T. Cummings, Chair of the Theatre department. "Our students will be learning from a master." The citation on the 2010 Eliot Norton Prize celebrated her as "an actress of phenomenal versatility, who for three decades has enriched our stages with indelible characterizations."

MacDonald received her professional training at Boston University and began her career in Boston with The Proposition, famous for its improvisational comedy revues, and was a founder of Next Move Theatre. She has worked in New York at the Roundabout, Second Stage, Playwrights Horizons and Theatre for a New Audience and at major resident theaters around the country (Hartford Stage, Berkeley Rep, Long Wharf Theatre, The Goodman in Chicago, and others). From 1993-95 she was a company member of Houston's Alley Theatre, where she worked with legendary diretor José Quintero.

In the 2010-2011 theater season, during her teaching residency at Boston College, Boston audiences can see MacDonald perform in the Huntington Theatre Company's production of Bus Stop, the Boston Playwrights Theatre production of Two Wives in India, Arts Emerson's The Color of Rose and The Drowsy Chaperone at SpeakEasy Stage Company.

The Monan Professorship in Theatre Arts was established in 2007 by a generous gift to Boston College in honor of University Chancellor and former BC President J. Donald Monan S.J.. The position, which also commemorates the late Trustee E. Paul Robsham, enables the Theatre Department to bring nationally and internationally known professional theater artists to Boston College to teach and work with undergraduate students. MacDonald is the fourth Monan visiting artist, following director Carmel O'Reilly, actor Remo Airaldi, and Broadway music director Mary Mitchell Campbell.

For more information on Karen MacDonald, the Monan Professorship, or the BC Theatre department, contact Scott T. Cummings at 617-552-4012.

Remo Airaldi

In his 16th year as a resident company member at the American Repertory Theater, Remo Airaldi has performed in over sixty A.R.T. productions. Previous roles include Casca in Julius Caesar, The Master of Ceremonies in The Onion Cellar, Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist, The Valet in No Exit (in Cambridge and on tour at Hartford Stage and Montclair Performing Arts Center), Arleguin in Island of Slaves, Peter in Romeo and Juliet, the Captain, Mister Green, and Head Porter in Amerika, Nurse in Dido, Queen of Carthage, the Constable in The Provoked Wife, McCann in The Birthday Party, Francis Flute in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Mesrou in La Dispute, Ilya Ilych Telegin in Uncle Vanya, Old Man in Lysistrata, Cucurucu in Marat/Sade, Prince of Aragon in The Merchant of Venice, Father Donnally/Doctor in The Marriage of Bette and Boo, Antonio in The Tempest, Matt of the Mint in The Threepenny Opera, Mistress Quickly/Governor of Harfleur/Le Fer in Henry V, Pozzo in Waiting for Godot, Chorus/Doorkeeper in The Orestia, Pishtchik in The Cherry Orchard, Mistress Quickly in Henry IV, parts one & two, along with several other roles.

Airaldi has also taught acting at Harvard University.

Mary-Mitchell Campbell

A composer, music director, music supervisor, orchestrator, conductor, and teacher. Mary-Mitchell Campbell is one of the brightest and most acclaimed musical artists in New York theatre. She won a 2006-2007 Drama Desk Award for her orchestration of Company, for which she also served as music director.

Ms. Campbell has worked on New York productions of Next to Normal, Company, Sweeney Todd, Beauty and the Beast, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Prince and the Pauper, First Lady Suite, The World of Nicky Adams, Our Town, Go Go Beach, The Screams of Kittle Genovese, The Audience, and Sweet Charity at Lincoln Center.

Mary-Mitchell also holds the distinction of being one of the youngest individuals to ever serve on the faculty at the Julliard School.

She is the founder and chair of Artists Striving to End Poverty, an international organization that seeks to empower young children through self-expression.

Mary-Mitchell is a native of North Carolina and holds degrees from the North Carolina School of the Arts and Furman University.