Josh Costello
Josh Costello is MTC’s Artistic Director of Expanded Programs. He directed My Children! My Africa! in 2009 and Lovers and Executioners in 2007, as well as our School Tour productions of A Short History of Nearly Everything, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and Animal vs. Animal: an Aesop's Fables mashup. He was the Education Director at Marin Shakespeare Company, and has taught at ACT, Cal Shakes, SF Shakes, UC Riverside, Cal State Long Beach, South Coast Rep, and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Hollywood. Josh has directed dozens of plays up and down the west coast, including House of Lucky at The Magic, Hamlet at Shakespeare-by-the-Sea in LA, and his adaptation of The Rover for The Chance Theater in Orange County and for a live television broadcast on LA and Orange County's PBS affiliate. He collaborated on Romeo and Juliet: A Fire Ballet at The Crucible in Oakland. Josh was the founder and first Artistic Director of Impact Theatre. He holds a BFA in Theatre from Boston University, and an MFA in Directing from the University of Washington, Seattle.

Lauren Bloom
Lauren Bloom is a Marin native who happily returned to the Bay Area last August after three years of living in New York City. She received her Bachelors Degree from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut and her MFA in Acting from the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. She has taught at both Marin Academy and San Domenico High Schools, as well as working with the Shakespeare Society's School Visit program in New York. As an actress she has worked with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, The Actor's Company Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Columbia Stages and TheatreFIRST, along with Middlemarch Films, Titan TV and What Productions.

Candace Brown
Candace is a teacher and professional actor. She has performed at the Marin Fringe Festival, College of Marin, Theater Rhinoceros and the Lesher Center for the Arts. Her favorite role was Maggie Mundy in Dancing at Lughnasa directed by Molly Noble and performed at the College of Marin. She was nominated for a Bay Area Theatre Critics Award for her performance in Condoms at the 2008 Marin Fringe Fall Festival. Other roles include Nurse Becky Hedges in Bad Habits, Mrs. Archer in the original production of Serenity in Central Park, Anfisa in Chekhov's Three Sisters and Mme de Rosemonde in the upcoming 2010 Porchlight production. Candace received her BA and Teaching Credential from Sonoma State University.

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Michael Cappelli
Michael Cappelli has a Masters in Theatre Education from Emerson College.  He recently moved to the Bay Area, and started teaching with MTC as a part of our 2008 Summer Camp program.  Previous teaching experience includes P.S. Arts in Los Angeles,  New York Film Academy, Boston Renaissance Charter School, and Rhode Island School of Design.  Michael is also an actor, and is appearing this Fall in a production at the Oakland Public Theater.

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Kristin Clippard
Kristin has taught theatre to children, teens and adults for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music Preparatory Department, the Orlando Shakespeare Festival, Tony Award winning Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, the Cincinnati Opera, the Victoria Theatre Association, the Children’s Theatre of Mason, and Rising Phoenix Theatre Company.

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Blanca Florido
Blanca Florido is a very active performer and director/choreographer in Marin, and holds degrees in both theatre and music. She last directed and choreographed Guys and Dolls for Novato Theater Company, and is a BATCC-nominated choreographer for their production of Urinetown. She has taught jazz dance for 8 years, and choreographed the last two MTC Summer Camps. She has also directed and choreographed for Yes Theatre and Stapleton Theatre Company children’s programs. As a performer, Blanca appeared in dozens of stage plays and operas in Florida and on national tours before moving to California, where she most recently played Jacquenetta in Love’s Labours Lost. She is also active in voiceover, and in her spare time Blanca wrote a fantasy novel she hopes to publish. Together with Jef Labes, she has also written a musical for children’s theatre based on the legend of King Arthur and his apprenticeship with Merlin. Blanca is happy to be back at the MTC summer camps!

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Nancy Gold
Nancy Gold is a multifaceted performing artist, director, and teacher. Her passion for theater is expressed in the arts of mime, mask, movement, clowning, juggling, acting, writing, and improvisation. She studied physical theater with Jacques LeCoq in Paris at Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques LeCoq, mime with Claude Kipnis and clowning with Ctibor Turba. She holds a BFA from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana and a Master’s Equivalency Degree. Ms. Gold teaches at The ACT Young Conservatory in San Francisco and The Berkeley Rep School of Theatre. Her performing arts program, BodyTalk…PowerTools has been honored by The Patron Saint’s Foundation and The Parson’s Foundation at the Marianne Frostig Center in Pasadena. It has been featured on magazine shows and in the Los Angeles Times. Ms. Gold teaches workshops and residencies at schools and universities throughout the country. She lives in San Francisco and performs her comedy characters with her partner and husband Lol Levy. 

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Lauren Gunderson
Lauren is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and short story author. She received her MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch and her BA from Emory University. Her work has received national praise and awards including the Berrila Kerr Award for American Theatre, Young Playwrights' Award, Eric Bentley New Play Award and Essential Theatre Prize. Her science-history play Emilie premiered at South Coast Rep and is published by Samuel French. Her play A Short History of Nearly Everything inaugurated MTC's School Tour program, and her play Rock Hill: Southern Gothic appeard in MTC's New Works program.

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Jessica Holt
Jessica Holt has taught acting at UC Berkeley , the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, and the Arts Bridge program in Los Angeles public schools.  She holds an MA in Theatre and Performance Studies from UC Berkeley.  She has worked with Magic Theatre, TheatreWorks, and many other Bay Area companies, and will be directing an upcoming production with the Ross Valley Players.

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Melpomene Katakalos
Melpomene Katakalos returns to MTC where she most recently designed Woody Guthrie's American Song. She has designed scenery for over 60 productions for Bay Area companies including A.C.T. Conservatory, Aurora Theatre, Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Thick Description, SF Playhouse, Traveling Jewish Theatre, Word for Word, Cal Shakes, CenterREP, Theatre Works, Magic Theatre, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Mellie is a founding member of Crowded Fire, dedicated to producing new and contemporary works. She is twice the recipient of the San Diego Playbill Award for her designs and was named Best Set Designer of 2008 in The East Bay Express. Upcoming projects include the scenic design for the television version of the PBS show Snap Judgement. She teaches scenic design at UC Berkeley. She recieved her MFA from UC San Diego and a BFA from Ithaca College.

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Laurie Keith
Laurie Keith received a BFA in Acting from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, with a minor in Broadcast News Journalism.  She has also completed a Masters degree in Classical Acting from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.  She has studied with David Mamet, William H. Macy, Felicity Huffman and Cameron Manheim at the Atlantic Theatre Co. in NYC.  She has taught in the Bay Area for the past 8 years.  Her teaching credits include; Marin Theatre Company, Judy Berlin’s Kids on Camera, Marin Shakespeare Co., Foothill Theatre Co., New Conservatory Theatre Center and The Yes Program for Children’s Theatre.  She has performed Off-Broadway at the Grove St. Playhouse, Atlantic Theatre Co., and LA MaMa ETC, where she wrote and directed an original one act. Her work is published in The Best Women’s Monologues ’98 (Smith &Kraus).  Laurie toured 40 states performing with The National Theatre for the Performing Arts.  She has also performed in the SF Bay Area with the Marin, San Francisco, Sierra, and Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festivals, as well as with Pacific Alliance Stage Co., Theatre Works and the Mountain Play Association. Television credits include; Pandora (Lifetime), A Private Affair (BET), Full (PBS), and New Living (KRON).  Commercial credits include, Pearle Vision, Yahoo! and Levi’s. Her most recent voice over credits include, California State Fair and Lone Mountain Credit Union.  

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Jef Labes
Jef has been happily writing songs for musicals over the past 25 years and has had productions of The “It” Girl, The Odyssey, Tik Tok of Oz, Peer Gynt, Diana, the Musical, Little Women, Lickety Split, Rumpelstilskin, Bye Bye Bin Laden, Shoes, Alice Altogether, and Alice Underground. He teaches music to elementary students at the Dover School in San Pablo, and performs weekends at several Bay Area hot spots, including Bing Crosby’s in Walnut Creek, and Martuni’s in San Francisco. His best-known work has been with Van Morrison, Bonnie Raitt, Saturday Night Live, and Heathcliff the Cat.

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Joan Mankin
Joan Mankin has been a company member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Pickle Family Circus, the Dell'Arte Players Company, and Make-A-Circus. In addition, she has performed with The American Conservatory Theater; the California and San Francisco Shakespeare Festivals, San Diego Rep, Marin Theater Company, Aurora Theater, Theaterworks, A Traveling Jewish Theater, San Jose Stage Company, and the Magic Theater. She has directed for Circus Center, the Magic Theater, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Make-A-Circus, the Phoenix Theater, Theaterworks of Colorado Springs, the Bricks and Earth Circus of Calgary, Canada, and the San Francisco New Vaudeville Festival. Joan holds an MFA in theater and has taught at San Francisco State University, University of California at Santa Cruz, Antioch University in Ohio, the American Conservatory Theater, the Dell'Arte School of Physical Performance, and the High School of the Performing Arts in San Francisco.

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Susannah Martin
Susannah is a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. For five years she served as the Joint Artistic Director of Paducah Mining Co., a San Francisco-based theatre ensemble that produced acclaimed work by established playwrights and devised original pieces on such complex matters as domestic terrorism, spousal abuse, and poverty in America. Ms. Martin has been honored to receive two Dean Goodman Choice Awards for directing in 1999 and 2002. Recently she assistant directed for London-based theatre artist Irina Brown on Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, and directed a critically acclaimed production of Strindberg's Miss Julie at UC Davis.

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Dyan McBride
Dyan is thrilled to be working with Marin Theatre Company and is so happy to direct Urinetown, one of her favorite musicals. As an actress and director she has worked with such companies as 42nd Street Moon, Laguna Playhouse, Golden State Productions, NCTC, Pacific Alliance Theatre Company, Actors Theatre of Sonoma, Broadway By the Bay, Willows, Napa Rep, Solano College Theatre, Sideshow Physical Theatre, Mondavi Center, Utah Musical Theatre and Performance Riverside to name a few. TV/Film credits include Comcast Sports Net, Yahoo! Progressive Auto Insurance, Nintendo, Charles Schwab, Hewlett Packard, IBM and many short films and web based projects. She serves on the acting faculty at NCTC, UC Davis, Solano College and is an artistic associate with 42nd Street Moon, where she has been a company member for 15 years. BA-CSU- Fullerton (musical theatre). MFA-UC Davis (acting). She is a member of the acting unions SAG, AEA and AFTRA. She is represented by Boom Models and Talent in San Francisco. She has won or been nominated for the BATCC , Dean Goodman, Garland, Irene Ryan, Arty and Elly awards. Upcoming projects include: -Call Me Madam (directing at 42nd Street Moon), Jubilee (playing party giver Eva Standing at 42nd Street Moon) and she will cap off a great run by portraying Patsy Cline in Always …Patsy Cline at Sacramento Theatre Company in Spring 2010.

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Julia McNeal
An award-winning actress, Julia McNeal has been appearing on stage and screen in New York, Los Angeles and regionally for over 20 years. Bay Area credits include: Enid in Roulette at the SF Playhouse, Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire at Pacific Alliance Stage Company, Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Actors Theatre of San Francisco, Alma in Summer and Smoke at Center Repertory Theatre, and as Stella Kerouac and Carolyn Cassady in Marin Theatre Company's Visions of Kerouac. Julia was a founding member of the Obie Award-winning, Cucaracha Theatre in NYC, where she originated many roles including Edie in Richard Caliban's Famine Plays. Other New York theatre credits include the acclaimed Requiem for a Heavyweight at the Kraine Theatre and Neena Beber's Tomorrowland at Soho Rep. Los Angeles: Elsa in Ellen McLaughlin's Days and Nights Within. (DramaLogue Award)Regional: Viola in Twelfth Night, Monmouth, ME; Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker, Louisville, KY. Notable screen credits include: Pearl in Hal Hartley's The Unbelievable Truth, Sarah in Steve Kloves' Flesh and Bone, Annie, in Adrienne Shelly’s Urban Legend, as well as appearances on Law and Order and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.

Julia has been a teacher and director for MTC’s summer conservatory for the last 4 years.  She is a Guest Artist at Tamalpais High School, where she recently co-directed an acclaimed production of Dead Man Walking. Other teaching credits: Acting: Windhover Center for the Performing Arts in Massachusetts; Yoga: Dance Space Center, NYC.  She also coaches private students – both adults and teens. Training: B.A. in Dramatic Arts from Dartmouth College; Meisner Technique with Chris Fields in L.A.; Linklater Voice Technique and Shakespeare with Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MASS; Classical Scene Study with Ada Brown Mather, NYC; Modern Scene Study with Anthony Abeson, NYC. Dance: Jazz and Modern with Lynn Simonson, Sasha Soreff and others, NYC; Ballet with Stefan Wenta, L.A.

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Hope Mirlis
Hope wears many hats - performer, producer, administrator, and educator. A native New Yorker, she spent over a decade in Atlanta where she co-founded Synchronicity Theatre and was its Co-Producing Artistic Director from 1996-2006. Hope received her MFA from the UC Davis in June 2009. She was awarded a coveted Civic Arts grant from the City of Davis in 2009 to create and present The Dada Cabaret, a one-day festival on the streets of Davis honoring the Dada art movement. Hope now calls the Bay Area her home and teaches playwriting, movement, acting, yoga, hip hop dance with various programs including MTC, Cal Shakes and UC Davis. She also works in production with San Francisco-based dance companies Epiphany Productions, Anne Bluethenthal and Dancers, as well as Jess Curtis/Gravity. This year she was nominated for a Bay Area Critic’s Circle Award for her performance in Diablo Theatre Company’s production of On the Town. www.hopemirlis.com.

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Christopher Morrison
Christopher Morrison is a director/performer/choreographer who has many international and local credits. He has performed with Cirque du Soleil, was the Outreach Coordinator for the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, taught in Bathurst Australia and is now an Artist in Residence at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. He has just completed his first short film (written and directed) Less Than Kind which is a Sundance hopeful.

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Peter Sinn Nachtrieb
Peter Sinn Nachtrieb is a San Francisco-based playwright whose works include boom, Hunter Gatherers, Colorado, Meaningless, and The Amorphous Blob. Hunter Gatherers received the 2007 American Theatre Critics Association/Steinberg New Play Award for best new play to premiere outside of New York and the 2007 Will Glickman Prize for best new play in the Bay Area. His work has been seen at Ars Nova and SPF in New York, the Bailiwick in Chicago, W.H.A.T. in New England, Dad’s Garage in Atlanta and the Magic Theatre, Killing My Lobster and Impact Theatre in the Bay Area. He is currently under commission from Encore Theatre Company (SF) and South Coast Rep and is a 2008 Resident Playwright at the Playwrights Foundation, San Francisco. Peter holds a degree in Theater and Biology from Brown and an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. He likes to promote himself online at www.peternachtrieb.com

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Monica Norcia
Voice teacher, music director and performer Monica Norcia is excited about helping MTC’s teens bring Urinetown to life. Active in both adult and children’s local theater, she most recently music directed Novato Theater Company’s production of Crazy for You, as well as Seussical at Marin Horizon and A Connecticut Yankee at Brookside School. On stage, she was last seen as the Fairy Godmother in Stapleton Theater’s production of Cinderella, the Countess in NTC’s A Little Night Music, and as Amalia Balash in NTC’s She Loves Me. She has music directed productions all over the Bay Area, working with such companies as the Alameda Civic Light Opera, Masquers and Contra Costa Musical Theater, in such shows as Oklahoma, West Side Story, Guys and Dolls, Victor, Victoria, The Fantasticks, The Most Happy Fella, The Sound of Music, and Man of La Mancha. A graduate of the opera program at Cal State Hayward, she teaches voice and the Alexander Technique in her studios in San Rafael and at the Pacheco Playhouse. She has taught Alexander workshops at Musical Theater of San Jose, the Contra Costa Children’s Theater and the Oakland Symphony Chorus. The Alexander Technique teaches us how to free ourselves from deeply ingrained habits in order to move freely through life.

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Ryan O'Donnell
Ryan O’Donnell has directed the Middle School and Youth Camp plays at MTC for four years. He is also on the faculty at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, directs plays in the Ross Valley School district, and works as the drama teacher for Dixie Elementary School. He holds a B.A. in Literature from Carleton College, and an M.F.A. in Acting from DePaul. He acts regularly in the Bay Area, often with the Shotgun Players in Berkeley and foolsFury in San Francisco – he is a member of both companies.

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SB Parks
S.B. Parks is a puppet designer, director, performer, builder and teacher. Her puppetry work has been seen in the Bay Area in Where the Sidewalk Ends at Boxcar Theatre, Meet the Samsas, for which she received a Theatre Bay Area CA$H grant, also at Boxcar, and at Twin Lakes Church in Aptos in the form of a giant puppet nativity. She teaches puppetry to kids in school, after school, and at summer camp. S.B. can be seen performing at libraries throughout the Bay Area this summer.

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Tommy Shepherd
In addition to teaching, Tommy (AKA Soulati) is an actor, playwright, b-boy, rapper, drummer, and beatboxer. He is cofounder of Felonious: onelovehiphop. Writing, composing, and acting credits include Stateless at TJT, and Angry Black White Boy, Hamlet: Blood in the Brain by Naomi Iizuka, A Fist of Roses by Philip Kan Gotanda, A Place To Stand, and Domino, all created with Campo Santo and Intersection for the Arts.

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Steve Yockey
Steve Yockey is a roaming member of Out of Hand Theater. His projects with the company include HELP! and Cartoon. In January 2008, Actor's Express Theatre in Atlanta, GA presented the world premiere of Octopus, followed in May/June by an extended run in San Francisco, co-produced by Encore Theatre Company and Magic Theatre. He is a regular fixture at Dad's Garage Theatre Company including the short play cycle Sleepy, a work commissioned to inaugurate the second stage “Top Shelf” series, and the adults-only Skin - both directed by Kate Warner. Dad’s Garage and Berkeley’s Impact Theatre will co-world premiere the new play Large Animal Games this fall. Other plays include: Afterlife, Bellwether, Heavier than... and Bliss. He is currently working on commissions for NYU Graduate Acting, Marin Theatre Company and South Coast Rep. His work has been produced/developed by Encore Theatre, The Boston Court, Reykjavic City Theatre, The Lark, The Kennedy Center, The Public Theatre and others. Steve is a Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of Georgia and holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He recently completed a Coca-Cola Artists Residency teaching dramatic structure at Emory University and is currently the NNPN Playwright-in-Residence at Marin Theatre Company..

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Eleni Zaharopoulos
Eleni Zaharopoulos is a multimedia artist living in San Francisco. She received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and is also a graduate of the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre. Since graduating, Eleni has taught Commedia Dell'Arte at Idyllwild Arts Academy, has toured with the Traveling Lantern Theatre Company, performing panto style theatre for children all over Northern California, has taught visual arts for the Marin based non-profit, Youth In Arts, and has been a storyteller for Golden Thread's touring children's ensemble. She is also an ensemble member of the very funny clown show, Simple Matters, and one part of the comedic duo, Lady and Jeffrit! Eleni is currently the birthday activities coordinator at zeum, a children's multi-media museum in San Francisco.

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Kathryn Zdan
Kathryn Zdan is a native of Mill Valley. She recieved her B.F.A. in Theater from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her M.F.A. in Ensemble Based Physical Theatre from the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake. She spent a season with Shakespeare Santa Cruz, and in the summer of 2008 performed in Holland and Spain with the Amsterdam based, internationally acclaimed street theatre company, Warner & Consorten. Currently she lives in San Francisco and teaches physical theater as a guest artist at Tamalpais High School, Mill Valley Middle School and the 142 Throckmorten Theatre and the Flying Actor studio in San Francisco, and performs with companies around the Bay Area..

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