DEAR FRIENDS,
On behalf of the University of Notre Dame, I welcome you to the 2024 season of the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival, an important tradition for our campus and the local community.
As we all know, the arts provide an important avenue for fostering learning and building lasting connections. Year after year, the Festival provides a wide range of educational and entertainment opportunities that invite us to engage with the power and excitement of one of the world’s most influential and provocative playwrights and poets. I hope you will take advantage of as many of the opportunities afforded by the Festival as you can.
Congratulations and thank you to all those involved in making these events possible. We are proud of your efforts and inspired by your talents, energy, and vision.
In Notre Dame,
Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C. President University of Notre Dame
GREETINGS!
On behalf of the City of South Bend, welcome to the 2024 Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival!
The Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival has been a beloved summer tradition for over two decades. It is an honor to be part of a community that embraces the arts, and we are excited to have the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival Professional Company back to perform one of Shakespeare’s greatest tales with As You Like It at the University’s beautiful DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.
We are grateful to the cast, crew, staff, and volunteers, along with the University of Notre Dame for its continuation of this summer tradition in South Bend. To the cast of As You Like It: Break a leg! And to the festival attendees, enjoy the show!
Sincerely, Mayor James Mueller
DEAR FRIENDS:
Welcome to the Forest of Arden and the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival Professional Company’s first production of Shakespeare’s beloved As You Like It!
The word Arden derived from the Old English “heordenne,” defined as “the valley of eagles.” Over time this definition evolved to reflect a place of solitude and great beauty—as well as just happening to be the surname of William Shakespeare’s mother, Mary Arden.
How fitting then that after years of traversing the valleys of enforced isolation and disconnection, we are once more daring to soar and look beyond today into the potential of tomorrow. Our lives were forever changed during those dark days that shuttered the world in March 2020, and one of the most notable transformations in our reemergence is how quickly the way we connect with one another in a (nearly) post-pandemic era has shifted. What becomes of the very fabric of community as we embark on a new technological era where the idealized digital persona often takes precedence over the imperfect physical self? Can we, living in a world of Insta-this and Amazon-that, regain our
ability to find “tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing”?
As You Like It contains some of Shakespeare’s greatest ruminations on this theme as he juxtaposes the artificial, material world of the court onto the natural, bucolic existence of the inhabitants of Arden. The merriment that ensues from this unlikely “marriage” speaks as much to this moment in our cultural evolution as it did over 400 years ago when it was written.
We hope you enjoy the show as much as we have enjoyed creating our own very special world of Arden for you!
Scott Jackson
Mary Irene Ryan Executive Artistic Director Shakespeare at Notre Dame
The
AS YOU LIKE IT
CAST
The de Boys Household
ORLANDO, youngest son of Sir Roland de Boys: Felix Teich
OLIVIA, Orlando’s older sister: April Sellers
JACK, the middle brother: Dominic Keene
ADAM, an elderly servant to the de Boys family: Mary Neufeld
The Court
DUKE FREDERICK, the usurping younger brother of the exiled Duke Seena: George Azcárate
CELIA, his daughter: Abigail Gillan*
ROSALIND, her best friend, daughter to the exiled Duke Seena: Julia Valen*
TOUCHSTONE, the court jester: Brennan Caldwell*
MONSIEUR & MADAME LE BEAU, a pair of married courtiers: Gabriel Armstrong, Morgan Ford
CHARLES, the duke’s champion wrestler: Tim Merkle
SECOND LORD, crony to Duke Frederick Melíza Gutierrez
FIRST LORD, likewise: Noah Sim
The Forest of Arden
DUKE SEENA, exiled former ruler and older sister to Duke Frederick: TayLar*
AMIENS, one of her companions in exile; a singer: Gabriel Armstrong
DIANA, likewise: Morgan Ford
WILLIAM, likewise: Dominic Keene
JAQUES, also a companion to Duke Seena; known for her melancholy: Sarah Scanlon
A strange COMRADE of Duke Seena's group: Mark Young
CORA, an old shepherd: Mary Neufeld
SILVIUS, her young friend and fellow shepherd, smitten with Phebe: Noah Sim
PHEBE, a shepherdess, not smitten with Silvius: Melíza Gutierrez
AUBREY, a goatherd: Tim Merkle
SIR OLIVER MARTEXT, a forest-dwelling priest: Mark Young
A DEER: Mark Young
HYMEN, the god of fertility, marriage, the forest: Mark Young
Act 1 runs approximiately 1 hour, 20 minutes; Act 2 runs approximately 65 minutes.
* This artist appears through the courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.
PRODUCTION TEAM
Sara Holdren: Director
*Olivia Louise Tree Plath: Stage Manager
+Elivia Bovenzi Blitz: Costume Designer
+Inseung Park: Scenic Designer
Jen Rock: Lighting Designer
+Kate Marvin: Sound Designer & Composer
Greg Corbino: Puppet Designer
Leah Jordan: Props Master / Designer
Tobias Garcia: Assistant Props Master / Puppet Operator
Tiana Mudzimurema: Assistant Director
Allison Pajor: Text Coach
Sarah Scanlon: Intimacy Coordinator / Fight Choreographer
Kathy Reynolds: Assistant Production Manager / Mentor
Carolyn Dell: Assistant Stage Manager / Puppet Operator
Ella Robertson: Assistant Stage Manager / Puppet Operator
* This artist appears through the courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.
+ This individual is a member of the United Scenic Artists, Local 829, a union of designers and artists in the entertainment industry.
PRODUCTION TEAM
Natalie Bowman: Cutter / Draper
Erin Bryant: Cutter / Draper
Emily Chidalek: Costume Shop Artisan
Lynn Holbrook: Costume Shop Manager
Deborah Mayers: Stitcher / Wardrobe Head Dresser
Abigail Moody: Costume Shop Artisan
Emma Rader: Costume Shop Artisan / Wardrobe Run Crew
Naya Tadavarthy: Costume Shop Artisan / Wardrobe Run Crew
Kathleen Werner: Stitcher
Brenton Abram-Copenhaver: Assistant Technical Director
Hayden Elowsky: Scene Shop Artisan / Carpenter
Emma Greenfield: Scene Shop Artisan / Carpenter
Jenna Sarrazin: Scene Shop Artisan / Carpenter / Scenic Artist / Run Crew
Jeff Szymanowski: Technical Director / Scenic Artist
Matt Anderson: Sound Artisan / Sound Board Operator
Andrew Cora: Light Board Operator
Aimee Cole: Puppet Artisan
Jason Swift: Master Electrician
Avery Trimm: Run Crew
STAFF
SHAKESPEARE AT NOTRE DAME STAFF
Jenny Birkett: Postdoctoral Research Associate / Infection Control Specialist
Cate Cappelmann: General Manager
Jason Comerford: Audience Development Manager
Kevin Dreyer: Producer
Debra Gasper: Ryan Family Producing Director
Don Hunter: Production Manager
Zac Hunter: Interim Production Manager
Scott Jackson: Mary Irene Ryan Family Executive Artistic Director
Avery Trimm: Arts Administrative Assistant
DEBARTOLO PERFORMING ARTS CENTER STAFF
Josh Ingle: Audio Visual Systems Engineer
Brian Nulle: Production Manager
Sarah Prince: Director of Technical Services
Alex Schiedler: Facilities Manager
Jason Swift: Assistant Production Manager
LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival acknowledges our presence in the traditional homelands of Native peoples including the Haudenosauneega, Miami, Peoria, all of the Bodéwadkmik / Potawatomi peoples, and particularly the Pokégnek Bodéwadmik / Pokagon Potawatomi, who utilized this land for education, art, storytelling, and life for thousands of years and continue to do so.
L to R: Julia Valen (Rosalind / Ensemble), Abigail Gillan (Celia / Ensemble), Sara Holdren (Director), TayLar (Duke Seena / Ensemble) (above), Sarah Scanlon (Jaques / Ensemble) (below), Brennan Caldwell (Touchstone / Ensemble), Felix Teich (Orlando / Ensemble).
Photos by Peter Ringenberg
L to R: Julia Valen (Rosalind / Ensemble), Abigail Gillan (Celia / Ensemble), Felix Teich (Orlando / Ensemble).
Sarah Scanlon (Jaques / Ensemble), Brennan Caldwell (Touchstone / Ensemble)
TayLar (Duke Seena / Ensemble), Julia Valen (Rosalind / Ensemble).
Abigail Gillan (Celia / Ensemble) (above), Julia Valen (Rosalind / Ensemble) (below).
PHOTO GALLERY
Gabriel Armstrong
George Azcárate
Brennan Caldwell
Morgan Ford
Melíza Gutierrez
Abigail Gillan
Dominic Keene
Timothy Merkle
Mary Neufeld
Sarah Scanlon
April Sellers
Noah Sim
TayLar
Felix Teich
Julia Valen
Mark Young
THE STORY
Duke Seena (Duke Senior in Shakespeare’s original text) has been deposed by her younger brother, Frederick, and banished to the Forest of Arden. Rosalind, Duke Seena’s daughter, however, remains at Duke Frederick’s court at the behest of her cousin, Celia. Meanwhile, Orlando, the youngest child of the recently deceased Sir Roland de Boys, is being treated unfairly by his older sister Olivia (adapted from Shakespeare’s Oliver). Upset, Orlando challenges the court wrestler, Charles, to a fight. Olivia persuades Charles to try to wound Orlando.
Rosalind and Celia watch the wrestling match. Unexpectedly, Orlando wins. Rosalind is smitten with him, giving him her necklace. Orlando immediately falls for Rosalind. He learns of Olivia’s plot against him and flees to Arden. Threatened by Rosalind’s presence in his court, Duke Frederick banishes her. Rosalind, Celia, and Touchstone the clown, decide to head to the forest. For safety, Rosalind and Celia disguise themselves as a boy named Ganymede and a shepherdess named Aliena. Once Duke Frederick learns of their flight, he orders Olivia to pursue Orlando.
In the forest, Rosalind (as Ganymede) and Celia (as Aliena) discover a lovesick shepherd named Silvius pursuing Phebe, a contemptuous shepherdess. Not far away, Duke Seena, her exiled courtiers, and huntsmen welcome Orlando and his servant Adam to their community. Orlando takes to writing love poems for Rosalind on trees. When Rosalind (as Ganymede) discovers this, she tells Orlando he must be cured of his lovesickness. Orlando agrees to practice wooing Ganymede as if he were Rosalind (though, of course, “he” really is Rosalind). Meanwhile, Phebe unwittingly falls for Ganymede and Touchstone courts a goatherd named Aubrey (re-gendered from Shakespeare’s Audrey).
In a tussle with a lioness, Orlando saves his sister’s life, injuring himself in the process. When Olivia relates the tale to Ganymede and Aliena, she and Celia quickly fall in love. Rosalind decides it is time to end her game with Orlando and concocts a plan to get everyone happily married with the help of Hymen, the god of marriage.
On the wedding day, Orlando's brother Jack returns from University with news that Duke Frederick has abandoned the court to become a hermit, allowing Duke Seena to reclaim her dukedom. The play ends with a celebration of the four marriages and an original Epilogue delivered by Rosalind.
A NOTE FROM DIRECTOR SARA HOLDREN
It doesn’t have to be the way it is. That is what fantasy says. It doesn’t say, “Anything goes”—that’s irresponsibility … [It] doesn’t say, “Nothing is”—that’s nihilism … It doesn’t have to be the way it is is a playful statement, made in the context of fiction, with no claim to “being real.” Yet it is a subversive statement … Fantasy not only asks “What if things didn’t go on just as they do?” but demonstrates what they might be like if they went otherwise—thus gnawing at the very foundation of the belief that things have to be the way they are. -- Ursula K. Le Guin
This production of As You Like It owes much to the great fantasists, the great possibilitarians living and dead: writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, theater-makers like Peter Schumann, and thinkers like Judith Butler and David Graeber, who all— whether through fairy tales, philosophy, or towering papier-mâché puppets—ask us to reckon with the question of how we’ve constructed the world we live in, and how we might do it differently. Permanence and control, such expansive souls remind us, are illusions. Every edifice is only made of so much wood and stone; every institution, and every heart, contains the potential, however deeply buried, for change.
Hiding in plain sight within the title of what is, ostensibly, Shakespeare’s sunniest comedy, is this very spirit of rigorous, subversive hope. As You Like It — there’s a
joke among scholars that Shakespeare named his play flippantly, even cynically, as a comment on his audience’s taste for crowd-pleasing tropes. “All right everybody, here you go. Have it as you like it — all the jokes and jesters and cross-dressing and comedy and shepherds and shepherdesses and song and dance and last-minute miracles you can stomach. Eat it right up!” It’s amusing to think about, but whoever and whatever Shakespeare was, I can’t bring myself to believe that he ever wrote purely from a place of cynicism. The soul of his work is too broad, too nuanced and compassionate; there’s never only one thing going on. And so, what if we looked more closely at As You Like It? What if we took its breezy, winking title at its word? That, as Hamlet might say, must give us pause. For then we find ourselves sincerely considering the question at the heart of fantasy: What if things were different? What if we could love as we like it? Express and define ourselves as we like it? Build our communities and societies as we like it? Who would we be and what would we make if we began with imagination and possibility, rather than the shackles of realism?
As You Like It is one of Shakespeare’s “green world” plays. As in A Midsummer Night’s Dream—and, to some extent, The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest —something about society is broken. Characters must run away to the green
A NOTE FROM DIRECTOR SARA HOLDREN
world—to the forest, the mountains, the fields of Bohemia or the enchanted isle—in order to experiment with new ways of being. In these wild, playful spaces, possibility and desire reign. Nature, in all its lawless beauty, reasserts itself. Identities shift, love blossoms, and the aggressive march of time seems to pause: There is no clock in the forest. In As You Like It, it takes escaping to the Forest of Arden for Shakespeare’s characters to discover who they might truly be and how they might reshape their society with more imagination, more joy, more thought for care than for control. “Those who dismiss fantasy…” writes Le Guin, “usually call it dreaming, or escapism … [But] the direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is ‘escapism’ an accusation of?”
In our Forest of Arden you might see hints of all sorts of utopian endeavors. Our forest is a making space, a collective of artists and questing souls, an off-grid social experiment — it is, in short, the theater itself. In May of this year, I was lucky to spend three weeks living in a tent in a field in Vermont, working with Bread & Puppet Theater, the company founded by Peter Schumann more than 60 years ago and still building enormous papier-mâché deities (as Peter calls them), baking bricks of rye sourdough, and living communally in the Northeast Kingdom to this day. Such a life might be the result of dreaming towards an ideal — but it’s no pastoral picnic. It takes hard work and constant
conversation. You shower from a bag of cold water hung in a tree, you muck out the outhouses yourself, you share cooking duties and cleaning duties and wood-chopping, gardening, and grain-grinding duties. You communicate constantly, setting daily schedules, addressing tensions, solving problems. This is also Arden: the work we do together every day, the work that is, necessarily, part of a caring, conscious, creative life.
You may hear and see things in this As You Like It that surprise you. Textually and texturally, we have been in search of a world that feels true both to Shakespeare’s spirit of playful, expressive, defiant imagination, and to our own. Sometimes, this has required new words, new gestures — new possibilities. We are full of joy to share them with you now. Thank you to the vast community that has built this show, to all those who have shaped its spirit and touched its heart, and to you, for venturing out into the forest today. It doesn’t have to be the way it is, so what might it be, if we remade it together?
—Sara
Holdren, August 22, 2024
A note on the scenic design for the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival’s As You Like It, from scenic designer Inseung Park:
The environment for As You Like It at the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival is intricately woven with striking visuals, blending classical architecture with industrial warehouse elements such as trusses, scaffolding, and gray brick walls. The spiritual character, Hymen, portrayed as a puppet alongside the puppet deer designed by Gregory Corbino, enhances the dynamic atmosphere. This interpretation of the Forest of Arden transcends a typical woodland, presenting it as a mental structure or system rather than a mere physical location. Designed to evolve with the characters and stage crew, this setting diverges from the traditional theatre flying system, effectively embodying the concept of a ‘Utopian world.’
Drawing strong inspiration from theatre visionaries such as Geoff Sobelle’s ‘Home’ and Peter Schumann’s Bread and Puppet Theatre, these influences were reinterpreted to create a unique production.
To create a stark contrast between the utopian Arden and the oppressive court, the court is designed with pretentious and domineering elements, reminiscent of Georgian architecture. At the center of the wall, a dominant portrait of Duke Frederick commands attention, while the sparsely used furniture emphasizes the vastness of the court itself. In contrast, Arden portrays a festive atmosphere, evolving organically from the dismantling of the courts. The world of Arden is vividly brought to life through the collaborative efforts of cast, crew, and puppets, culminating in an invitation to the audience to join in the wedding ceremony at the play’s conclusion.
The play opens not in a traditional orchard but within a greenhouse, setting the de Boys household scene with a distinctly unnatural feel. The atmosphere is narrow and claustrophobic, with the house curtain partially closed, creating an initial sense of confinement. As the scene progresses, the stage gradually opens wider, reflecting the transformation toward the Forest of Arden. By the time Arden is fully revealed, the black masking is completely stripped away, unveiling the entire stage in its full expanse.
Under the leadership of the technical director, Jeff Szymanowski, the scenic department meticulously engineered the transformation from the court to Arden. This was achieved by carefully selecting the appropriate casters and scaffolding units, utilizing Styrofoam moldings on the flats to reduce weight, and ensuring a seamless and efficient transition between the two distinct environments. Complementing this, the prop department, led by Leah Jordan, brought Arden to life with an array of props, including mismatched farm tables, chairs, paintbrushes, buckets, picnic rugs, pillows, and an old bike. For the wedding scene, the setting was further enriched with streamers tied with various fabrics, adding a festive touch of the final celebration.
Every element, meticulously crafted by the creative team, comes together to fully realize the vision of director Sara Holdren.
COMPANY BIOS
Matt Anderson (Sound Artisan/Sound Board Operator) is an IATSE audio engineer and stage manager based in the Michiana area, who discovered a love for technology and has been working in it since. His work has been seen (or heard) at South Bend Civic Theatre, Summerfly, Bethel University, and more. Matt is excited to be returning to NDSF for this year’s production of As You Like It.
Gabriel Armstrong (Monsieur Le Beau / Amiens / Ensemble) (he/him) is an actor, opera singer, and playwright from Ogden, Utah. He is a 2024 graduate of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he studied vocal performance and musical theatre. Credits include Curious George: The Golden Meatball (Chef Pisghetti) with Constellation Stage & Screen, Gianni Schicchi and American Gothical with the Cedar Rapids Opera, The Secret Garden and Amazing Grace with Utah Festival Opera, as well as numerous productions with IU Opera Theater and IU Theatre & Dance. As a playwright, his plays have received readings at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (Region III), The Utah New Works Project, and the IU At First Sight Festival, and he produced a full staging of his play Fishbowl in December 2022.
George Azcárate (Duke Frederick / Ensemble) is a graduate student from the Texas-Mexico border. He was born in El Paso and raised in Ciudad Juárez. His research explores the healer-patient relationship and how the patient's body is transformed into a book that the healer
not only reads in search of signs and symptoms but also writes and edits. He is interested in biopolitics, bioethics, and the emergence of the modern hospital as a political instrument for managing and nurturing life and health. George is also drawn to the other and darker side of biopolitics: the abandonment, exclusion, and even suppression of life as a modern expression of political power. He is a registered nurse (RN) with extensive experience in the ICU. He has had the pleasure of working on several FTT productions at Notre Dame, including Native Gardens, The Imaginary Invalid, Staging the Daffy Dame, and the world premiere of Hamlet 50/50
Jenny Birkett (Postdoctoral Research Associate / Infection Control Specialist) graduated from Notre Dame’s English PhD program in 2023. Her work can be found in Women and Indian Shakespeares (Arden Series) and Restoration: Studies in English Literature and Culture, 1660–1700. She is currently writing a book on the performance of terms of endearment in early modern drama. Jenny coordinates all pre-show and post-show events for Shakespeare at Notre Dame’s productions and spearheads its research initiatives, including our ThinkND series, Shakespeare and Possibility. From spending summers attending the Utah Shakespeare Festival as a child, directing productions in high school, and teaching Shakespeare as a graduate student, Jenny brings a deep passion for live theatre to the office.
COMPANY BIOS
Elivia Bovenzi Blitz (Costume Designer) is a costume designer based in New York City. She has designed an extensive repertoire of Shakespeare including Hamlet, Titus Andronicus (New York Shakespeare Exchange), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night (Shakespeare On The Sound), The Comedy of Errors, Macbeth (Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey), Love’s Labor’s Lost (Elm Shakespeare), and Richard II (Yale). Elivia also has worked as an associate and assistant costume designer on various Regional and Broadway shows. Over the course of her career, she has worked at the Guthrie Theater, the Public Theater, Alliance Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, Two River Theater, Hartford Stage, LaMaMa, Ars Nova, and NYU, as well as Barrington Stage and Berkshire Theatre Group, in the Berkshires, MA . She holds an MFA in Design from the Yale School of Drama. Elivia teaches as an Adjunct Professor of Fashion History at FIT. Proud member of United Scenic Artists Local 829. www.eliviabovenzi.com
Natalie Bowman (Cutter / Draper) began working with the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival in 2007 and has returned every season since. Natalie received her BA in costume design and technology from IUSB and went on to earn her MFA in Costume Design at Florida State University in 2001. Before Natalie moved to Southern Indiana where she heads the Costume program for Indiana University Southeast’s Theatre Department, she
spent several years traveling around the United States working at various regional theatres and educational institutions as a costume technician and costume designer. Some of these include Swine Palace Productions based at Louisiana State University, Northern Illinois University, Utah Shakespeare Festival, Milwaukee Shakespeare Company, and Virginia Stage Company.
Erin Bryant (Cutter / Draper) is the Costume Shop Supervisor/Designer for Bethel University Theatre. Erin has worked as a costumer, designer, or overhire wardrobe for such companies as Southold Dance Theatre, South Bend Civic Theatre, and the IATSE Local #187. Erin has also served as a cutter/draper for the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival since 2014.
Brennan Caldwell (Touchstone / Ensemble) is an actor, software engineer, and fitness instructor based in NYC. Selected NY and regional theater include Neurosis (DR2 Theatre, OCR, Chita Rivera nominee), Who’s Your Baghdaddy? (St. Luke’s, OCR), Einstein’s Dreams (59E59 Theaters, OCR), Midsummer (Tiltyard), Loch Ness (The Rev), Urinetown (Theatre Raleigh), and The Hound of the Baskervilles (Playhouse on Park). Brennan is a former Whiffenpoof and was a featured soloist on NBC’s The Sing-Off Much love to his family, Andrew, and the incomparable Sara Holdren. IG: @brennan.caldwell
COMPANY BIOS
Cate Cappelmann (General Manager) is proud to join the Shakespeare at Notre Dame team as General Manager. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where she received a BA in American Studies and the Program of Liberal Studies. While a student at Notre Dame, she was a frequent collaborator with Shakespeare at Notre Dame, both spending her summers working on the administrative side of the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival and stage managing for Actors From The London Stage. She is also a proud alumna of the Not-So-Royal Shakespeare Company, where she directed Macbeth, and assistant directed Julius Caesar and The Taming of the Shrew. After graduating, she spent a year in service as an AmeriCorps member with the Robinson Shakespeare Company where she had the privilege of teaching Shakespeare and Drama to over 200 K-12 students each week in South Bend Public Schools and at the Robinson Community Learning Center. Cate loves to empower fellow artists to do their best work and is passionate about investigating the importance and power of Shakespeare in our community life.
Emily Chidalek (Costume Shop Artisan) is glad to be back at Notre Dame! She holds a Masters degree in Clinical Counseling and a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre Performance, both from IUSB. She anticipates becoming a drama therapist to continue using her love of theater to help others. Emily
has been the resident costume designer and stage manager for Culver Academies since 2018. She has worked regionally and internationally as a costumer, scenic artist, stage manager, and performer. Recent design credits: Ghost Quartet (South Bend’s Costume Design of the Decade, BroadwayWorld 2020), Next to Normal (Art 4); Rent, She Kills Monsters, Puffs (Culver Academies), Three Decembers, Don Giovanni, and The Merry Widow (South Bend Lyric Opera). Emily also runs a small business focusing on eco friendly design, find her at love.emily.creative on instagram. She would like to thank those who have patience with her while she is busy and hold space for her when she needs it.
Aimee Cole (Puppet Artisan): This is Aimee’s 20th season with the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival. She is a Senior Lecturer in Costume Technology and Puppetry at Indiana University South Bend. She enjoys traveling, and all things Disney.
Jason Comerford (Audience Development Manager) arrived at Notre Dame in 2017 after a 15-year career in advertising, working as a creative copywriter for agencies including Erwin Penland (now EP+Co, Greenville, SC) and Sullivan Higdon & Sink (now Signal Theory, Wichita, KS). He is responsible for Shakespeare at Notre Dame's marketing and PR efforts, including web, social & print marketing for the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival, Actors From The
COMPANY BIOS
London Stage, and various other events and initiatives under the Shakespeare at Notre Dame umbrella. He was a longtime stage manager for the Upstate Shakespeare Festival in Greenville, SC, where he stage-managed multiple productions including Othello, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Henry IV Part 1, and Richard III. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and has written prolifically for newspapers (Centre Daily Times, State College, PA), magazines (Film Score Monthly, Los Angeles, CA), and record labels (Howlin’ Wolf Records, Raleigh, NC).
Greg Corbino (Puppet Designer) is a transdisciplinary queer artist, puppeteer, and educator, identified as “gorgeously baroque” by The New Yorker and “crafty and audacious” by The New York Times. His ongoing public space puppet performance, MURMURATIONS, draws attention to the environmental impact of plastics with giant puppets crafted of plastic trash collected from New York shorelines and has been supported by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Green Feather Foundation, and Greenpeace USA. Collaborators include Peter Schumann and The Bread and Puppet Theater, Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir, Jennifer Miller and Circus Amok, Xaviera Simmons, Cecilia Vicuña, and Becca Blackwell. His design work has been featured at Soho Repertory
Theater, the High Line, the Architecture League of New York, the Queens Museum, the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Berlin Jewish Museum and the Smithsonian Institution. Greg lives and works in Brooklyn.
Carolyn Dell (Assistant Stage Manager / Puppet Operator) is delighted to be making her debut at the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival. Recent credits include A Chorus Line and A Doll’s House 1954 (Stage Manager) with Notre Dame Film, Television, and Theatre, and Monomythical (Stage Manager) with Pasquerilla East Musical Co. She hails from San Antonio, Texas, and she is a current student at the University of Notre Dame with a concentration in Theatre. She would like to thank Carys Kresny, Deb Gasper, Chris Mendoza, and her parents for their inspiration and help with everything theatre in her life.
Kevin Dreyer (Producer) is an experienced lighting designer and a member of the United Scenic Artists with an active freelance career. He has designed for major companies across the United States and around the world with reviews and award nominations from four continents. He has been on the faculty at Notre Dame since 1989, where in addition to teaching he has designed lighting and scenery for the theatre season. In recent years he has added the responsibilities of producing and directing for the University. He published his first book Dance and
COMPANY BIOS
Light: The Partnership Between Choreography and Lighting Design in 2020. He was the resident lighting designer for the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival from its inception until 2018. This is his second time producing the summer season. His whole family is in the arts — his wife directed the Saint Mary's College dance program for 30 years and his three daughters are involved in theatre as either performers or educators. Kevin's work as a lighting designer has been seen in Chicago and around the world with the Joffrey Ballet and Ballet West. His design work is featured in Robert Altman’s film The Company
Hayden Elowsky (Scene Shop Artisan / Carpenter) is a senior theatre major attending Bethel University. He is from Niles, MI. Hayden is pursuing lighting design and costume design. A few of his favorite credits include costume design for Lauren Gunderson's Silent Sky and lighting design for Charles Strause's Annie. He has also worked in both the costume shop and scene shop at Bethel University.
Morgan Rose Ford (Madame Le Beau / Diana, comrade to Duke Seena / Ensemble) is an actor, writer, and educator currently living in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. Morgan spent the summers of her youth performing Shakespeare outdoors in Salem, MA before studying anthropology at Boston University. She has toured with several Boston-based Shakespeare in Schools productions and has made
collaborative, devised, and immersive theatre in Massachusetts. Morgan holds an MFA from Mary Baldwin University where she studied Shakespeare and Performance. Recent favorites include Viola (Twelfth Night), Nell (The Knight of the Burning Pestle), and Lady Landsworth/La Basset/Elder Clerimont (The Beau Defeated) at MBU. She loves dancing, teaching yoga, taking long walks, and performing early modern theatre.
Tobias Garcia (Assistant Props Master / Puppet Operator) is a multifaceted theatre artist based in South Bend, with specializations in props design, educational theatre, and puppetry. This is their third year as a part of NDSF, previously working on productions in 2022 and 2023 as an assistant props designer and assistant stage manager respectively. Tobias has also done a variety of work locally at the South Bend Civic Theatre, most recently helping to teach their 2024 production focused spring break shadow puppet camp, The Queen of Flowers. Tobias has also just completed a full year as an Americorps intern with the Robinson Shakespeare Company, an educational theatre company and outreach program that serves South Bend public schools as well as the Robinson Community Learning Center. Tobias hopes to continue his work in educational theatre, with plans to eventually pursue an MFA in educational theatre and puppetry!
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Debra Gasper (Ryan Family Producing Director) is thrilled to be a part of the Shakespeare at Notre Dame team. She is responsible for coordinating the practical needs of the artistic staff, crew, and performers for the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival and Actors From The London Stage. Debra has been a professional stage manager for 13 years and is a member of Actor’s Equity Association. Debra came to Notre Dame from Louisville, KY, where she spent 10 years as the resident stage manager for Actors Theatre of Louisville. She has also worked for Long Wharf Theatre, The River Rep, Cleveland Signstage Theatre, and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Debra has stage managed over 60 productions, including many productions of Shakespeare. Favorites include The Tempest, Macbeth, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. Debra holds a B.A. in theatre from Indiana University at South Bend, where she teaches stage management.
Abigail Gillan (Celia / Ensemble) is making her NDSF debut! Regional credits include performances for the Huntington, Phoenix Theatre, Beef and Boards, and Theatre on the Square, to name a few. Abigail has a BFA from Emerson College in Boston, and is the owner of The Ragamuffin Bakery in South Bend. Love to my Norrie and Agnes!
Emma Greenfield (Scene Shop Artisan / Carpenter) is from Unionville, MI. She is a senior studying Theatre Arts at Bethel University. She enjoys studying theatre history and stagecraft. She has participated in many different aspects of theatre including acting, wardrobe crew, properties, stage management, and set construction.
Melíza Guiterrez (Second Lord / Phebe / Ensemble) (she/they) is an actor, playwright, and poet from Southern California. They are currently an MFA in Acting candidate at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign where they have appeared as Volumnia in Coriolanus, Joanne in Rent, Contestant Two in So You Think You Can Stay?, and as an actor/deviser in The Gangster Play: Circus/Circus (Forcibly Adapted from Brecht’s The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui). Melíza played Susanna in last year’s NDSF production of Hamlet 50/50 and is thrilled to be back in South Bend again this summer! Instagram: @melizakg Website: www.melizagutierrez.com.
Lynn Holbrook (Costume Shop Manager) returns to NDSF for her eleventh season. Recent costume design credits include Dead Man’s Cell Phone with Notre Dame’s Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, and Candide with Opera Notre Dame. Lynn previously served as wardrobe supervisor and costume shop manager for BalletMet Columbus as well as costume shop manager for the
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University of Michigan. She designed costumes for seven new works at BalletMet Columbus, including Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, and toured with many performances of Beauty and the Beast and The Nutcracker. Lynn earned her BS in Textiles and Clothing from Ohio State University and her MFA in Costume Design from Wayne State University, where her designs were featured in three productions that traveled to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She is originally from Ohio, and is happy to be at Notre Dame.
Sara Holdren (Director) is a director, teacher, and writer, originally from the Blue Ridge foothills of Virginia. She is the theater critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, the recipient of the 2016-2017 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, and the co-founder of the theater project Tiltyard. Recent projects include Black Snow (Atlantic Theater School), Cymbeline (NYU Grad Acting), Tiltyard’s MIDSUMMER (which she co-adapted from the plays of Shakespeare) at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Three Sisters (Two River Theater), and bicycling 3,900 miles across the country with her partner, Beau, a writer. Sara is a Drama League Fellow and a graduate of the Acting Shakespeare program at RADA, and she has recently been both a lead artist and a mentor at the Mercury Store. She holds a BA in Theater from Yale University and an MFA in Directing from Yale School of Drama. She lives in
Jersey City with Beau and their feline friends, Masha and Danny.
Don Hunter (Production Manager) served served on the faculty and as production manager at Bethel University for fourteen years and returns to the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival for his eighth season. He has his B.A. in theatre arts from Bethel College and his M.F.A. in stage management from Wayne State University. Don has spent the last 14 years stage managing, designing, and directing. Recent credits include projection design for Alice in Wonderland, Around the World in 80 Days, and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, set design for Around the World in 80 Days, sound design for Plain and Fancy and Alice in Wonderland, director for Disney's Beauty and the Beast and Charlotte’s Web, stage manager for Opera Notre Dame's Candide, and stage manager for the Southold Dance Theatre’s The Nutcracker, Cinderella, Giselle and others.
Zac Hunter (Interim Production Manager) graduated in 2013 from Bethel University with a focus on design and technical theatre. He is currently in his 8th season with Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis as the Production Manager and Technical Director. His most recent design work at the Phoenix includes Bakersfield Mist (set design), Alabaster (set design), and The Agitators (lighting design). He has also designed sets and lights for Actors Theatre of Indiana,
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Storefront Theatre, Wabash College, and Bethel University. As always, he wants to give a shout out to his beautiful wife, Stephanie, for being awesome and holding down the fort while he’s away.
Scott Jackson (Mary Irene Ryan Family Executive Artistic Director) has served as the Mary Irene Ryan Family Executive Artistic Director of Shakespeare at Notre Dame since the position was created in 2007, providing oversight for the many Shakespearerelated programs housed at the University of Notre Dame, with a particular focus on engaging the local community through the works of William Shakespeare. Previously he served as executive director for the Fairbanks Shakespeare Theatre (FST) in Fairbanks, Alaska. From 2000–2003, Scott was the business and legal affairs coordinator for Brighter Pictures, Ltd (now a part of Endemol Shine UK), one of the United Kingdom’s most successful independent television and film production companies. He holds a dual BA in theatre and history from Indiana University Bloomington, an MFA (distinction) in Actor Training and Coaching from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (University of London), and is a certified Kundalini yoga teacher (CKYT-200) under acclaimed practitioner Maya Fiennes. He has produced, directed, and performed in over 175 theatrical productions.
Scott currently serves as the vice president/president-elect for the Shakespeare Theatre Association, where he also served as treasurer from 2013-2017. He has taught acting process at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, the University of Notre Dame, Holy Cross College, and Indiana University South Bend. Since 2018 he has taught Meisner acting technique and Mindfulness for the Artist for the Prague Shakespeare Company’s Summer Shakespeare Intensive. A firm believer in the power of Shakespeare and the theatre arts to affect positive social change, he is a co-founder of the Shakespeare in Prisons Network. He teaches a Shakespeare in performance course and leads the kundalini yoga club at the Westville Correctional Facility, Indiana’s largest state prison. His leadership in the nascent field of Applied Shakespeare has led to an appointment as a Research Associate for the Von Hügel Institute at St. Edmund’s College in the University of Cambridge.
Leah Jordan (Props Master / Designer) is a professional musician and theatre artist from East Jordan, MI. She has worked in a variety of capacities for area theatres, ranging from accompanist to props. Her favorite credits include A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, Annie, and a performance of NDSF's Much Ado About Nothing.
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Dominic Keene (William / Jack de Boys / Ensemble) comes from Walla Walla, WA and recently graduated from the University of Notre Dame with majors in Electrical Engineering (Semiconductors and Nanotechnology Concentration) and FTT (Theatre Concentration). This is his first professional production, but not his first experience with Shakespeare. During his time at Notre Dame, Dominic was heavily involved with the student-run Not-So-Royal Shakespeare Company, where he acted in nine shows over the past four years, playing such roles as Benedick, Petruchio, Leontes, Polonius, and Richard III. Dominic’s non-Shakespeare credits include Jerry in The Zoo Story, Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, and Tom in Tom Sawyer. Outside of acting and engineering, Dominic’s passions include close-up card magic, reading, playing board games, and rock climbing. After NDSF, Dominic will be living in Baltimore, MD, where he will pursue his career in the field of semiconductor microchip fabrication while continuing to act and hone his performance skills.
Kate Marvin (Sound Designer & Composer)’s recent credits include Jonah (Roundabout Theatre Company), The Scarlet Letter (Two River Theater), Bulrusher (McCarter/Berkeley Rep), Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (Lortel Theatre), Merry Me (New York Theater Workshop), Wolf Play (Lucille Lortel Award - Outstanding Sound Design.
MCC/Soho Rep/Ma-Yi), the best we could [a family tragedy] (Manhattan Theatre Club), Three Sisters (Two River Theater), The Game (Playmakers Rep), Krymov’s Eugene Onegin (La MaMa), Fidelio (Heartbeat Opera), Chimpanzee (HERE/Festival Mondial Théâtres de Marionnettes/Barbican), and Vanessa in Bed (Audible). Film credits include White Flags (AC Pictures) and The Memory Trade (Handmade Puppet Dreams). She is an Associate Artist at Target Margin Theater and received an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. www.katemarvinsound.com
Tim Merkle (Charles / Aubrey / Ensemble) is thrilled to be making his return to Notre Dame and excited to be a part of the Festival again this year! He is a recent graduate of Notre Dame with a BA in Theatre and Applied Mathematics. Past credits include Hamlet 50/50 (1st Gravedigger) at the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival, The Winter’s Tale (Florizel) and Twelfth Night (Sir Toby Belch) at the Estates Theatre in Prague, and Dawn’s Early Light (Frank Lloyd), Pippin (King Charlemagne), and Bare: A Pop Opera (Matt) while attending Notre Dame. Tim sends his love and eternal thanks to his family and friends for their everlasting support. Te Amo Siempre!
Abigail Moody (Costume Shop Artisan) has been sewing since she was eight. She's mostly worked on small projects and cosplays for herself and her friends and family. Abigail's first time
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costuming was in Clay High School's production of Aristophanes: The Birds. Afterwards she worked on Clay High School's production of Radium Girls, for which she designed, drafted, and constructed all the dresses for the dancing ensemble. In her first year at IUSB, Abigail started volunteering and working in the IUSB costume shop as an assistant for the shows: Peter Rabbit Tail, The Lighting Thief (at Art4), and Puffs. Abigail is so excited to be part of the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival this year. Thanks for having her.
Tiana Mudzimurema (Assistant Director) is an educator, community artist, and graphic designer passionate about preserving the freedom of artistic expression and highlighting underrepresented individuals through arts education and community engagement. Born and raised in South Bend, Indiana, Tiana has always gravitated toward the arts. She began her performing arts career at the Robinson Shakespeare Company (RSC), reciting the works of William Shakespeare at the age of nine in RSC productions and ShakeScenes at Notre Dame. Even though Shakespeare’s characters were not written for or performed by Black women, she found herself in the text, tapping into the universal theme that every character just wants to be heard. This past summer in the Czech Republic at the Prague Shakespeare Company, Tiana had the opportunity to perform and serve as an assistant director with the
world-renowned Shakespearean Lisa Wolpe. In the summer of 2022, Tiana made her professional debut and toured with the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival (NDSF). As she transitioned into her post-college career as a full-time AmeriCorps member at the RSC, she found her passion in creating visual designs of Shakespeare’s characters in all shades of melanin, with the hope of breaking down racial stereotypes of what Shakespearean actors should look like. Tiana is honored to be this year’s assistant director for NDSF’s As You Like It and a director for the RSC ShakeScenes performance of Romeo & Juliet.
Mary Neufeld (Adam / Cora / Ensemble) is an actor from NYC working with Target Margin Theater, a downtown company that radically re-imagines classics. Mary is delighted to be working on Sara Holdren’s As You Like It, having recently appeared in Sara’s production of Three Sisters with Two River Theater. With roots in the Greenwich Village-based Ridiculous Theatrical Company, famous for farce and inventing their own genre, Mary has played many “cross gartered” roles. Some favorites include Tamara (Titus Andronicus), Mother Courage (Mother Courage), Polonius (Hamlet), Belarius (Cymbeline), Gayev (The Cherry Orchard), Serebryakov (Uncle Vanya), Chebutykin (Three Sisters), Caliban (The Tempest), and Seth (Mourning Becomes Electra)!
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Allison Pajor (Text Coach) is excited to return for her fourth season with the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival. In addition to serving as text coach, Allison has previously worked with NDSF as assistant director (Hamlet 50/50) and actor (Countess, All's Well That Ends Well). She helped coordinate both ShakeScenes and Shakespeare After Hours as this year's Assistant Production Manager. During the academic year, Allison serves as the lead teacher for S@ND's Theatre I class at DePaul Academy; and she has previously worked as an education artist at the American Shakespeare Center and South Bend Civic Theatre. Allison received her MFA and MLitt in Shakespeare and Performance from Mary Baldwin University and she has performed with the ASC, Prague Shakespeare Company, the Motley Shakespeare Players, Sweet Wag Shakespeare, and the National Theatre for Children. Allison lives in Mishawaka with her husband Mark and their dog Raven.
Inseung Park (Scenic Designer) is thrilled to debut at the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival’s 2024 season with As You Like It. Pursuing a practical abstraction distinct from film / television, his designs have been seen in live entertainment: drama, dance, musical, and opera at organizations across the country including Stages Houston, Texas Shakespeare Festival, ZACH in Austin, Theatre 3 in Dallas, Profile Theatre in Portland, Phoenix Indianapolis, Provision Theatre in
Chicago (Jeff Awards nomination in Scenic Design for The Hiding Place), Winnipesaukee Playhouse (New Hampshire Theatre Awards nomination in Best Scenic Design for Mary’s Wedding and The Waltz), and Looking Glass in New York. One of his film productions, Wake (grand prize in Kodak competition), was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. He is currently teaching at University of New Mexico. He holds an MFA in Scenic Design from UT Austin. He is an active member of United Scenic Artists Local 829.
Olivia Louise Tree Plath (Stage Manager) (she/her) is a Kentucky / Minnesota-based stage manager and director. She has recently co-directed her first musical, Elf, with a local community theater and works as a Foley artist with the Theater Downstream. Her recent stage management & assistant stage management work includes Sally & Tom, Sweat, and Noura with the Guthrie Theatre, as well as Stage Manager for Antigone with Cleveland Play House. She spent a large portion of the pandemic working with the Playwrights Workshop founded by Josh Wilder, and she stage-managed several online plays and readings including Redeemed with Dorset Theater Festival and Lake Erie Oubliette and Crooked River Burning with Cleveland Play House, as well as a livestream of Salt Pepper Ketchup with Aye Defy. She is a graduate of Yale’s School of Drama.
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Emma Rader (Costume Shop Artisan / Wardrobe Run Crew) just graduated from Bethel University with a degree in Liberal Studies focused in theatre. Her intention is to work in costuming, and this is her first step out of college. She is potentially going to go back to get another degree in art, and eventually she would like to get her masters in costume design, but she wants to get through the summer first. She is really excited to be back with the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival!
Kathy Reynolds (Assistant Production Manager / Mentor), a seasoned theatre professional with over 30 years of experience, is delighted to resume her journey at Shakespeare Notre Dame. Throughout her career, Kathy has excelled in various roles within the theatre realm, such as stage manager, designer, director, and executive producer. However, her true passion lies in mentoring and imparting her wealth of knowledge to aspiring individuals stepping into the industry.
Ella Robertson (Assistant Stage Manager / Puppet Operator) is a graduate of Penn High School and is a rising junior as a tech/design major at IU South Bend, with a minor in costume production. Her most recent credits include assistant stage manager for Xanadu (Summerfly), stage manager for Puffs and A Peter Rabbit Tale (IUSB), as well as stage manager for Odd One Out, a one-act written, directed, and produced by students. She is thrilled to be a part of the Notre
Dame Shakespeare Festival this summer and would like to thank her friends for their continued trust and support.
Jen Rock (Lighting Designer) is thrilled to be returning to the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival. Jen is a lighting designer for the performing arts who has worked extensively throughout the Northeast, and is the recipient of two Elliot Norton Awards for her design work in Boston. Regionally, Jen has designed lights for Western Michigan University (Tribes, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods) and Crossroads Repertory Theatre (Hairspray, Steel Magnolias, Avenue Q, Young Frankenstein). Jen resides full time in Reading, Pennsylvania, where she is a Professor of Theatre at Albright College.
Jenna Sarrazin (Scene Shop Artisan / Carpenter / Scenic Artist / Run Crew) is from Angola, IN and just graduated from Bethel University this past May with a degree in Theatre Arts. She was here at Notre Dame last summer as a Scenic Artist/Carpenter for Hamlet 50/50. She has participated in numerous shows at Bethel, including onstage roles in Alice in Wonderland (Duchess), Plain and Fancy (Ruth), Silent Sky (Henerietta Leavitt) and Annie (Grace). She also has been hard at work backstage as an Scenic Artist / Carpenter for over 7 shows at Bethel.
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Sarah Scanlon (Jaques / Ensemble / Intimacy Coordinator) is thrilled to be back at NDSF after last being seen as Ariel in The Tempest and Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Other regional credits of note include work at the New York Fringe Festival, A.R.T., South Bend Symphony Orchestra; and in Chicago; About Face Theatre, Lifeline Theatre, Akvavit Theatre, The Factory Theater, and The Conspirators, among others. As an Intimacy Director, Sarah’s work has been seen at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Milwaukee Rep, Drury Lane, Paramount Theatre, Steep, and Kokandy, among others, and for TV shows on HBO, Apple+, NBC, Showtime, FX, and VAM Studios. She is a certified Intimacy Director and Coordinator with IDC and holds an MFA in acting from the American Repertory Theatre and the Moscow Art Theatre School. Find her on Instagram at sarapodisrex or say hi at sarahscanlon.com.
April Sellers (Olivia / Ensemble) began her life in the theatre in 1992, playing a witch in the San Diego Children’s Opera production of Hansel and Gretel. Since moving to the Michiana area in 2008, she has performed and directed with several area theater companies. Favorite performances include Much Ado About Nothing (Dogberry), Xanadu (Melpomene), and The Clean House (Matilde) with South Bend Civic Theatre, Vindication (Joseph Johnson) and The Birds (Diane) with Michiana Playmakers, and Assassins (Emma Goldman) with the Elkhart Civic
Theatre. She also directed The Thanksgiving Play and The Outsiders at South Bend Civic Theatre. A former lawyer, April is now a teaching artist in the area, having worked with young adults of all ages, through the South Bend Civic Theatre and Shakespeare at Notre Dame.
Noah Sim (Second Lord to Duke Frederick / Silvius / Ensemble) hails from Carmel, Indiana and is a senior at the University of Notre Dame, studying Computer Science and History with a minor in Musical Theatre. This is his first production with Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival, but he has been involved in a number of Shakespeare plays with Notre Dame’s Not-So-Royal Shakespeare Company. For acting roles, he has played Verges, Horatio, Rosencrantz, Elbow, Abhorson, and Messengers galore. His design work includes lighting design for Love’s Labour’s Lost, Hamlet, and The Winter’s Tale. He has also had the wonderful opportunity to direct The Winter’s Tale with NSR. For non-Shakespeare work, Noah has played in a number of pit orchestras, played Peter in The Zoo Story, ensemble in Tuck Everlasting, and directed Monomythical, a new musical. Outside of theatre, Noah enjoys reading, watching movies, and birdwatching.
Jason Swift (Master Electrician) is excited to be returning to the festival as the head electrician. His love for theater and live events began in high school, while working on one of the
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first high school productions of The Phantom of the Opera. This, and subsequent shows, propelled Jason to study Stage Management in college, and work for numerous theater companies in Philadelphia. After graduation, Jason went on to tour the US with a children’s theater company, presenting theatrical representations of classic literature stories and poems for thousands of students across America. Outside of work, Jason enjoys spending time with his goldens, Sophie and Riley, playing or watching sports, and exploring and traveling with his partner, Nina. Proud union member of IATSE Local 187, and graduate of the University of Connecticut.
Naya Tadavarthy (Costume Shop Artisan / Wardrobe Run Crew) is thrilled to be returning to NDSF this summer! Originally from Saint Paul, Minnesota, she graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022 with majors in studio art and German. She spent last year in Vienna, Austria on a Fulbright Combined Grant, teaching middle-and-high school English and researching the connections between nineteenth-century fashion and costume design. Currently completing her MFA at Northwestern University, her previous design credits include This Is Modern Art (University of Notre Dame) and Elephant (Northwestern University).
TayLar (Duke Seena / Ensemble) is excited to return to NDSF. She last appeared as Queen Gertrude in NDSF’s
production of Hamlet 50/50. She recently performed as Rose in Fences at Arts Center of Coastal Carolina. Other productions include American Fast (Constellation Stage and Screen), Arsenic and Old Lace as Abby Brewster, King Hedley II and Oedipus Rex (Chicago’s Court Theatre), Gem of the Ocean, Sweat, The Convert, Mary, and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (Goodman Theatre), The Little Foxes and The Great Society (Asolo Repertory), Ruined (Manhattan Theatre Club and Eclipse Theatre), The Old Settler (Writers’ Theatre), Intimate Apparel (Steppenwolf), Black Ensemble and ETA Theatre. Television appearances include Saint X, Chicago Med, Chicago PD, Chicago Fire, Empire, The Chi and NeXt. Film credits include Heist 88, Southside With You (Obama movie), Teacher, and Ms. White Light. TayLar can be seen in numerous commercials and is repped by DDO Artists Agency. She sends much love and gratitude to God, her family, and friends for their support!
Felix Teich (Orlando) is so grateful to be a part of this production. Hope is hard to come by these days, but this play affirms that when people build together and care for each others humanity… well, we may not have Eden, but we can have Arden: a working paradise. And they are so thankful you’re watching it! You are the last and most crucial member of this community. Felix is a 2021 graduate of NYU's MFA Acting program, and graduated from Emerson College in
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2016 with a BFA in Acting. Also they’re an acting company member at the Mercury Store, a new play development lab in Gowanus, New York. @felix.teich on Instagram if you want to say hi :)
Avery Trimm (Arts Administrative Assistant) is from San Diego, CA and is a recent graduate from the University of Notre Dame with a major in Psychology and minor in Philosophy. She’s had the honor of working in three professional productions at Lambs Players Theater, originating each role (Posey in Christmas On My Mind, Ellie in Catch a Falling Star, and Maria in Dinner with Marlene). Outside of professional theater, her background ranges from performer to assistant stage manager to artistic producer. She performed in A Chorus Line with the Notre Dame Theater Department and has worn many different hats in PEMCo, Notre Dame’s student-run theater club. She also wrote and composed a musical in the fall of 2023. One of Avery’s favorite pastimes was working as a princess performer, entertaining party goers with face painting, balloon-twisting, and magic.
Company (Lucy’s Wedding), GreenHouse Theater Project (Hedda Gabler, Covid Buddies), The Workshop Theater (Pulp Vérité) and Great River Shakespeare Festival (Macbeth). Her original play Nothing Can Stop What is Coming was produced by GreenHouse Theater Project in 2021, and her films A Home in the Country and Don’t Cry Yet premiered at the Chelsea Film Festival, Chain Film Festival, Night of Shorts and OUT at the Movies. Julia holds a BA in Theater from St. Olaf College, and an MFA from NYU Grad Acting.
Kathleen Werner (Stitcher) is thrilled to be working with the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival for yet another season! She is an educator by vocation, but sewing has been her avocation from her very first dressmaking class at the age of ten. In addition to sewing for herself, family and friends, she has had experience working in the retail fabric industry.
Julia Valen (Rosalind / Ensemble) (she/her) is thrilled to be making her NDSF debut. As an actor she has performed with the Guthrie Theater (A Brittle Glory, My Fair Lady), Jungle Theater (You Can’t Take It with You, Christmas at Pemberley), Park Square Theatre (Airness), Frank Theater (Fetal), The Moving Company (Anamnesis), Living Room Theater
Kathleen is now an Assistant Teaching Professor of French, Emerita in the Romance Languages and Literatures Department here at the University of Notre Dame, where she taught for 30 years.
Mark Young (Third Comrade to Duke Seena / Deer / Sir Oliver Martext / Hymen / Ensemble) is an actor, singer, and writer from southern Illinois. He received a B.A. in Theatre from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Credits include working as a puppeteer for the Bread and Puppet Theater
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Company, Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Players Theater, Alonso in The Tempest at Columbia University, and The Man in The Drowsy Chaperone for the Actors' Attic. Mark also travels around the U.S. performing murder mysteries, and he appears regularly in the Greenwich Village immersive experience Accomplice. He's currently one half of the film podcast "Looking for the Ocean," where he reviews every Pixar movie.
ABOUT SHAKESPEARE AT NOTRE DAME
Sharing. Serving. Advancing.
Officially established in 2007, Shakespeare at Notre Dame's mission is to fuse the University’s pursuit of compassionate social justice with the study of the works of William Shakespeare. The program’s reach extends deep into the South Bend community, with a number of community-focused events every year, and beyond, to audiences from over a dozen countries across the world.
Combining humanistic pedagogy and the world’s greatest works of literature, Shakespeare at Notre Dame encompasses a number of different initiatives including the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival, Actors From The London Stage, and many others. Shakespeare at Notre Dame also partners with their sister organizations, the Not-So-Royal Shakespeare Company and the Robinson Community Learning Center.
Finally, the Shakespeare in Prisons Network, founded at Notre Dame, was designed to build societal re-engagement skills for incarcerated populations and is the host of the biennial Shakespeare in Prisons Conference. Regionally, Shakespeare at Notre Dame hosts regular Shakespeare in performance classes at the Westville Correctional Facility in Westville, Indiana and the DePaul Academy at the Thomas M. Frederick Juvenile Justice Center here in South Bend.
The mission of Shakespeare at Notre Dame, under which the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival operates, is to advance the study and performance of William Shakespeare for the audiences, students, and scholars of today and tomorrow. By producing programming that aligns contemporary societal values with the versatile worlds created within Shakespeare’s canon, we seek to “hold the mirror up to nature” and imagine bold, new realities — both onstage and off — which champion a diversity of thought and identity; reinvent models of engagement toward greater access, inclusion, and equity; and contribute to the global dialogue of Shakespeare’s possibility in the here and now.
Our values include:
• Service: To our students, our communities, our artists and staff, and to the advancement of the field of Shakespeare.
• Equity: Dismantling harmful and unjust systems by uplifting the plurality of lived identities that breathe relevance and fresh insights into the study and production of Shakespeare’s works.
• Research: Innovating our approach to the works of William Shakespeare by connecting tradition with contemporary research and application.
• Collaboration: Creating interdisciplinary opportunities for academic and performance communities to discover new methods of working as one.
• Global Connection: Bringing the world to Notre Dame and Notre Dame to the world.
• Possibility: Embracing risk and daring to fail as we traverse uncharted ground.
• Joy: Redefining the marker of true artistic excellence for both artist and audience.
ENDOWMENTS
Shakespeare at Notre Dame is grateful to these partners for creating Endowments for Excellence that support our work now and long into the future:
The Abdo Director of the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival
The Thomas and Elizabeth Naquin Borger Endowment for Excellence for the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival
The Brian and Jeannelle Brady Endowment for Excellence for the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival
The Cullen Endowment for Excellence for the Notre Dame
Shakespeare Festival
The Paul Eulau Endowment for Excellence for Actors From The London Stage
The Gary Gutchess Endowment for Excellence in Shakespearean Theatre
The Mr. & Mrs. William P. Johnson Endowment for Excellence for the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival
The Deborah J. Loughrey Endowment for Excellence in Shakespeare Studies
The McMeel Family Chair in Shakespeare Studies
The McMeel Family Endowment for Excellence for Actors From The London Stage
Radiology, Inc. Endowment for Excellence for the Notre Dame
Shakespeare Festival
The Mary Irene Ryan Endowment for Excellence in Community Programming
The Mary Irene Ryan Endowment for Excellence for Shakespeare at Notre Dame
The Mary Irene Ryan Executive Artistic Director of Shakespeare at Notre Dame
The Ryan Family Producing Director of Shakespeare at Notre Dame
The D & J Smith Endowment for Shakespeare and Performance
SUSTAINING BENEFACTORS
2024-2025 SUSTAINING BENEFACTORS OF SHAKESPEARE AT NOTRE DAME:
Ryan A. Belock & Michelle Letourneau-Belock
Marielle N. Boneau
Elizabeth Naquin Borger, Stifel Nicolaus
Kathleen C. Collins, JD
Karen E. Crespy
Thomas Esper
David & Ernestine Gardner
Joe & Kathy Giglia
Tom & Maribeth Gubanich
David W. Hartwig
Michael P. Leary, Esq.
Anna M. McKeever
Andy & Kiera Pfaff
Ann M. Rathburn-Lacopo
Dr. Eileen Ryan
Dr. Joel & Lynn Secrest
Dr. Alesha D. Seroczynski
Dr. Jeffrey R. Show
Jack B. Smith, Jr. & Laura Arauz Smith, Gaska Tape Tyler Tigges
Robert J. Weber, Jr.
Mark Edelman, The Theatre League of Kansas City
CAMPUS PARTNERS
DeBartolo Performing Arts Center
Ted Barron, Executive Director
Daniel Burgun, Falon Cole, Thomas Cumbow, Molly DeWald, Terri Douglas, Mark Flora, Rachel Grzenia, Leigh Hayden, Ricky Herbst, Joshua Ingle, Stephani Keve, Kevin Krizmanich, Sean Martin, Brian Nulle, Sarah Schreiber Prince, Connor Reilly, Alex Scheidler, Christopher Schenkel, Sara Skiles, Kirk Richard Smith, Jason Swift, Nathalie Villalobos, Paige Wexler, Housekeeping Staff, Ticket Office Staff, Usher Staff, and Volunteers
Notre Dame College of Arts and Letters
Sarah A. Mustillo, I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean
Tarzan D. Ball, Matthew Bizoe, Todd Boruff, Jim Brockmole, Karin
Dale, Elicia Dennis, Heidi Henke, Mary Kinney, Michelle LaCourt, Ellen Roof, Josh Weinhold, Randy Yoho, Matthew Zyniewicz
Notre Dame Department of Film, Television, and Theatre
Pamela Robertson Wojick, Chair
Ted Barron, Christine Becker, Terrance Brown, Lori Butchko, Tarryn Chun, Jim Collins, C. Kenneth Cole, Briona Nic Dhiarmada, William Donamura, Kevin C. Dreyer, La Donna Forsgren, Anne Garcia-Romero, Tre Goodhue, Matt Hawkins, Karen Heisler, Lynn Holbrook, Peter Holland, Michael Kackman, Mary Celeste Kearney, Carys Kresny, Ted Mandell, Olivier Morel, JoAnn Norris, Mary Pergola Parent, Matthew Payne, Siiri Scott, Gary Sieber, Jeff Spoonhower, Marcus Stephens
ADVISORY BOARD
Shakespeare at Notre Dame Advisory Board
The Shakespeare at Notre Dame Advisory Board serves as the advisory board for the entire Shakespeare at Notre Dame program, which encompasses not only the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival but also the McMeel Family Chair in Shakespeare Studies and Actors From The London Stage.
O cers: Dr. Eileen Ryan, Chair, Advisory Board
Andrew T. Blum, Chair, Executive Committee
Members:
Elizabeth Naquin Borger, Jeannelle Brady, Kevin C. Dreyer, Peter Holland, Toni Johnson, Ginger Lake, Molly Murtagh Meyers, Kurt Schreyer (Honorary), Amanda Abdo Sheahan, Bill Sheahan, Laura D. Arauz Smith
Ex-Officio: Gary Graham
Emeritus: Kathy Malone Beeler, Jack Cullen, John A. Haynes, Jim Powell, Brian O’Donaghue
Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival Founder: Dr. Paul A. Rathburn
SPECIAL THANKS
Allison Abner, WVPE
Bethel University Theatre Department
Jenny Birkett (piano loan)
Christy Burgess
Bread & Puppet Theater and the May 2024 Apprenticeship Cohort
Kari Bumgardner, Downtown South Bend
Kerry Byler, Granger Gazette
Ken & Aimee Cole
Andrea Deitchley, Lamar Advertising
Christine DellaNeva Flint, the Navarre Hospitality Group
Tricia Emlet & John Holdren
Beau Gambold
Kevin Hardsock & Dave Kyttka, Express Press
Andrew Hughes & Joseph Dits, South Bend Tribune
Colleen Jones, Hammes Bookstore
Mary Kinney, College of Arts & Letters
Ben Lauer & Garland Scott, Folger Shakespeare Library
Barbara Levan, Martin’s Supermarkets
Mel Marvin
McHale Performing Arts Center
Drew Montgomery Graphic Design
Vanessa Morosco
Constance Morrow
Joanna Park (assistant model crafter)
Brandon Rudolph & Dan Rosado, LocalIQ
Amy Ruth, University of Notre Dame Campus Dining
Kevin Schellinger, Morris Inn and Notre Dame Conference Center
South Bend Civic Theatre
Josephine Stewart
Jack Tamburri
Austin Tichenor
Walter Piano Transport
E. Andrew Whittington, M.Ed., Center for University Advising
Kelsy Zumbrun & Courtney Jorgensen, Experience Michiana
UPCOMING EVENTS
OCTOBER 30-NOV.1, 2024
DEBARTOLO PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
Love, deception, ambition, and desire collide in Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s great romantic comedy. A delightful blend of mistaken identity, disguises, and love triangles, Twelfth Night features some of Shakespeare’s most famed passages, with its effervescent comic energy carried swiftly by deeper currents of grief, forgiveness, and transformation. Fast, energetic, and above all gloriously entertaining, Twelfth Night is one of the great playwright’s most popular and enduring stories.
Actors From The London Stage, the renowned five-actor touring group, brings Twelfth Night back to the touring circuit in fall 2024. With each actor portraying multiple roles, this dynamic, self-directed ensemble brings a fresh and vivacious energy to each new performance.
UPCOMING EVENTS
UPCOMING EVENTS
