Alumni in the News

Andrew Rudin (B.M., Composition, 1962) received an American Academy of Arts & Letters Music Award in May 2018. A grant from the Academy will support two new CD's and a March 2019 concert at The Academy will feature his music. He will be a guest composer in April 2019 at Piano on the Rocks festival in Sedona, Arizona, and in May of that same year, his opera, "Purewater" will have its premier with the Center for Contemporary Opera in NYC.

Alumnus Isaac Gomez (B.A. 2013) has been named the co-recipient of the Lanford Wilson Award along with R. Eric Thomas by the Dramatists Guild of America. This award is presented annually to early career playwrights at the Guild's national conference, which will take place July 28 in New York.  

Lina Chambers (M.F.A. in Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities candidate) will receive the Don and Elizabeth Doyle Fellowship and Lauren Smith (M.F.A. 2017) will receive the Distinguished Thesis Award at the 2018 American Alliance for Theatre and Education (AATE) conference. These awards celebrate excellent work in theatre for youth and outstanding scholarship. The conference will be held in Minneapolis August 1-5, 2018. 

Hannah Wolf (M.F.A., Theatre, 2018), a Los Angeles based director, dramaturg, and creative producer originally from Juneau, Alaska, has received a 2018 National Directors Fellowship. The fellowship will begin at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in July 2018 and provides 18 months of practical, hands-on training and mentorship, and concludes with a professional directing opportunity. Wolf's work has been seen at Perseverance Theatre, Superhero Clubhouse, The Vineyard Theater, The Civilians, Culturebot, Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant, Howlround, Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York University (NYU), PeppercornTheatre, Writopia Lab, The Secret City and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. 

Kimberly Belflower's (M.F.A., Playwriting, 2017) show "Lost Girl," which follows Wendy Darling's coming-of-age story after her return from Peter Pan's Neverland, will be performed at the Stiemke Studio in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by the 2017-2018 Professional Training Institute company, an advanced actor training program for students in 9th-12th grade. 

Matrex Kilgore (B.A., Theatre and Dance, 2015) directs 'A' (What the Black Girl Found While Searching for God), written and performed by Taji Senior and heading to Ground Floor Theatre in July. Inspired by George Bernard Shaw's The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search For God, 'A' is the story of a person, searching inside and outside of herself to find her place in the world. That search is filtered through a lens of black girlhood. 'A' hopes to ask and answer the question: Who has the right to self-creation?

Suzanne Ramo (D.M.A., Performance, 2013) joins Texas State University in the fall of 2018 as Assistant Professor of Voice. Previously she was Assistant Professor of Voice and Director of Opera Workshop at West Texas A&M University, where she led the opera workshop to their first national award in the National Opera Association's opera production competition with her production of Menotti’s "The Medium." She also recently performed the role of Violetta in Verdi’s "La Traviata" with Amarillo Opera, available for viewing on pbs.org.

Callan Steinmann (M.A., Art Education, 2013) has been appointed Curator of Education at The Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia. Steinmann has been associate curator of education at the museum since 2013.

Victoria Fisher Kaak (B.F.A., Studio Art, 1982) has accepted the position of exhibition graphic designer at The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., effective June 11, 2018. She previously worked for more than 30 years in the Department of Design and Installation at The Baltimore Museum of Art.  

Rebecca Fahning (B.F.A., Theatre Studies, 2014) teaches theatre and theatre tech at Desert Pines High School in the Clark County School District, the fifth largest school district in the nation.