Alumni in the News

A former actor in New York on Broadway and off-Broadway, Catherine Ann Jones (B.F.A., Drama, 1965) is currently performing her 12th play, Freud's Oracle, a one-woman play set in Vienna and London in 1933.

Luis Rodriguez (B.M., Applied Music/Performance, 2010) has been appointed the assistant conductor for Plano Symphony and Irving Symphony as of January 2016. He also is the new music director for Camerata Dallas Youth orchestra as of April 2017. Photo by Michał Dembiński.

Marya Spont-Lemus (M.A., Art Education, 2010) co-led the Arts + Public Life’s Teen Arts Council for the 2016-17 school year, taking students through the process of developing a teen-curated exhibition of teen art for a University of Chicago gallery. 

Maxine Price (B.F.A., Art, 1959) will present an exhibition of paintings at the Nave Museum in Victoria through July 19.

Will Davis (M.F.A., Directing, 2013), artistic director of American Theatre Company in Chicago discusses his process and planning his first season in his new role that includes work that reckons with race, gender, culture and controversy with American Theatre.

Martin Rodriguez (B.F.A., Theatre Studies, 2015), Amanda Lloyd (B.A., Theatre Studies, 2014), Sarah Marcum (B.F.A., Theatre Studies, 2014) and Shae Tomlinson (B.A., Theatre and Dance, 2015) formed Flat Tire Theatre Company in Los Angeles. They will perform in their second Hollywood Fringe Festival this year with a show titled CringeFest: An Uncomfortable Anthology. 

Talleri McRae (M.F.A., Theatre, 2010) was recognized in American Theatre's Roll Call. She is currently a teaching artist and access/inclusion consultant whose work focuses on fostering the creativity and passion of the disability rights movement and developing meaningful theatre for young audiences.

Lucia Unrau (D.M.A., Applied Music, 1992) has been appointed professor of Music and Music Department Chair at Murray State University. She will continue as Camp Keyboard Coordinator at Interlochen Center for the Arts, where she has been a member of the piano faculty since 1993.

Dan Duling’s (Ph.D., Drama, 1977) play “Tesla: A Radio Play for the Stage” will be performed May 26-28 at Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach, California. He also is the scriptwriter at Pageant of the Masters in Laguna and their latest production, “The Grand Tour,” which opens July 7.

Thomas Caneva (M.M., Band and Wind Conducting, 1984), director of bands at Ball State University, conducted the BSU Wind Ensemble in a performance at the College Band Directors National Association National Conference in Kansas City, Missouri. In addition, Caneva was awarded the 2017-18 College of Fine Arts Dean’s Creative Endeavor Award in Music at BSU.