Recent Alumni Notes
Updated January 31, 2023
Hernán Angulo '19 recently received his MFA in Acting from American Conservatory Theater in May 2022. He is in the cast of Sanctuary City, a co-production between Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Arena Stage. The production at Berkeley Rep closed August 14 and will open at Arena Stage October 25.
Tiffany Hernandez Alberto will be starting the Lighting/Electrics Fellowship at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in the fall!
Edoardo Benzoni '17 was just accepted into the MFA Acting class at Yale School of Drama (now known as David Geffen School of Drama at Yale) on a full ride scholarship starting in the fall. He will be part of the class of 2025.
Tiffany Lee Brown '91 is still, unbelievably, searching for the meaning of life. Most days, she finds it. After Cal, Tiffany left traditional theater and worked as a writer and editor. She also created music, ritual, performance art, installation, and social practice pieces, earning an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art. The intense creativity of motherhood was a revelation, too. These days she is a small-town journalist in the pines of Central Oregon, where she has a lively Tarot and astrology practice. On her podcast, Burning Tarot, she takes listeners on nature walks and pulls a card to guide folks for the week.
Richard Capp '58 completed his MFA in filmmaking at UCLA in 1976. He is still doing small things, mostly for fun and challenge. He sold a short sequence from his film, Run, Don't Walk, to ESPN, which features a 92-year-old delightfully charming lady who still jogs daily along the Santa Monica Esplanade to stay in shape.
Steve Chivers '81 was a writer on the seven-part true crime podcast Hollywood and Crime: The Execution of Bonny Lee Bakley which chronicles the bizarre true story of the murder of the wife of actor Robert Blake.
G. Chris '06 recently became Director of Production at YBCA in San Francisco, five years after stepping down as Lighting and Production Director at Alonzo King LINES Ballet, a position he held for 9 years. He is an active member of IAVM and the PMF, and is thrilled to be remaining in the business. He wants to thank the community, and TDPS Professor Lisa Wymore in particular, for their support following the 2021 passing of his wife Katherine McGinity, Dance and Performance Studies '07.
Matthew Cowell '06 is the Technical Director for Napa Valley College Performing Arts Center. He is also an adjunct instructor teaching Sound Reinforcement and Recording, Digital Sound Recording, and Sound Engineering. Working in the Bay Area for over 18 years as sound designer, recording engineer and drummer, he has worked with numerous local and national talents, including Grammy and Oscar nominated artists. He is an accomplished fight choreographer and Bay Area actor. Cowell has a bachelor's degree in Theater and Performance Studies from UC Berkeley (2006) and a Master's degree in Theology and Film Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary (2010). He lives in Napa, CA with his wife and two daughters.
Gregory Scott Cummins '83 has been making a living professionally for 37 years (since 1985) in film, TV, and theater. He can currently be seen as Crate (Detective Moore) on Bosch and Bosch: Legacy, as well as Luther (Mac's dad) in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Greg received his M.F.A in Acting from UCLA 1985, after receiving his degree from Cal. He was the starting punter on Cal's football team in '74 and '75 before punting in his last two years for the University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors. Visit Gregory's IMDB profile to learn more about his work.
Marni Davis '05 enjoyed teaching drama last year in Healdsburg Unified School District.
Huan Dong '08 recently completed his residency training in Pediatric Medicine at UCLA and has been selected to pursue a fellowship to sub-specialize in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at UCLA. His research interests include STI/HIV prevention, antibiotic resistance, and leveraging technology to improve education on potentially harmful health seeking behaviors. Throughout his journey in medicine, he is recognized by colleagues as an individual with emotional intelligence and being able to pick up on non-verbalized patient concerns, something he often attributes to his training in stage and theater. He continues to promote wellness to his colleagues and community through dance and creative expression.
Margaret Fisher Ph.D. '03 celebrated the release of the Italian edition of RADIA: A Gloss of the 1933 Futurist Radio Manifesto, co-edited with Laura Fournier-Finocchiaro (Edizioni Pendragon 2021). The volume includes Pino Masnata's exegesis of the Radio Manifesto in the context of the scientific discoveries of his time as well as radio-related articles, poems, dramas, transcripts of broadcasts, and tables of Futurist broadcasts from 1925-1943.
Karen Grassle published a memoir, Bright Lights, Prairie Dust: Reflections on Life, Loss, and Love from Little House's Ma (She Writes Press, 2021). TDPS faculty member Peter Glazer wrote of the book: "By the end, we feel great affection and respect for Karen Grassle, the person—a role she struggled with through much of her life but eventually fulfilled in fine style. She found acting and feminism at Berkeley in the '60s, and they never let her down."
Vivian Huang '08 is returning to the Bay Area as assistant professor of communication, performance, and race at San Francisco State University. Her first book, Surface Relations: Queer Forms of Asian American Inscrutability (Duke University Press, 2022) will be published in December.
Samantha Hyde has been cast in the film Wildflower opposite Emmy-winning actor Jean Smart.
Annie Kee '05 currently lives in Los Angeles where she is the Program Director of the arts organization The Advot Project. The Advot Project serves high school students and incarcerated youth in LA County, and uses arts-based curricula to teach them communication and healthy relationship skills. She uses her TDPS training every day!
Molly Olis Krost '16 wrote a new play, NANAY, which will be a part of Town Hall Theatre's New Voices Series. Performances will be January 20, 21, 27, and 28, 2023.
Camilla Leonard '21 is a second year MFA candidate at the Old Globe & University of San Diego Theater program! She is currently starring as Hippolyta and Cobweb in the Old Globe's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Julian Damian Marenco '17 decided to change his career path and work in conservation. He joined the California Conservation Corps in 2019, earning a Crew Leader position for their Forestry Crew. He is now an Ecological Restoration Technician with the Inland Empire Resource Conservation District!
Jane McGonigal PhD '06 published Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything, Even Things That Seem Impossible Today (Spiegel & Grau, 2022), a book about how games can help us anticipate otherwise hard-to-predict futures. Imaginable was featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR, and named a best book of the year so far by Barnes & Noble.
Salwa Meghjee '20 is currently an MFA student in Writing for the Screen and Stage at Northwestern University. Learn more about Salwa's work on her website.
Godfrey Plata served as assistant director to Pulitzer Prize-finalist Kristina Wong on her devised play, From Number to Name: Back to Life. The play was live streamed by East West Players in August 2022 with a cast and story from API RISE, a group of formerly-incarcerated or -detained Asian Pacific Islander community members who are attempting to build second chances at life.
Tom Provenzano is currently a semi-retired theater professor at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB). Previously he had been a theater critic for The LA Weekly and writer for Dramalogue. He also built a children's theater that toured across California and Washington state.
Priya Roy '21 is performing in a London operatic theatre company's production of Cinderella this fall — as Cinderella! As their research focuses on the intersections between Political Economy and Performing Arts — greatly inspired by their time with TDPS at Berkeley — Priya is thrilled to bring a queer, non-binary princess of color to life on stage. Priya is a Master's student at King's College London, and recently presented their work on Lesbian Love in Bollywood at a research conference. In addition, Priya teaches voice, dance, and yoga; hosting regular workshops for trauma survivors and marginalized communities to find healing through arts.
Shauna Satnick '18 has become an AEA actor and signed with a modeling agency. She's performed with Bay Area Musicals, Alma Theatre Company, Eugenie Chan Theatre Projects, East Bay Children's Theatre, Pacifica Spindrift Players, and Town Hall Theatre (to name a few). Most recently, she was a featured actor in A24's upcoming new film. In 2020, Shauna was a Fullbright Scholar nominee with her proposed research focusing on commedia dell'arte in contemporary theater spaces. Aside from acting, Shauna works as a media strategist. She is eternally grateful for the education and connections she made with peers and professors during her time at Cal. Learn more about Shauna's work on her website.
Robert Starr '74 co-stars on Amazon Prime's new series The Consultant, starring Oscar-winning actor Christoph Waltz. The series will air in 2023. He also co-stars on the ABC TV series The Rookie: Feds.
Charles Slender-White '06 is the Artistic Director of FACT/SF, a San Francisco-based contemporary dance company he founded in 2008. He is one of 36 Countertechnique Teachers worldwide, and teaches workshops throughout North America and Europe. Charles also currently works at ODC Theater as the Resident Strategist for Creative Partnerships and Curation and as a Guest Curator for ODC's 2022 season. His upcoming project, QAF, includes a podcast of interview with queer athletes, outdoor performances in San Francisco, a family-friendly sports day, and indoor performances with a neuro-diverse cast of dancers and athletes. His 2021 work, Split, was funded by the NEA and received significant critical acclaim.
Mark London Williams '81 continues to work as a columnist chronicling showbiz and its discontents in "double columnist" mode, as both an LA-based correspondent for a British film magazine, and a filmbiz labor and culture writer for Below the Line. Recent fiction-y things include an optioned zombie tale for young readers, and scripts for the first season of a demon-fused "audio noir" tale, set aboard a train, yet coming to podcast platforms next year. He misses playwriting.
Rodney Witherspoon II '15 recently graduated from the Brown University/Trinity Rep MFA program. He has performed and directed throughout New England and is currently performing in The Inheritance by Matthew Lopez at Trinity Repertory Company this Fall. When not on stage, he is teaching playwriting and acting at School One in Providence and at various institutions throughout Rhode Island.
Danica Zhou '18 has been in China's entertainment industry and worked with Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME), TikTok China (Douyin), and several satellite TV stations for their annual live events. She and her team want to bring avant-garde stage designs into their shows. They are continuously searching for talents who would like to work on the live events in China's industry (remotely).