Lura Dolas

Lura Dolas received UC Berkeley's Distinguished Lecturer in the Humanities Award in 2016. Her acting credits include fourteen seasons with CalShakes, as well as leading roles with the Aurora Theater of Berkeley, the Oregon, San Francisco, and Santa Fe Shakespeare Festivals, The Empty Space Theater of Seattle, Sacramento Theater Company, Theater Emory of Atlanta, the Pacific Conservatory for the Performing Arts, and the Ensemble Theater Company of Santa Barbara. Her credits include Queen Atossa in The Persians at the Aurora for which she received a San Francisco Critic’s Circle Award Nomination, Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, also at the Aurora, and a one-woman show based on the life of Carlotta Monterey O’Neill, produced by the O’Neill Foundation. She has taught for the Boston  University Theater Institute, the American Conservatory Theater, CalShakes (where she was founding director of the CalShakes Conservatory), Berkeley Repertory Theater, Mills College and the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles. Her TDPS directing credits include The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Cradle Will Rock, for which she was awarded a Consortium for the Arts grant and The Cherry Orchard. Dolas is the senior lecturer in acting for the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies and has given public speaking workshops for UCB Law School, Haas School of Business, and the Townsend Center for the Humanities as well as for numerous departments on campus. She holds an MA from Antioch International in conjunction with the London Drama Studio and the American Conservatory Theatre.