Lecturers

Dominique Fawn Hill

Lecturer: Costume Design

Dominique Fawn Hill is a Tony Award-nominated and Obie Award-winning costume designer for Broadway and film.

Dominique's designs include world premieres of plays and musicals produced at major venues such as The Public Theatre, Playwright’s Horizons, Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC, The Geffen Playhouse, and the Chautauqua Theatre Company. Her theatre credits include the Broadway production of Fat Ham (Tony Award and Lucille Lortel nominations) and Off-Broadway productions of Tambo & Bones (Lucille Lortel nomination), Fat Ham (Obie Award), Where the Mountain Meets the Sea (...

Jessica Berman Hirigoyen

Continuing Lecturer: Acting, Voice & Speech

Jessica Berman Hirigoyen is a dialect, voice, text, and acting coach. She has taught at UC Berkeley, American Conservatory Theatre (A.C.T.), and Academy of Art University. Recent dialect and vocal coaching credits include: Co-Head of Voice and Dialects: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (The Curran Theatre); School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play,...

Laxmi Kumaran

Undergraduate Academic Advisor, Continuing Lecturer: Technical Theater

Laxmi Kumaran has been with TDPS for over a decade. In addition to her role as Undergraduate Academic Advisor, she is a Continuing Lecturer for Technical Theater courses. She also teaches Stage Management in the Theater & Performance Studies Department at Stanford University. Laxmi spent several years as the Production Stage Manager at California Shakespeare Theater and at San Jose Repertory Theater. Before moving to the Bay Area, Laxmi stage managed in Chicago for a variety of theaters, including the Goodman Theatre and the Court Theatre. Laxmi has taught in the theater...

Daniel Larlham

Lecturer: Acting & Performance Studies

Daniel Larlham is a theatre-maker and performance researcher with a Ph.D. in Theatre from Columbia University and an M.F.A. from NYU’s Graduate Acting Program.

Daniel has held academic appointments at UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, Yale University’s Theater Studies Program, and Saint Mary’s College of California’s Performing Arts Department. He has also taught and conducted research at the Freie Universität Berlin (as a Humboldt Foundation Research Fellow) and the University of Roehampton, London (as a Fulbright Scholar). His articles and...

Erik K. Raymond Lee

Lecturer: Dance

Born in Oakland, Erik K. Raymond Lee is a dance artist and youth advocate. He began his formal training at UC Berkeley where he earned a BA in Dance & Performance Studies and a BA in Art Practice with a concentration in painting in 2010. Erik earned his MFA in Dance from Mills College in 2017. His professional dance journey began in 2011 with Dimensions Dance Theater (DDT) as a company member and modern dance teacher for the Rites of Passage summer program. He has since become a collaborator/member with James Graham Dance Theatre, Zaccho Dance Theater, and PUSH Dance...

Susannah Martin

Lecturer: Acting

A director, teacher, performer, and theatre maker of Tunisian heritage, and a Sephardic/Mizrahi Jewish feminist- activist-artist, Susannah has taught, directed, and performed for organizations throughout the Bay Area including: Shotgun Players (Company Member), A.C.T., California Shakespeare Theater, Cutting Ball Theater, Golden Thread Productions, Magic Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Mugwumpin (Company Member), Oakland Theater Project, the Playwright's Foundation, San Francisco Playhouse, TheatreFirst, and West Edge Opera. Some recent credits include: Marivaux’s The Triumph of Love for...

Michael Socrates Moran

Lecturer: Acting & Directing

Michael Socrates Moran grew up in Richmond, California before attending Boston University where he pursued his BFA. He has worked as a professional actor in regional theaters in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and at an off-Broadway house in New York City. He recently graduated from UC San Diego’s world-renowned MFA Directing program where he founded the award winning, Ubuntu Theater Project: a professional theater company based in Oakland, California dedicated to inspiring compassion across socio-economic and racial barriers. Michael now serves as Ubuntu’s Executive Director. Having...

Ray Oppenheimer

Lecturer: Lighting Design

Ray Oppenheimer is a San Francisco Bay Area based lighting designer, educator, scenographer, technologist, and creator who has been bringing his boundless curiosity, chimerical aesthetic, and Sisyphean perseverance to performance design and education since 2005. Ray graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Arts with an emphasis in lighting design from San Francisco State University in the Fall of 2017. He also is an active company member with Mugwumpin and Shotgun Players.

As a lighting designer, Ray has worked with Word For Word, Z Space, piecebypiece productions, ACT, The...

Lana Palmer

Lecturer: Sound Design

Lana Palmer is a Canadian-born, San Francisco-based artist working in theatre, film, and music. As a sound designer and composer, she is proud to have worked with many leading theatre companies in the Bay Area and throughout North America. Her recent credits include Josephine’s Feast (Magic Theatre/World Premiere), Hurricane Diane (Aurora Theatre), The Confessions of Lily Dare and Locusts Have No King (NCTC), Man of God (Shotgun Players),...

Mark Rafael

Lecturer: Acting & Public Speaking

A graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama, Mark has been an instructor in acting and theater at the University of California Berkeley, University of San Francisco, American Conservatory Theater, and the Academy of Art University. He is also a communications and speech coach for clients such as Cisco, Facebook, and Pinterest. He is the author of Telling Stories: A Grand Unifying Theory of Acting Techniques. He has appeared at many Bay Area theaters and his film and television credits include Titanic, Trauma, Chance, Star Trek Voyager...