 |
| Directors and Guest Artists |
| Michele Valdez assistant theatre director, resident property master, resident choreographer |
| Melanie Y. C. Pepe resident make-up designer, guest director |
| Donna Curfman resident costume designer |
| David Spondike resident sound designer, resident conductor |
| Jennifer Jeter guest director |
| Elynmarie Kazle artist-in-residence: stage management mentor |
| Melanie has served as the resident make-up designer at Firestone since 1998 and has recently served as a guest director, guiding the on-going production of Dear Gabby: the Confessions of an Over-Acheiver as well as The Actor's Nightmare in 2001. She holds a BFA in theatre arts from Kent State University where she participated in over twenty productions. Some of her favorites include Romeo and Juliet (Juliet), Medea (Medea), On Shakespeare (Queen Anne), Children of a Lesser God (Edna Kline), Bent (Stage Manager), Ain't Misbehaving (Stage Manager), Quarm (director) and On a Dead Horse They Ride (director). She also worked two years at the Schoenbrunn Ampitheatre as a fight choreographer and stage manager. Melanie has co-directed two plays with the Imno Theatre Company and served as stage manager for A Particular Class of Women at Cleveland Public Theatre as well as Oliver! at Weathervane Playhouse. |
| Mark A. Zimmerman theatre director |
| Jennifer Jeter served as a guest director on the FHS production of The Amen Corner by James Baldwin. She is a performance artist, director, writer, and scenographer in Ohio. A native of Akron, she attended Central Hower High School, and went on to earn both her bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Akron, concentrating on performance art. Her thesis, titled The Rites of Being: an Analytical Review of Performance Art as a Theatrical Form was an attempt to legitimize this experimental art form by documenting its history, its individualistic style, and how it is affected by and, in turn, affects society. Miss Jeter has worked in educational, community, and professional theatre since the early 1980s. She has served as the coordinator for Cleveland's Karamu Performing Art Theatre's Arenafest as well as directing The Purple Flower a the University of Akron and The Fifteen Minute Hamlet as Weathervane Playhouse's contribution to First Night Akron. Miss Jeter's intet is to research, document, and educate individuals regarding their economical, political, racial, and cultural consciousness through art. |
| Mark A. Zimmerman is a working theatre director with over 30 plays to his credit, including productions at Weathervane Playhouse in Akron (The Philadelphia Story, Oliver!, Dear Gabby: the Confessions of an Over-Acheiver, How I Learned to Drive), Cleveland Public Theatre (Eve Ensler's Lemonade, Humankindness, The Fable of the Cloister of Cemetaries), Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens in Akron (King John), the University of Akron (Into the Woods, Picnic on a Battlefield, Talk Radio) as well as the Firehouse Theatre in Alliance (The Nerd). Zimmerman also serves on Weathervane's Production Board as the FirstEnergy Lighting Co-Chair. He has successfully lit Weathervane productions of Little Shop of Horrors, Having Our Say, The Glass Menagerie, Gross Indecency, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. He has appeared as an actor in a number of successful productions including turns as Speed in The Two Gentlemen of Verona at Weathervane Playhouse and as Peter Quince in A Midsummer Night's Dream at Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens as well as Inspector Hearne in Witness for the Prosecution at Coach House Theatre in Akron. Zimmerman is the theatre director at Firestone High School where he has created and executes a curriculum for college-bound theatre students. Under his guidance, the program has developed into one that presents a full season of plays and musicals --including two plays in rep-- and regularly has full-length productions featured at the State Thespian Conference. His students are regularly cast outside of the high school setting and most continue to study theatre at the university level after graduation. Zimmerman is the co-founder of the Second Stage Theatre in Wooster, where he also served as president of the Wayne County Performing Arts Council and as drama director at Wooster High School. Zimmerman earned a B.A. at Bowling Green State University and an M.A. from the University of Akron. He was recently named to Who's Who Among America's Teachers. |
| Michele Valdez earned her Bachelor of Science in Dance Management from Oklahoma City University and is currently pursuing a theatre degree at Ashland University. She recenntly provided choreography for the Weathervane Playhouse production of Oliver! Her other musical choreography credits include 42nd Street, Anything Goes, Guys and Dolls, She Loves Me, and Babes in Arms. She has directed such productions as The Night Before Christmas, 42nd Street, and Anything Goes. Valdez has had students from both Oklahoma and California who have won awards at the state and national levels. |
| David Spondike is a native Ohioan from Mentor with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography and Cinema from the Ohio State University and a Master of Music degree in Music Theory and Composition from Kent State University. He is the music theory and history teacher for the Visual and Performing Arts program at Firestone High School. Spondike is an active performer in Northeast Ohio as a bassist and a conductor. |
| Donna Curfman has worked in the theatre in many different roles: costume designing being the latest. She enjoys working onstage, as well, having recently appeared in the Weathervane Playhouse production of The Philadelphia Story. Curfman has also appeared in Our Town, A Christmas Carol, Talk Radio, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Plain and Fancy at the Canton Players Guild. Other memrable roles include Hello Dolly, Something's Afoot, Steel Magnolias, Tomfoolery, and Godspell at other area theatres. Curfman has worked as Public Relations/Education Director for Akron Children's Theatre/Magical Theatres. She has a degree in Speech/Drama and French from the Ohio State University and recently added Japanese to her teaching fields. Curfman currently teaches Japanese and French at Firestone and Litchfield Middle School. |
| Elynmarie Kazle is the Executive Director at Weathervane Playhouse in Akron. She has been a professional stage manager for 20 years and has worked professionally in dance, theatre, and opera. A USITT member since 1978, she founded USITT's National Stage Managers Mentoring Project in 1991. She spent 10 years producing and developing plays in Los Angeles and New York. Regional Theatre credits include The Old Globe in San Diego, Pasadena Playhouse, Long Beach Opera and Classical Ballet, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Great Lakes Shakespeare, Mark Taper Forum, and Opera Columbus along with such shows as Martin Sherman's Bent directed by David Marshall Grant and featuring Peter Frechette, Tate Donovan, and Ian Abercrombe. Elynmarie has worked with professionals such as director Robert Wilson, Baryshnikov, Madeline Kahn, Tommy Tune, Chita Rivera, and Christopher Walken. Just prior to her relocation to Akron in 1997, she stage-managed The Hopper's Wife for Long Beach Opera and subsequently returned to Sacramento Theatre Company to stage manage an all-star, 10-person rotating cast of A.R. Gurney's Love Letters. She began her association with Akron as apprentice to Tom Skelton at Ohio Ballet. A member of Actors Equity (AEA), TCG, Stage Managers Association, and OCTA, she served two terms on Theatre LA's Board and a number of years on the AEA West Coast Committee for Stage Managers. Kazle holds an MFA from Ohio University and a BFA from the University of Minnesota, Duluth. She served on the USITT Board of Directors 1990-96 and 9 years as Vice Commissioner of USITT's Management Commission. She is currently Vice President for Membership and Development for USITT. |