Teaching Artist-in-Residence/Visiting Lecturer, Department of Theatre Arts, University of Pittsburgh
Holly Thuma’s performing credits include The Dallas Theater Center, Pittsburgh Public Theater, Jennerstown Mountain Playhouse, Quantum Theatre, Playhouse Repertory, The Jewish Theater of Pittsburgh, and films by Tony Buba and Brady Lewis. A founding member of the City Theatre under Mark Masterson, she also performed regularly with Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival. She has appeared as a dramatic performer with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the International Poetry Forum, and Pittsburgh Ballet Theater.
Directing credits include How I Learned to Drive, Dancing at Lughnasa, and The Recruiting Officer for University of Pittsburgh Repertory Theatre, Brian Friel’s Translations for Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre, Brundibar for Hope Academy, and adaptations of Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet for Shakespeare In the Schools.
She helped create and develop Pittsburgh Public Theater’s Creative Dramatics Program, which unites children from diverse public schools in and around the City of Pittsburgh. She has served as performance and education consultant for Hope Academy of Music and the Arts, a non-profit program whose mission is to provide quality arts education for underserved children in the community. For many years she told stories on the Healy-Heartwood Story Bus, and continues to free-lance as a storyteller and creative dramatics facilitator.
She holds a BFA in acting from New York University and MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, where she was the 2002 recipient of the MFA Teaching Award. She has served on the acting faculty at Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama, the University of Pittsburgh, and Point Park University.