Faculty

Education

• BA Hofstra University

• MALS Wesleyan University

Dawn Alger has worked in arts administration in Connecticut for the past 30 years, having held positions in performing arts operations, business management, education, development/fundraising, marketing, and program management. Prior to coming to Wesleyan University in 2013, she worked at The Palace Theater in Waterbury as Patron Services and Educational Programs Manager for a 3,000-seat multi-genre venue in a largely urban setting. Previously, Ms. Alger worked at The Bushnell Center for Performing Arts in Hartford, the Greater Middletown Chorale, and the Goodspeed Opera House. She has been a member of the Oddfellows Playhouse Board of Directors since 2016, and is a founding board member of Blue Fire Stage Company in Haddam, created in 2019. 

Ms. Alger graduated from Hofstra University in New York in 1996 with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with a minor in Theater, and as of 2025, completed her Master’s Degree at Wesleyan University through the Graduate Liberal Studies with a concentration in Science.

Assistant Professor of the Practice, Design and Engineering Studies

Education:

• BA Bryn Mawr College

• MFA Yale University

Rosalie Bochansky holds an MFA in Technical Design and Production from the Yale School of Drama (2015) and a BA in Philosophy with a minor in Geology from Bryn Mawr College (1999). Her academic honors include the Allen M. and Hildred L. Harvey Prize for Technical Writing, the McPherson Award for Excellence, and the Kaye Prize in Theatre Arts.

She holds several certifications including ETCP Rigger, OSHA 30-Hour, First Aid/CPR/AED, and training in Antiracist Theater, Documentary Theater, and Stage Combat. Her areas of expertise include technical design, carpentry and welding, automation, rigging, and she is proficient in AutoCAD, Vectorworks, and 3D modeling.

Prof. Bochansky recently served as Technical Director and Production Manager at Quinnipiac University. She led programming focused on new plays and musicals, taught Stagecraft and design practicums, and collaborated with New Haven-based re-entry organization Emerge, CT on documentary theater projects. Her previous experience includes work with the Yale Baroque Opera Project, Yale Repertory Theatre, and Big House.

At Wesleyan, she will teach Production Lab (Scenery section), Technical Practice, Drafting for Theater, and serve as Technical Director for Mainstage and Capstone productions.

Faculty Coordinator of Sustainability & Environmental Justice Initiatives

Associate Professor, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Faculty Coordinator of Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiatives

Education:

• BA Occidental College

• MA New York University

• PHD New York University

Katie Brewer Ball (KBB) is Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the Theater Department & affiliated Faculty in Feminst, Gender, Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University. They are currently serving as Theater Department Chair and the Sustainability and Environmental Justice Faculty Coordinator. Brewer Ball earned their PhD in Performance Studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2013. Their research focuses on performance, visual culture, Black and Indigenous aesthetics, feminist theory, queer studies, and psychoanalysis. Brewer Ball is the author of The Only Way Out: The Racial & Sexual Performance of Escape (Duke University Press, 2024), editor of Mommy Wound (Shandaken Projects, 2004), with artist Vick Quezada.

Brewer Ball is currently working on two new book projects, Unsettling Art Criticism: Alaska Native Art After 1960, for which they are a 2024 recipient of the The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers grant, and a book on the history of Arctic science on the North Slope of Alaska.

Their writing has been published in The Mass Review, ASAP/Journal, Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, TDR: The Drama Review, Artforum, Little Joe, Bomb Magazine, Dirty Looks, and by ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives.

Education:

• BA Weber State University

Nathan Dame is originally from Ogden, Utah. He lives in Brooklyn and makes his living as a music director and writer for theater. He has had plays developed by Roundabout Theatre Company, Portland Center Stage (JAW Fest 2016), The New Group, and Barrow Street Theater, among others. He co-orchestrated the recent national tour of the new musical An Officer and a Gentleman. His musical adapted from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, written with Rob Baumgartner, has been developed at Goodspeed Musicals and Bucks County Playhouse. Some credits as Music Director include: Off-Broadway: Pretty Filthy (The Civilians, Original Cast Recording); Dying For It (Atlantic Theater Company); Mr. Burns (associate music director, Playwrights Horizons); What's It All About? (assoc. music director, New York Theatre Workshop. Regional: Be More Chill (Two River Theater, Original Cast Recording); A Little Night Music (Berkshire Theatre Group); Fly By Night (assoc. music director, Dallas Theater Center). Developmental work at Playwrights Horizons, Ars Nova, Roundabout, Goodspeed, The O’Neill Theater Center, Aspen Theatre Festival, among many others.

Assistant Professor, Design and Engineering Studies

Education

• BA Centenary College La

• MFA University of Iowa

Courtney Gaston is a theatrical lighting and media designer whose research focuses on integrating new technologies into performance. They are the co-head of the Art Department on an ongoing, devised research project titled “Media Clown” which premiered in the Emerging Artist Series at the Prague Quadrennial in 2019. “Media Clown” explores the live interactivity of traditional performance and new technologies through motion capture, space tracking, and live content generation. In the summer of 2021, they continued as the production designer on the second iteration of Media Clown after the project secured funding from Epic Mega Grants. Using Epic Games’ software, Unreal Engine, she created three immersive virtual playing spaces which were used with a live performer and presented in an interactive theatrical experience.

Courtney has also spent the last several years focusing their research on integrating lighting and costume design. Along with Wesleyan Theater costume shop manager, Robin Mazzola, they have worked to find ways in which the process from design to execution can be fully collaborative, considering ways in which costumes can be constructed to support lighting systems. They presented this research at the 2023 Prague Quadrennial and the upcoming Critical Costume Conference in Los Angeles.

Education:

• AA Casper College

• MFA Yale University

Ms. Hickman holds an MFA in Costume Design degree from the Yale School of Drama, 2020; a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Costume Design & Technology from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, 2013; and an Associate Degree in Technical Theater from Casper College, 2010. Ms. Hickman has designed mainly within educational institutions such as the Yale School of Drama, Yale Cabaret, Bowie State University Arts and University of North Carolina School of the Arts. As a recent graduate, Ms. Hickman has been awarded several honors and fellowships such as the William R. Kenan Jr. Costume Design Fellowship at the Kennedy Center, 2014 and 2015, as well as being selected to the Young Designers Forum for the United States Institute for Theatre Technology, USITT Conference, 2013, among others. In addition, Ms. Hickman participated in AmeriCorps where she became committed to community outreach and grass roots activism. Ms. Hickman, at Wesleyan Theater Department teaches Introduction to Costume Design, Advising Students Projects in Costume Design and participating in Department productions.

Education

• BA Haverford College

• EDD Harvard University

International Traditions of Comic Performance with special interests in Balinese Theater and the work of the Italian Nobel Laureate Dario Fo. Prison Arts Projects and Theater for Social Change Directing and translating the plays of Dario Fo. Directing and translating theater connected to the traditions of Bali.

Education

• BA Brown University

• MFA Yale University

Alex Keegan is a director of new work, adaptations, and devised pieces. In her work, she's committed to uplifting LGBTQ+ stories and exploring the dramatization of mental illness while using heightened theatricality to unpack all the messy, delightful ways in which we strive to connect. 

She has been a Directing Fellow with The Drama League (2023), Rattlestick Theater (2022/2023), and Geva Theater Center (2017) and is currently a member of the 2024-2026 WP Theater Lab and an Affiliated Artist at New Georges. Her recent directing includes:  the world premiere of Manning by Benjamin Benne (Portland Stage), Maiden Voyage by Cayenne Douglass (The Flea, recipient of the NYFA NYC Emerging Women's Fund for Theater), Judith by Katie Bender (AFO at WP Theater), Charlotte's Web (National Tour, TheaterWorksUSA), The Incredible Book Eating Boy (The Hangar), Birds of North America by Anna Ouyang Moench (Chester Theatre), Affinity, co-adapted with Ryan Adelsheim based on Sarah Waters' novel, Uhuru by Gloria Majule, Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (Yale Drama), Auntie Vanya by Reed Northrup (Ars Nova ANT Fest), and new work in development with Primary Stages, Signature Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theater, Hope Repertory Theater, Cherry Lane Theatre, MCC FreshPlay, The O'Neill YPF.

Alex has taught theater or educationally directed with institutions including Yale University's Young Global Scholars, The O'Neill Theater Center National Theater Institute, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Atlantic Acting School, American Academy of Dramatic Arts, LIU CW Post, and SUNY Brockport. At Wesleyan, Alex has directed The Moors by Jen Silverman, A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare, and Wolfcrush: A Queer Werewolf Play in Three Acts by Haygen-Brice Walker. Other academic directing includes: All Eight by Lilly Camp, That Poor Girl and How He Killed Her by Jen Silverman (AADA), She Kills Monsters by Qui Nguyen (SUNY Brockport), Questions for Snowless Children by Sarah Ruhl (NYU Tisch). 

Alex is a recipient of an EST/Sloan Project Commission, New York Theater Workshop's Adelphi Residency, The Drama League First Stage Artist Residency. She is an alum of Roundabout Directors Group, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, The Civilians R&D Group, Williamstown Directing Corps, 24 Hour Plays Nationals. In addition to her directing work, she also adapts and devises. Recent work includes: Affinity, which she co-adapted with Ryan Adelsheim from Sarah Waters' novel into a theater piece that follows one woman's search for lesbian connection amidst spiritualist Victorian London, and Aplomb, an ensemble piece exploring queer college students' experiences with anxiety disorder that she developed with NYTW and The Habitat. She's a proud member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. 

MFA: Yale School of Drama
    Julian Milton Kaufman Memorial Prize for Directing

BA: Brown University
    Weston Fine Arts Award for Excellence in Directing
    Robinson Potter Dunn Premium in Theater Arts 

At the Theater Department, Alex teaches Intro to Directing, Directing II, Acting I, Performance Practice, The Actor’s Experience, and Reading Plays for Production.

Education

• BFA Paier College of Art

• MLS Wesleyan University

At Wesleyan University, Robin serves as the Costume Shop Manager for the Theater Department and as an Assistant Adjunct Professor of Theater. In these roles, she mentors students through hands-on design and construction processes for Department, Thesis, and Dance productions. Through her teaching, she introduces prospective majors to the collaborative nature of theater-making, fostering a creative and inclusive environment where students learn to bring stories to life through costume.

Robin Mazzola is a clothing and costume designer with over 25 years of experience, known for blending a love of vintage and historical fashion with innovative costume technology. Her work explores how traditional construction methods can be integrated with emerging technologies to push costume design beyond the expected. With a deep understanding of both aesthetics and function, Robin creates transformative pieces that help performers embody their characters fully and authentically.

Education

• BA Yale University

• MFA National Theatre Conservatory

Maria-Christina Oliveras is an award-winning first generation Filipina and Puerto Rican classically trained actor, singer, educator and activist from the Bronx, NY. 

She has performed extensively on and off Broadway, regionally, internationally, and in film and television, and has served as a singer for such esteemed artists as Taylor Mac and Toshi Reagon. Her Broadway credits include Luz Baccay in the world premiere of Pultizer Prize winner, David Lindsay Abaire's The Balusters, directed by Tony Award Winner, Kenny Leon, Church Lady in the Tony nominated, Pulitzer-Prize winning play, Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis, directed by Austin Pendleton, and Persephone in the Broadway National Tour of Hadestown, directed by Tony Award Winner, Rachel Chavkin.  Broadway: The Balusters, Between Riverside and Crazy, Amelie (original cast album); Machinal; Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. Off-Broadway: Here Lies Love (Public; cast album); Pretty Filthy (Civilians; cast album); Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade…(St. Ann’s Warehouse); And Miles to Go (PCP); Reading Under the Influence (DR2); Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Public); Romeo and Juliet (Public); Zorba! (Encores!); Night Sky (BPAC). Regional: CTG, Yale Rep, Berkeley Rep, Williamstown, Long Wharf, Huntington, Baltimore Centerstage, Sundance, O’Neill, among numerous others. Selected Film/TV: Manhattan Night, St. Vincent, "Blue Bloods," "Nurse Jackie", "Law & Order: SVU", The Blacklist”; “Madame Secretary.” Education: B.A. with honors—Yale University; M.F.A.—National Theatre Conservatory.

Professor, Design and Engineering Studies

Professor, Bailey College of the Environment

Professor, Latin American Studies

Education

• MFA California Institute of Arts

• BFA University of Chile

Marcela I. Oteíza, Visual Artist, Scenic Designer. Her design credits include scenic design for La Canción by Candido Tirado, directed by Edward Torres, NYC, 2016, awarded the ACE and ATI prize for best production; and scenic design for Summer Time by Charles L. Mee, directed by Kim Weild to exhibited at World Stage Design (WSD – OISTAT 2022). She specializes in collaborative and non-text-based work, such as Wes out Loud, 2016, created and directed by Prof. Oteíza. A designed object from the Old Wild Boy directed by Rinde Eckert, a 2012 Doris Duke Performing Arts fellow. was shown at Object Exhibit at The Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space (PQ), 2015. Her video-documentary: Santiago (en) vivo, based on objects of street performances, screened at the Centro Cultural Palacio de la Moneda as part of the selection of the Teatro Internacional Santiago a Mil, 2018. She collaborates with the Judy Dworin at Justice Dance Performance Project (JDPP), for which she has completed several scenic and media designs, such as  In the Presence of Trees, site-based-work performed in multiple locations throughout Hartford in 2022-23, ColorFields. Commissioned by Helen Frankenthaler Foundation at New Britain Museum of American Art, Video and Site-based versions, 2021. Her articles in Street Performance-Scenography have been published in the Series Scenography Expanded: An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design, edited by Joslin Mckinney and Scott Palmer, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017, and in Theatre and Performance Design Magazine, Routledge, 2018. She participates in The International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR) Architecture and scenography working groups, with projects such as Feminist Scenographies 2022 and Performing Rage: A Rapist in Your Path Feminist Scenic Barricade, a Public Space Intervention by Las Tesis Collective, 2019-ongoing, and at the  PQ-2023 participated in the Feminist Scenographies panel with Prof. Hari Marini (Iaonian University) and Prof. Shauna Jensen (Concordia University) at the PQ Symposium Where are we? 2023 with The object tells the truth: Baquedano’s statue as a witness for social change at Plaza Dignidad,  Santiago, Chile”. PQ Talks 2019: Street Performance Contemporary Objects Project: The Self and the Automaton. She is currently a  Professor at Wesleyan University,  Theater department, the College of the Environment and Latin American Studies Program, in addition she faculty for the College of Design, Engineering Studies  (CoDES) program. Prof. Oteíza holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a BFA in fine arts from the University of Chile.

Prof. Oteíza’s artistic practice and scholarly research in scenography center on the transdisciplinary nature of design for performance, which exists simultaneously as both a spatial and time-based phenomenon across multiple artistic practices. Her current research focuses on contemporary street performance objects and how they are designed, utilized, and understood within their context. Prof. Oteíza is currently working on her book project, Rebel Objects of Street Theatre: Scenography, Activism, and the City. She teaches in the Department of Theater, as well as in the College of Design and Engineering Studies (CoDES) and the College of the Environment (COE) at Wesleyan University.

https://moteiza.faculty.wesleyan.edu/publications/

Education

• BA University of Washington

• MFA Brown University

Introductory and Advanced Directing, Site-Specifc Theater, Devising Methods and Practice, Theater as Civic Practice, Following Fornés

Katie Pearl's work ranges from conventional plays to community-wide collaborations to experimental performances. Her professional practice is motivated and shaped by the conviction that personal encounter and creative exchange are essential to a humane world; as such, a core interest is in the relationships making up a performance event and their ability to build community, shift perception, and catalyze action. 

Pearl is the co-Artistic Director of the Obie-winning PearlDamour, a company with a 25-year history of pushing the boundaries of theatrical convention. PearlDamour has garnered recognition and support from major institutions such as the NEA (Our Town grant), the Creative Capital Foundation, and the Multi-Arts Production (MAP) Fund. PearlDamour projects are genre-defying, community building, and adventurous—from the 8-hour performance installation How to Build a Forest, inspired by Hurricane Katrina and the BP Oil spill and devised for conventional theater stages; to Lost in the Meadow, created for a forty-acre hillside at Longwood Botanical Gardens outside Philadelphia, fancifully exploring the short-sightedness of humans; to the 5-town, 5-year MILTON, our performance and community engagement project created for and with small towns named Milton. Now touring: the climate-focused senate-chamber showdown Ocean Filibuster which premiered at The American Repertory Theater in February 2022. Currently in development: Climate Sing, a city-wide sing along of new songs celebrating the planet, and INDELIBLE, a new performance responding to ongoing sexual violence against women with seminal lesbian performance artist Holly Hughes.

Pearl was the 2017 Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton, the Quinn Martin Guest Chair of Directing at UCSD, and a visiting lecturer at Harvard, where her teaching and research focused on the concept of the Artist-Citizen.  Commissions include Trinity Rep, The American Repertory Theater, The Kitchen, and PS122. Pearl has been a Berkeley Rep Ground Floor and SPACE at Ryder Farm artist. She is a producer on the award winning documentary by Michelle Memran about the Cuban American playwright María Irene Fornés called The Rest I Make Up.

Pearl received her BA from the University of Washington (Drama) and her MFA from Brown University (Writing for Performance). She is an alum of the Drama League, a member of SDC, and currently serves as an At-Large Member on the Executive Council of the AAUP.  www.katiepearl.com,  www.pearldamour.com 

Associate Professor, English

Education

• CER Yale University

Edwin Sánchez is a playwright who’s work includes, LA BELLA FAMILIA, TRAFFICKING IN BROKEN HEARTS, I’LL TAKE ROMANCE, DIOSA, UNMERCIFUL GOOD FORTUNE, ICARUS and BAREFOOT BOY WITH SHOES ON. His work has been produced regionally throughout the United States as well as Brazil, Russia, England and Switzerland. Among his awards are the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays (CLEAN), three New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting/Screenwriting Fellowships, the Princess Grace Playwriting Fellowship, the Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award and the AT&T On Stage New Play Award. His novel, Diary of a Puerto Rican Demigod is available through Amazon. His play UNMERCIFUL GOOD FORTUNE is currently under option.

Education

• BFA Valdosta State University

Caleb Spivey holds a BFA in Theatre with a Production and Musical Theatre Emphasis from Valdosta State University (2013). Professionally, he brings over ten years of stage management and production

management experience across the field, from summer stock to theme park to regional, from national tours to Off-Broadway. Mr. Spivey currently serves as Associate Director of Operations and

Production for GFour Productions, where he oversees large-scale touring productions. He has brought his professional experience to

bear in academic settings both as a guest designer and as a stage manager, mentoring university students while on tour with the award-winning American Moor.

At Wesleyan, He will teach the Stage Management, Technical  and Performance Practice courses , and serve as Production Manager and Stage Manager for the Theater Department.

Education

• BA Sarah Lawrence College

Sacha Yanow is a NYC based performance artist and actor. Their solo practice is rooted in theater, queer performance, and radical Jewish tradition, using humor and physicality to explore themes of gender, aging, loss, and diaspora. Their recent work is a trio of solo performances based on familial archetypes: the father, the grandmother and the uncle. These embodied renderings mine Yanow's family history as an entry point to address broader social issues. Toggling the thin line between humor and grief, the pieces are experimental portraits of intergenerational loneliness and longing which utilize the role of the clown or “fool” as a way to metabolize ancestral trauma. Yanow’s work has been presented by venues including The Kitchen, MoMA PS1, Danspace Project, Joe's Pub, and the New Museum in NYC; PICA’s TBA Festival/Cooley Gallery at Reed College in Portland; and Festival Theaterformen in Hanover, Germany. They have received residency support from Baryshnikov Arts Center, Denniston Hill, LIFT Festival UK, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, MASS MoCA, and Yaddo  among others. Yanow received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and are a graduate of the William Esper Studio Actor Training Program.

Education

• BA Tufts University

• MFA Columbia University

Lauren Yeoman holds an MFA in Acting from Columbia University and a BA from Tufts University. She is a Designated Linklater Voice Teacher and certified Colaianni Speech Teacher. Lauren teaches voice, movement, and speech & dialects, and coaches professionally. She has taught at the University of Southern California's School of Dramatic Arts, The Rossier School of Education, USC’s Summer Conservatory, Stella Adler, Theatricum Botanicum, the Summer Institute for International Actors, the EdVentures Program, STAR Education, and Columbia University’s Senior Executive Program, to name a few. Lauren's vocal coaching credits include the University of Southern California, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, the Mark Taper Forum, the Kirk Douglas Theater, A Noise Within, Theatricum Botanicum, and Classic Stage Company. Lauren has an extensive performance record as an actor in New York, Los Angeles, and regionally. At Wesleyan, Lauren teaches  Acting 1, Voice & Movement, and Acting Shakespeare courses. 

Lauren Yeoman's published work includes articles such as “Acting Lessons for Zoom“, "Dramatic Arts Pedagogy & Online Learning: Potential Tool for Learning in a Knowledge Society?".