DAWN ARNOLD
Founder and Artistic Director of The Moving Dock Theatre Company
and Chekhov Studio Chicago. Dawn is a teacher of the Chekhov Technique,
trained by the Michael Chekhov Association (MICHA). She appears in the
documentary, Master Classes in the Michael Chekhov Technique produced
by the Michael Chekhov Association. She has been on the faculty of
Roosevelt University’s Theatre Conservatory, Music Institute of Chicago,
Northern Illinois University, and The Theatre School at DePaul. She is
currently on the Faculty of the Michael Chekhov Association and the
Michael Chekhov Acting Studio New York City, Chekhov Studio Chicago,
and Lyric Opera of Chicago's Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center.
She is a guest artist around the country in workshops and residencies for
colleges, high schools, and theatre companies. As a movement director and
rehearsal coach, she has worked with Vitalist Theatre, Porchlight Music
Theatre, House Theatre, and Janus Theatre and coaches actors working for
Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Lookingglass Theatre, Goodman Theatre, and
Court Theatre among others, and opera singers at Lyric Opera Chicago's
Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center.
AKIL APOLLO DAVIS
Performing Artist and Theater Teacher based in NYC.
Akil teaches and develops a rare form of masks and movement.
The former apprentice and on-going collaborator of celebrated mask
teacher Per Brahe. Akil’s movement coaching is further informed in
his extensive training in Balinese dance, Thai Classical dance, Modern
dance, Butoh, African, Ballet, Jazz, Kabuki, and Noh. Akil has taught
Theatre and Dance all over America, in over seven countries, regularly
returning to Bali and Thailand, and has taught Mask and Art Aesthetic at
NYU and SUNY Purchase. An alumni of NYC TISCH School of the Arts, Founder
and Artistic Director of the new performance company LOUDSOL,
and a Megastar Talent Finalist.
MELANIA LEVITSKY
Melania Levitsky is the Artistic Director of Nikita Productions,
and the Associate Artistic Director of Walking the dog Theater Company
Inc. She directs the Shakespeare in the Valley Festival every summer
in upstate NY. She trained in the Michael Chekhov acting technique with
Ted Pugh and Fern Sloan and was a member of The Actors’ Ensemble for 20
years, and is one of the founding members of the Tennessee Shakespeare Company.
She is certified in Level 1 Spacial Dynamics and Bothmer Gymnastics and is
trained in the Werbeck singing technique. She has taught in the U.S.,
The Netherlands and South Africa. She is currently completing a recording
of original songs with a partner in Amsterdam, a children’s book based on a
Kazakh folk tale called, The Gold in the Ground, and recently began creating
custom sculpture portraits. She believes all art forms are a melding of truth,
fantasy, movement, danger and love.
JAMES LUSE
Actor, director, and teacher based in CT. James has an MFA
in Theatre Arts from Brandeis University and studied at the
Michael Chekhov Acting Studio in NYC, The International Michael
Chekhov Conference and The Baikal Theatre School, Irkusk, USSR.
James has been a Master Teacher of Acting at Yale & Wesleyan
Universities, the head of Acting at the Broadway Theatre Project,
and a Michael Chekhov specialist at THE NATIONAL THEATRE INSTITUTE.
He has also taught at the Theatre Faculties of WAYNE STATE University,
The College of William and Mary, NYU, The American Academy of Dramatic
Arts, The Berkshire Theatre Festival, The Virginia Stage Company,
Northern Michigan University, Hampton University, The Virginia
Shakespeare Festival, and the Long Wharf Theatre. James Luse has
directed over 600 productions in regional, stock and academic theatre.
He has acted regionally at the Walking the Dog Theatre/Nikita Productions,
ADVICE TO THE PLAYERS, INC. (NH), Virginia Shakespeare Festival,
Bristol Riverside Theatre, Jenny Wiley Theatre, Virginia Stage Company,
The International Stanislavski Theatre Studio, Yale University, Long Wharf,
Shakespeare on the Sound, the Generic Theatre(VA), and in NYC at HERE, The
ARCLIGHT THEATRE, Gorilla Repertory Co., Circle East, The Hunger and Thirst
Theatre Collective, A>N>O>N>Productions, and at NYU. In New York City, Luse
has performed major roles at The Gallery Players, The Michael Chekhov Acting
Studio & Theatre Festival, and at The Metropolitan Playhouse. He has played
in UNCLE VANYA as Vanya for the Torn Space Theatre in Buffalo, NY.
SCOTT MILLER
Having spent forty years as a coach, trainer and teacher,
Scott blends a lifetime of exceptional experience into his
work with others. His diverse life paths include two sports
at the professional level, a law degree from George Washington
University, clerking at DC’s Public Defender Service, time as
a producer, actor, director, a trainer of lead teachers. He
has been, for the last fifteen years, a Professor at NYU Tisch’s
elite Graduate Acting Program. He is the founder of the
Miller
Voice Method® and through decades of field and scientific research
has developed a transformational and repeatable way to embody
presence and empathy for peak performances that sustain both
the audience’s and speaker’s attention.
HUGO MOSS
Born in the U.K. and half Irish, has lived in Brazil for nearly
30 years. Recognizing how little Michael Chekhovs artistic legacy
was known in Brazil, Michael Chekhov Brasil was founded in 2010
by Hugo Moss and Brazilian actor Thaís Loureiro with the mission
to fill the gap in the country’s theatre education and practice.
Trained by MICHA, Hugo is an active member of the international
Michael Chekhov community and is director of Grupo Assik's acclaimed
2014 production of 'night, Mother, by Marsha Norman. He has
recently been assisting Jessica Cerullo in editing sections of
Deirdre Hurst du Prey's archive for MICHA's 2017 edition of
"Lessons for Teachers", and in 2016 was appointed Visiting
Professor at the University of Campinas to introduce the Michael
Chekhov technique to graduate, post-graduate students and
faculty members. He finds daily inspiration in the Alexander
Technique and Eurythmy and is fluent in Portuguese, German and French.
MEL SHRAWDER
Mel has performed with the New York Shakespeare Festival under
the direction of Joseph Papp, and has appeared at Arena Stage in
Washington DC, Portland Stage, and theatres around the world including
London and Paris. As a writer he has recently written two bookend
plays centered around the Native American experience at Carlisle,
and with the Chekhov Studio, he developed a one person show, Homefront,
which was also presented at the International Michael Chekhov Festival
at Amherst under the direction of Lenard Petit. He headed the performance
program at the University of Miami for a number of years where he receive
a faculty grant to study at the National Theatre of Great Britain. He is a
certified Reiki Master, and as well as teaching the Michael Chekhov approach,
Mel includes in his present teaching Energize components based on RYSE work,
and character/personality transformation approaches based on holistic means.
Mel appeared in the Michael Chekhov Association's master class instructional DVDs.
NATALIE YALON
Artistic director of Michael Chekhov Studio Brussels. Natalie specialized in stage
production and Russian theatrical pedagogics in Russia at Moscow’s Gitis (the Russian
Academy of Theatre Arts) and the Vakhtanghov Institute; with teachers Vladimir Skoritz,
Andrei Droznin, Boris Rabey, and Slava Kokorin. She also followed an intensive training
at the Michael Chekhov Acting Studio in New York with Lenard Petit. Since 2003,
she has given courses in Italy, Belgium, France and the United States. She teaches at the
Conservatoire de Liège and at the Conservatoire de Roubaix, France, at the Samovar in Paris
and at the Michael Chekhov Acting Studio in New York. She also works as a consultant for the
City of Brussels for the ‘Dispositif d’Accrochage Scolaire’. She stages the authors Victor
Haïm, Jean-Claude Grumberg, Joël Pommerat, Daniil Kharms and Anton Tchekhov. She has collaborated
with film director Boris Lehman, and film directors and performance artists Vincent Matijn-Wallecan,
Patricia Martin, Marc Rossignol, Dominique Thirion, Angel Vergara, Melanie Rullier, Anne-Cécile
Vandalem, Alain Wathieu Boris Rabey, Matthias Langhoff, Isabelle Pousseur, and Slava Kokorin.
