Faculty and Staff

About

Angela Bacarisse

Angela Bacarisse supervises all costume and makeup designs for SFA's theatre productions. She has designed and taught at the University of North Carolina – Asheville, James Madison University and the College of Charleston.

Her designs also have been seen at:

  • Mount Holyoke College
  • Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre
  • Blowing Rock Stage Company
  • Playhouse on the Square in Memphis
  • East Texas Opera
  • Pioneer Valley Summer Theatre in Massachusetts
  • and the Asheville Lyric Opera.

As a cutter draper, she has worked on productions at the:

  • Alley Theatre in Houston
  • Texas Shakespeare Festival
  • Mac-Hayden Musical Theatre
  • Theatre in the Square in Atlanta
  • and the Georgia Shakespeare.

She also has worked extensively with dance companies in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas as a lighting designer.

Slade Billew

Slade Billew holds an MFA in theatre pedagogy from Virginia Commonwealth University and a PhD in theatre from Bowling Green State University.

He is a certified actor/combatant with the Society of American Fight Directors, holding certifications in seven of the eight weapon disciplines. His scholarship focuses on the application of contemporary science to acting pedagogy and has been presented at:

  • Mid-America Theatre Conference
  • American Society for Theatre Research
  • and the Association of Theatre Movement Educators.

Billew's work has been seen on a variety of professional and academic stages. In Richmond, Virginia, he worked with:

  • Barksdale Theatre
  • Richmond Shakespeare Festival
  • Henley Street Theatre
  • Firehouse Theatre Project
  • Nightlight Collective
  • and Cadence Theatre.

In Ohio, he worked for

  • Bowling Green State University
  • Lionface Productions
  • Beautiful Kids Independent Shakespeare
  • and Toledo Repertoire Theatre.

At SFA, Billew directed "The Moors", the world premiere staged reading of Chiori Miyagawa's "Julia and Ellie" and the Mainstage presentation of "Mr. Burns: a post electric play."

Kristen Blossom

Kristen Blossom holds an MFA in acting from the Asolo Conservatory, which is one of the top 20 acting schools in the world.

Blossom is a member of Actors Equity Association and a certified yoga teacher, holding the RYT® 200 designation. Her combination of acting, creative writing and yoga made her the recipient of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education 2019 Innovative Teaching Award.

She uses the Demidov acting technique in her classes, which frees the actor from the analytical mind, thus allowing access to higher spheres of emotion through organic spontaneity. Blossom has done film work in Los Angeles, California, and performed on stages all over the country.

She also served as choreographer and director for "Hunchback of Notre Dame" at the South Arkansas Arts Center.

Heather Samuelson

Heather Samuelson received both her BFA and MFA in dance from Sam Houston State University. She earned the Lyra Aerial Certification in 2020, as well as her Progressing Ballet Technique certification in 2020.

Samuelson has danced with numerous companies such as the Kista Tucker Dance Theatre, Raven Dance Project and Dance Umbrella. She is in her second term as board member for American College Dance Association's South-Central Region, and she is a board member for the Social Movement Contemporary Dance Company in Houston.

Her work, "M.E.," was selected for the Gala Performance at the Southern Region ACDA Conference in 2016, and in June 2017, "M.E." was presented internationally in Paris, France, at the Arts in Society Conference.

Samuelson's piece "Cognitive Disturbance" was Gala Selected at the 2018 ACDA South-Central Conference, and her choreography in "Tales of Neverland" was presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland in 2019.

She has been a guest speaker and choreographer at Houston Community College and presented her research and choreography on dementia at the 12th Annual International Visual and Performing Arts Conference in Athens, Greece, in June 2021.

Samuelson was selected for the 2018-19 Teaching Excellence Award for SFA's Department of Kinesiology and Health Science and received recognition for teaching one of the "10 most life changing courses" at SFA.

Other choreographies include, for SFA theatre productions:

  • "Godspell"
  • "Ivy and Bean"
  • "Oklahoma!"
  • "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee"
  • and "Pride and Prejudice."

For the "Oklahoma!" choreography, Samuelson received the award for Excellence in Choreography from the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

She also has choreographed for the SFA School of Music, including:

  • "Street Scenes"
  • and "Indodana."

She co-directs the SFA Repertory Dance Company and teaches all levels of Limón modern, ballet, tap and jazz dance techniques. She also is the artistic director of Dimensions Contemporary Ballet, founded in 2015. DCB is recognized throughout Texas and Oklahoma for their performances at the Houston Fringe Festival, the Brazos Contemporary Dance Festival, and the EXCHANGE Choreography Festival in Tulsa, Oklahoma. DCB provides dance and performance opportunities to aspiring artists in preparation for professional dance careers.

Jessica Thomas

Jessica Thomas received her BFA in dance from the University of North Texas and her MFA in choreography with a focus in interdisciplinary arts from Wilson College.

Along with dance, she is an active musician, poet, sound designer and videographer. She also is a licensed massage therapist, yoga practitioner, and member of the Dance Studies Association, Dance and Child International, and Dance Science and Somatics Educators.

She has performed professionally with companies and choreographers such as:

  • Contemporary Dance Fort Worth
  • Muscle Memory Dance Theatre
  • Backhaus Dance Company
  • Brenna Monroe-Cook
  • Risa Steinberg
  • Gus Solomons Jr.,
  • and Colin Connor.

Thomas has premiered interdisciplinary dance works at a variety of festivals and venues, including:

  • The Modern Dance Festival
  • Dallas Museum of Art
  • Brazos Dance Festival
  • Austin Dance Festival
  • Out of the Loop Fringe Festival
  • Kimbell Art Museum
  • Dance New Amsterdam
  • 254 Dance-Fest
  • Amon Carter Museum
  • South Dallas Cultural Center
  • Water Tower Theatre
  • The Wild Detectives
  • Bath House Cultural Center
  • and Sammons Center for the Arts.

Her screendances, "Illuminight," "In Memoriam," "Vortex" and "Underdeck," have premiered nationally and internationally.

Thomas's practice-led research fuels her interdisciplinary dancemaking and teaching practices, exploring the multifaceted realms of embodied knowledge through the lens of the dancing body and has been presented internationally in Vancouver, Canada.

She teaches modern and postmodern techniques, ballet, jazz and dance improvisation, interweaving concepts from somatics, experiential anatomy, integrated bodywork and Skinner Releasing Technique. She also provides somatic lecture workshops, as well as participatory dance performance lectures that involve interdisciplinary explorations, intersecting dance, music, visual arts and creative writing to the general public.

Above all else, Thomas is enlivened by mentoring individuals in a way that experientially empowers and refines their autonomy as emerging dance artists and educators while enriching their collaborative capacity as creative human beings.

Cleo House-Keller

A native Texas, Cleo House-Keller earned a bachelor of science at Texas A&M University-Commerce and his MFA at Texas Tech University. He attended SFA's High School Theatre workshop in 1992.

House-Keller has previous acting credits that include:

  • Teller and Posner Macbeth at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre, Washington, DC and the Two River Theatre Company, New Jersey
  • Hammer in "Insurrection: Holding History" at the Theatre Alliance, Washington, DC
  • Amusa in "Death and the King's Horseman" at the The Lantern Theatre, Philadelphia
  • Aaron in "Titus" at the Oklahoma Shakespearean Festival
  • and Boy Willie in "The Piano Lesson" at theTheatre of the Seventh Sister, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

National directing credits include:

  • "Hello Dolly!" at the Oklahoma Shakespearean Festival
  • "Cry Cristiana Morning" at the Theatre of the Seventh Sister
  • and the Lincoln Center's Directors Lab, New York City.

SFA Mainstage directing credits include:

  • "Pinkalicious the Musical"
  • "Sweat"
  • "Titus Andronicus"
  • "Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead"
  • "Bootycandy"
  • "The Jungle Book Kids"
  • "Lord of the Flies"

He is a Helen Hayes Nominee for Outstanding Ensemble and has won numerous regional awards as a director in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. House-Keller was formerly coordinator of Theatre at Penn State-Berks College, chair of Visual and Performing Arts at Texas Southern University and chair of Speech and Theatre at Clark Atlanta University.

Dr. Rick Jones

Dr. Rick Jones has worked as an actor, director, dialect coach, dramaturg and translator in seven states and two foreign countries.

His SFA directing credits include:

  • "Blood Wedding"
  • "Godspell"
  • "The Madwoman of Chaillot"
  • "Three Sisters"
  • "The Uninvited"
  • "The Breasts of Tiresias"
  • "Woyzeck"
  • and "Master Harold."

He also appeared in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and in the School of Music's production of "La Périchole."

Jones has published articles, chapters, reviews and interviews in books and journals devoted to African-American literature, Asian culture, classics and the classical tradition, Irish studies, modernism, pedagogy, and world history and literature, as well as in such journals as the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, New England Theatre Journal, Theatre InSight, Theatre Journal, and Theatre Survey, among others.

Jones has presented more than 40 scholarly papers at regional, national and international conferences, including:

  • the American Conference for Irish Studies
  • Association for Theatre in Higher Education
  • Comparative Drama Conference
  • Conference on the Reception of Classical Texts, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
  • International Society for the Classical Tradition
  • Mid-America Theatre Conference
  • Millennium Responses: (Dis)Placing Classical Greek Theatre, Thessaloniki, Greece
  • Southeastern Theatre Conference
  • and the Southeastern Theatre Conference Symposium.

He has been especially active in the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and has held the two highest offices in the Theatre History Focus Group and served on the executive committees of the Directing and Theatre as a Liberal Art focus groups.

Jones has chaired ATHE's Nominations and Strategic Planning committees, and also has held leadership positions on the Advocacy and Professional Development Committees. He served on the Research and Publications Committee for four years and on the Conference Committee.

He organizes and leads the School of Theatre and Dance's biennial study abroad program in Ireland. Jones received the 2007 Teaching Excellence Award for the Micky Elliott College of Fine Arts.

Jennifer Malmberg

Jen Malmberg is a lecturer and the theatre education program advisor in SFA's School of Theatre and Dance. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in stage management and her Master of Arts in teaching from SFA . While earning her undergraduate degree, Malmberg interned with AmeriCorps at Project Transformation in their summer education program and in the stage management department of the Portland Stage Company in Portland, Maine.

After graduating, she began her educational career as a high school technical director. Throughout her time in K-12, Malmberg served in many capacities outside her role as a technical theatre teacher and tech director, including auditorium facilitator, new-teacher mentor and Teacher Excellence Initiative campus expert. Beyond these roles, she served on numerous committees, including the Campus Action Plan Committee, Staff Quality, Retention and Recruitment Committee, Envision Learning Instructional Strategies Committee, multiple fine arts hiring committees and as the Sunshine Committee chair (dedicated to faculty and staff morale). Her time in K-12 culminated with receiving the “Teacher of the Year” award for her campus in the 2017-18 academic year.

Malmberg returned to SFA in 2018 as a lecturer and the program director for theatre education in the School of Theatre and Dance. In her time here at SFA, she:

  • serves as the program advisor to theater certification students
  • hosts five to seven digital workshops, bringing in professional educators and administrators from across the state and country to teach and network with students
  • developed multiple new theater education courses
  • hosts a theatre education job fair
  • hosts UIL One-Act Play events
  • and coordinates internship opportunities with the Texas Educational Theatre Association Theatrefest Conference for her theater education students.

TxETA is the state-wide organization for theatre educators in which Malmberg has served in many capacities ranging from assistant to the programming chair, a member of the special events team and in a recruitment capacity for SFA's School of Theatre and Dance. Currently, she serves as the president-elect for the Higher Education Committee and member-at-large for the Higher Ed Research Conference, both dedicated to building network relations and community between higher education institutions throughout the state for future K-12 educators and current higher education professionals.

During the summers in Nacogdoches, Malmberg serves as the workshop director for SFA's School of Theatre and Dance High School Summer Theatre Workshop. This two-week workshop, intensive in acting and technical theatre, offers high school students the opportunity to live on SFA's campus while working with renowned guest educators as their directors from across the country, producing multiple productions ending in a multi-day performance.

Malmberg was awarded the “Faculty Senate Teaching Excellence Award” at SFA for the 2022-23 academic year.

James McDaniel

James McDaniel is a native of Fort Worth and received his BFA in theatre with an emphasis in acting from the University of Oklahoma and MFA in costume design and technology from the University of Houston.

After graduating with his BFA, McDaniel was accepted into the acting apprentice program at Actor's Theatre of Louisville, where he played a role in the new play "Trudy Blue" by Marsha Norman at the 1995 Humana Festival of New Plays.

After 10 months at ATL he moved to New York City to pursue an acting career and eventually joined Actor's Equity Association with a production of "Agamemnon" directed by Alexander Hamilton at the historical La MaMa theatre in NYC.

After 9/11, he took a career turn and worked on Wall Street for seven years until the market crash of 2008. This lead McDaniel to pursue costuming opportunities and his MFA.

McDaniel enjoys construction and fabrication as well as design and has worked for Syracuse Stage, Aquila Theatre Company, Kean University and others in various costuming capacities.

Inga Meier

Dr. Inga Meier earned her BA with a double major in English literature and theatre arts from Rutgers College and an MFA in dramaturgy with a graduate certificate in cultural studies from Stony Brook University. She received her PhD in theatre history and performance studies from the University of Pittsburgh, where she also completed a doctoral film studies certificate.

Meier's scholarship is focused on performances of terrorism, violence and trauma and has been presented at conferences throughout the United States and in England, including:

  • Association for Theatre in Higher Education
  • American Society for Theatre Research
  • Comparative Drama Conference
  • Film and History
  • Mid-America Theatre Conference
  • Midwest Modern Language Association
  • Southeastern Theatre Conference
  • and the Shaw Society.

Meier has served as secretary and debut panel coordinator for the Theatre and Social Change Focus Group at ATHE, and on the editorial board of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, published by the American Theatre and Drama Society.

Her writing has been published in Film and History, the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Theatre Journal, Theatre Annual and in the anthology Recovering 9/11 in New York.

Her article, "'Heroes and their Consequences:' 9/11, The War on Terror, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe " was published in The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War – Volume 1: Australasia, the British Isles.

As a dramaturg, Meier worked on both professional and university productions in New Jersey, New York, Pittsburgh and Nacogdoches, and her translation and adaptation of "Woyzeck" has been produced in New York and New Jersey.

She also directed numerous plays, including:

  • Bert Royal's "Dog Sees God"
  • Steve Martin's "Picasso at the Lapin Agile"
  • William Gibson's "The Miracle Worker"
  • Jean Paul Sartre's "No Exit"
  • and her own translation of Georg Büchner's "Woyzeck."

She is currently working on an interdisciplinary monograph examining the memorialization and narrativization of 9/11 through performance.

Matthew Paul Olmos

Matthew Paul Olmos is a three-time Sundance Institute Fellowship/Residency recipient.

He also is recognized as:

  • Actors' Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival commissioned playwright
  • New Dramatists Resident playwright
  • Center Theatre Group LA Playwright Workshop writer
  • Geffen Playhouse Writers Room playwright
  • Oregon Shakespeare Festival Black Swan Lab playwright
  • Humanitas Play LA Workshop playwright
  • Princess Grace awardee in Playwriting
  • National Latino Playwriting awardee
  • Ojai Playwrights Conference Foundry Project playwright
  • Repertorio Español Miranda Family Nuestra Voces Playwriting awardee
  • Cherry Lane Mentor Project playwright as chosen by Taylor Mac
  • and La MaMa e.t.c.'s Ellen Stewart Emerging Playwright awardee as selected by Sam Shepard.

He spent two years as a Mabou Mines/SUITE resident artist being mentored by Ruth Maleczech and is an Ensemble Studio Theater lifetime member. Olmos also is a former:

  • New York Theatre Workshop's emerging artist fellow
  • Baryshnikov Arts Center artist in residence
  • dramatists guild fellow
  • Primary Stages' Dorothy Strelsin New American Writer
  • two-time International Arts Relations Hispanic Playwrights-in Residents Lab participant
  • Echo Theater Company Resident playwright

He is a proud Kilroys nominator. His work is produced internationally and nationally, published by Samuel French and No Passport Press.

Scott Shattuck

Scott Shattuck earned his BA with distinction in speech and theatre arts from Colorado State University and his MFA in drama from The University of Texas at Austin.

He came to SFA in 2007 from New York City, where he headed the Theatre and Media program at Marymount College of Fordham University. He was previously producing and artistic director of Jean Cocteau Repertory, an off-Broadway classical theatre company. Shattuck also has served as director of the London Dramatic Academy and chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance at Pennsylvania's Dickinson College.

A full member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, he has directed at venues that include:

  • Arkansas Repertory Theatre
  • the National Shakespeare Conservatory
  • and the Texas Shakespeare Festival.

Shattuck also has served on the production staffs of the Denver Center Theatre Company and the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.

He studied voice with Catherine Fitzmaurice and Cicely Berry of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and performance studies with Richard Schechner of New York University, where he was a Faculty Resource Network scholar-in-residence.

As an actor, his roles have run the gamut from the title role in "The Elephant Man" to Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof" to Menenius in Shakespeare's "Coriolanus."

He has taught budgeting and financial systems to members of the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Theatre Leadership Institute and the William Randolph Hearst Theatrical Education Program, and assisted groups including New York's Second Stage Theatre, Pan-Asian Repertory Theatre and Classical Theatre of Harlem.

Shattuck has chaired granting panels for the Nancy Quinn Fund for Emerging Theatres, and served on funding panels for the New York Times Company Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, the New York State Council on the Arts and the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs.

He has co-authored The Director's Vision (Second Edition) and completed the Harvard Institutes of Higher Education's Management Development Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

From 2014-18, he served as treasurer of the International Association for Theatre in Higher Education. He is a former director of the SFA School of Theatre and spent one year as chair of the university-wide Chairs Forum. He is associated with Nacogdoches Music Friendly Community as well as a dog-lover and an avid fan of public broadcasting.

 

Kenneth Verdugo

Kenneth Verdugo earned his BA in studio art at the University of California Irvine, an MFA in painting and installation from University of California Los Angeles, and an MFA in scenic design and digital imaging from University of California Irvine.

As a native of Southern California, he was drawn to the monumental scale of the Hollywood industry and he served as a Los Angeles-based art critic for two West Coast journals. He concurrently worked for a decade in the industry as a scenic and properties artisan with numerous West Coast production companies, including the Walt Disney Company, South Coast Repertory and the Old Globe San Diego.

Before coming to SFA, Verdugo taught scene design at Florida State University, University of North Texas, Alabama State University, Texas Woman's University.

Verdugo previously served as guest scenic artist with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. He has designed for venues that include:

  • Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre in New York
  • Colorado Ballet
  • Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Jamaica
  • Mount Washington Valley Theatre Co in New Hampshire
  • Lillian Russel Theatre in Iowa
  • Haskin Circus Complex in Florida
  • Capitol Playhouse in Washington
  • Cara Mia Theatre Co.
  • Shakespeare Dallas
  • and the African-American Repertory Theatre in Dallas

Haley Hoss-Jameson

Haley Hoss-Jameson earned her bachelor's degree in theatre and dance from Kansas State University and her MFA in dance and related arts from Texas Woman's University.

She has taught dance technique, history, anatomy and pedagogy for 20+ years at the collegiate level. Prior to joining SFA's faculty, she was a faculty member at Friends University, University of Missouri-Kansas City's Conservatory of Music and Dance, Missouri Valley College, Cottey College and Northwest Missouri State University.

She has taught beginning voice, and stage movement for the singer at the Singer's Workshop Studios for professional recording artists. She has choreographed in the Miss Kansas system, for universities, and for show choirs across Texas, Missouri and Kansas. She is a judge for the Miss America pageant system, various dance competitions, show choirs and collegiate dance companies. 

She has presented her work internationally in Paris, France, and most recently at the Festival Fringe in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Hoss-Jameson has performed professionally as an independent dancer and choreographer throughout Texas and Missouri.

Gregory Condon

Gregory Condon received his bachelor of science in theatre arts, the design and production track, at Towson University and his Master of Fine Arts in technical production from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Condon has worked with PlayMakers Repertory Theatre in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Rorschach Theatre and Flying V Theatre in the Washington, DC area. He also has worked for Design Foundry an Events Company in Maryland as a carpenter.