Berkeley Playhouse » Meet The Teaching Artists

Molly Aaronson-Gelb is the Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Berkeley-based Just Theater. She has directed World and Regional Premieres of new works for Just Theater, CentralWorks, Capital Stage, Shotgun Players, Crowded Fire, and PlayGround. She has assisted at Berkeley Rep, Cal Shakes, A.C.T. and The Women’s Project. A teaching artist with Cal Shakes, Woman’s Will and Berkeley Playhouse, she holds an M.A. in Performance Studies from Northwestern and a B.A. in Sociology and African American Studies from Wesleyan University. Ms. Aaronson-Gelb is a member of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab and a Magic Lab Artist. Molly has taught for Berkeley Playhouse for the past four years.

JJ Connor

JJ Connor is currently a student at the University of Chicago, where she has worked on choreography for several musical productions and has a leadership role with the university’s oldest dance group. She attended high school in the Bay Area. When in Berkeley, she enjoys taking classes at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center.

Kimberly Dooley

Kimberly received a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. At Tisch, she co-created and starred in an original work based on the life of sculptress Camille Claudel. She is in residence with the acclaimed Shotgun Players, and her roles at Shotgun have included Sally Bowles in Cabaret, Cassandra in There Will Be No Trojan War, and Pat in Vampires. She created and co-wrote the Shotgun Theatre Lab hit Eat, a documentary-style play based on interviews and research conducted around eating in the United States. Kimberly has appeared in productions at Broadway by the Bay and Pacific Repertory. She teaches dance and musical theatre at Berkwood Hedge School, and has directed two mainstage professional productions at Berkeley Playhouse – Seussical the Musical and Once On This Island. Kimberly also serves as the Conservatory Programs Manager for Berkeley Playhouse.

Phil Gorman

Phil Gorman, Berkeley Playhouse’s Resident Music Director, is a Berkeley native. A composer, performer, studio musician, and music teacher, he got his start in musical theatre at Yale University, where he received his BA in Music Composition in 2001. He has composed musicals for Yale Children’s Theater, the Young Actor’s Workshop, Berkeley High School, and Berkeley Playhouse. Phil started learning jazz on the clarinet when he was just nine, added trumpet to his repertoire in high school, and as a high school senior was awarded the Outstanding Musicianship Prize by the International Association for Jazz Education. But he didn’t stop at jazz–Phil has performed up and down California with The Flux, an original quintet which blends elements of jam rock with West African polyrhythms and high-energy funk.

Phil has taught junior high band at Park Day School’s Community Campus in Oakland, CA, and teaches privately throughout the East Bay. While not creating music, Phil might be found at the A’s game, on the frisbee field, camping in the mountains, or maybe in the kitchen cooking some vegetarian delights!

Gabriel Grilli

Gabriel Grilli A director, teacher, actor, and writer, Gabriel has worked at theatres in New York City, San Francisco, and around the country. As a teacher of acting and directing, he has headed classes and workshops at Acting Abroad (France), Berkeley Playhouse, Custom Made Theatre, Marin Shakespeare Company, New York University, The New School, The School of Visual Arts, Syracuse University, Pennsylvania State University and the Oxbridge Program at Trinity Hall (UK). Since moving to the Bay Area in 2007, Gabriel has performed with 42nd St. Moon (The Student Gypsy, Girl Crazy & Call Me Madam), Custom Made Theatre (The Old Neighborhood & Mr. Marmalade), PlayGround, Magic Theatre, Playwrights Foundation, Playwrights’ Center, The Media Factory, and the SF Fringe Festival. Last summer, he played Captain Hook in Berkeley Playhouse’s Peter Pan, which critics hailed as “hilariously elegant” and “visually magnetic.” Beyond Chron has called him “a compulsively good actor.” Gabriel worked for 14 years with many NY theatre companies, including Manhattan Theatre Source, HERE, the Brick, Flying Fig, NY Fringe, Themantics Group, the Mint, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Theatreworks USA and others. He is a member of PlayGround, Actors’ Equity, and the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, and was a founder of the Stage Directors & Choreographers Foundation Artists’ Action Committee. Gabriel’s principal training was at Penn State University(MFA Directing) and Hofstra University (BFA Acting). Visit his sitewww.gabrielgrilli.com.

Jennifer King

Jennifer King is the Artistic Director of Napa Valley Stage and Shakespeare Napa Valley. Her teaching and directing credits include work for the California Shakespeare Theater (Associate Artist), Dallas Theater Center, Sonoma County Repertory Theater (Associate Director), the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, Napa Valley College (Professor of Theater), Richland, Foothill and Solano Colleges, and University of California, Davis. Upcoming projects include: I Hate Hamlet (Sonoma County Rep), The Man of La Mancha (Napa Valley College), I Am My Own Wife (Pacific Alliance Stage Company), and The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare Napa Valley). Jennifer will make her directing debut with Berkeley Playhouse in Summer 2010 with our production of Disney’s Aladdin.

Casi Maggio

Casi recently complete a two year training program with the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts. Before PCPA, she received her B.A. in Theatre Arts with an acting option and a minor in Marketing (cum laude), from CSU East Bay. She began teaching young artists with PCPA’s Young People’s Project , and since then, has taught with New Conservatory Theatre, SF Arts Education, StarStruck Theatre and TheatreWorks. In addition to performing in Berkeley Playhouse shows (including a lead role in Oliver! in Spring 2010), Casi has served as one of the lead teachers both in the classroom, and in the TheatreReach program, taking live theatre into local schools.

Denise Montgomery

Denise has been teaching and acting for over 17 years. She recently moved back to the Bay Area after a 6-year stint on the East coast where she worked in theatre in New York City. There she wrote, directed and produced the original play, Kegedawan (The Gift) at the New York International Fringe Festival in 2005. Previously she performed at the Utah Shakespearean Festival, The Professional Theatre Training Program, and The Sonoma Shakespeare Festival, among others. Favorite roles include Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, and Harper in Angels In America. In New York City she also taught theatre to kids in inner city schools through Perriwinkle National Theatre, as well as theatre to developmentally disabled adults through YAI (Young Adults International). Currently she serves as the K-2 Spanish teacher for the year at Park Day School, as well as the After School Drama Teacher. She holds a BFA from UC Santa Barbara in Acting, and an MFA in acting from The University of Delaware Professional Theatre Training Program.

Brendan Simon

A Bay Area native, Brendan has been performing for 14 years and teaching, directing, and choreographing for 10 years. You may have recently seen him in Berkeley Playhouse’s Once On This Island as Daniel. He is thrilled to return to the Berkeley Playhouse as a dance teaching artist. Brendan has directed youth in summer programs for the City of Santa Clara, and has choreographed many shows throughout California with numerous theatre companies, including 42nd Street Moon, Altarena Playhouse, Kaiser Permanente’s Educational Theatre Programs, and the Contra Costa Civic Theatre Summer Conservatory. He has also taught Hip Hop at the World Dance Center and guest-taught for Destiny Arts Center. Brendan studied jazz and stage dance with Patricia Page and Nancy East, as well as hip-hop at Dance Unlimited with nationally-renowned Greg Chapkis.

Matthew Graham Smith

Matthew Graham Smith is the founder and Artistic Director of Precarious Theatre, San Francisco’s critically acclaimed ensemble theatre company. He is a core member of the Dell’arte company, a group focusing on classical and emerging physical theater forms. He has directed at the Walnut Theater in Philadelphia and the HERE American Living Room series in New York City. In San Francisco he has directed at the Yerba Buena Garden’s Festival, Bay Area Playwright’s Festival, the A.C.T.’s Masters program, Aurora Theatre, The EXIT Theatre, Playground, and New Conservatory Theatre, where his Kiss of the Spiderwoman was nominated for Best Overall Drama 2006 by the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. This season he directed the world premiere of Philip Kan Gotanda’s #5 Angry Red Drum at the Asian American Theatre Company, as well as On The Rocks, part of the Me, Myself and I series at BRAVA, where he is also directing 4 staged readings paired with food and wine for Precarious Theatre’s Kitchen Series. An accomplished educator, Graham has taught at A.C.T.’s Master of Fine Arts program, Summer Training Congress, and Studio ACT in San Francisco, Assumption University in Bangkok, and the Barcelona Meisner Program in Barcelona, Spain (www.meisner.es). His teaching incorporates principals from many different physical disciplines and traditions from around the world in the service of training a dynamic physical actor.

Beverly Sotelo

Beverly Sotelo, For over 12 years, Beverly has worked as a professional actor in Los Angeles and elsewhere. In addition to small screen appearances (City Guys, Charmed), work in indie films (Better Luck Tomorrow, a Sundance 2002 Best Picture contender), and ensemble work in regional theatre (Guthrie Theare, PCPA, East West Players, etc.), Beverly is most proud of her time touring the nation with the educational theatre group hereandnow and then later, with the solo-show Faces of America by Will and Company. Both groups dealt with issues of multi-culturalism and diversity. She’s led workshops for students and professors alike at over 50 universities in over 30 states. Beverly discovered theatre as a method of community building while studying in Africa in the 1990s. There, around the villages near the capital of Ghana, she and her African actor friends used skits and songs to teach villagers how to practice family planning. After that revelation, Beverly completed a B.A. in Drama from UC Irvine and just recently finished her MFA in Acting from the University of Washington’s Professional Actor Training Program. She currently teaches kids grades K-6th for Marin Shakespeare, Berkeley Playhouse, and The Performing Arts Workshop of San Francisco.

Jon Tracy

Jon Tracy works as a director, producer, playwright and light/set/sound/combat designer. Favorite directing credits include Bug, First Person Shooter, Man of La Mancha (The SF Playhouse), Trainspotting, Some Devil Whisper, Marisol, King Lear (Darkroom Productions), The Diviners, The Rainmaker (American Conservatory Theatre’s MFA), Three Tall Women (Harbor Theater), Catherine’s Care (Alter Theater Ensemble), and Farmtrucks: A Corporate Coffee Adventure (NY Fringe). A graduate of Solano College Theatre’s Actor Training Program, Jon is an Affiliate Artist of Berkeley Playhouse, Alter Theatre Ensemble, The Foothill Theatre Company, a Company Member of Playground, The Director of Artistic Development at The SF Playhouse and a founder of Darkroom Productions, the North Bay’s lab for new art. For more information about Jon, visit: jontracy.com

Elena Wright

ELENA WRIGHT is a teacher and actor who recently moved to the Bay Area from Seattle after receiving her MFA in acting from the University of Washington. Most recently she was the movement consultant for Jon Tracy’s Animal Farm at Shotgun Players. Previous roles include Snug in The Good News (Darkroom Productions), Clea in The Scene (Capital Stage), Ophelia in Hamlet, Sister James in Doubt: A Parable, and Virginia Poe in the world premiere of Evermore (Foothill Theatre), The Little Dog Laughed (B Street Theatre), The Winter’s Tale (Seattle Shakespeare). In Seattle she has taught at the University of Washington and Coyote Central; in the Bay Area she has taught for Marin Shakespeare and San Francisco Shakespeare. She also leads a weekly Suzuki class at the Ellen Webb Dance Studio.