The Twin Cities, Washington, DC,, Philadelphia, Los Angeles,
Houston, Edinburgh Scotland, sailing the Baltic – anywhere you find yourself in
the upcoming months you may run into the work of our distinguished Theatre Forum presenters!
Nancy Gisbrecht Bailey received her undergraduate degree in music from the University of Redlands (California) and her M.A. and Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Southern California. Though her particular research areas are song literature, Richard Wagner, and French music of the late 19th century, she has lectured on a wide variety of musical topics. A favorite at the Women’s Institute of Houston, Nancy teaches at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University and for the Master of Liberal Studies Program there. For the 2013 Forum Nancy spoke at the performance of Kurt Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins, guiding us through the imaginative connecting strands of Bertolt Brecht’s plot and Kurt Weill’s music.
Vern Sutton: Gifted teacher, lecturer,
singer and actor, Vern returns for his fourteenth appearance at the annual
Theatre Forum weekend. Longtime resident
of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Vern recently retired as chair of the Music Department
at the University of Minnesota. His
performances in the Twin Cities include work with the Plymouth Music Series,
Center Opera, Minnesota Opera, The Guthrie Theatre, the Minneapolis Children's
Theatre, and A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. His special interests include Florenz
Ziegfeld and the music used to create the scores for the Ziegfeld Follies as
well as early styles and techniques of singing and performance.
Felicia Londré: Felicia is Curators'
Professor of Theatre at the University of Missouri-Kansas City where she
teaches theatre history and dramaturgy.
She earned her B.A. in French at the University of Montana, then,
following a Fulbright year at the Université
de Caen in Normandy, France, she earned her M.A. in Romance Languages at the
University of Washington and her Ph.D. in Speech/Theatre at the University of
Wisconsin. She received
the ATHE Outstanding Teacher of Theatre in Higher Education Award in 2001. The
author of fourteen books, the twelfth of which, The Enchanted Years of the
Stage: Kansas City at the Crossroads of American Theater, 1870-1930 (University of Missouri Press, 2007), won the prestigious George
Freedley Memorial Book Award for 2008.
Felicia was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American
Theatre in 1999 and served as Dean of the College (2012-14).
Tom Foral: Tom returns from New York
City for his fifteenth annual Theatre Forum.
Tom's undergraduate degree is from Northwestern and he holds an MFA in
theatre from Penn State. His performing
experience includes shows on Broadway, off-Broadway and in regional theatre,
plus film and television. A painter and
designer, Tom specializes in portraiture and figurative works. As a portraitist, Tom has painted among
others, H.S.H. Princess Grace of Monaco, Audrey Hepburn, Bill Blass and Eudora
Welty. He has been showing his art in
New York and Bucks County, including two new series of paintings on the circus
and the ballet. You can see some of his
work at www.thomasforal.com.
Kate Pogue: Producer for the Theatre
Forums, Kate is a playwright, librettist and theatre director. She received an undergraduate degree in
theatre from Northwestern and an M.A. from the University of Minnesota. For ten years she was Artistic Director of
both Opera to Go and The Shakespeare by the Book Festival, for which she
directed numerous productions. Her book Shakespeare's
Friends was published in January 2006 by Praeger and a companion volume,
Shakespeare's Family, came out in June 2008.
Her most recent Shakespeare books involve his training and include Shakespeare's
Figures of Speech (2010) and Shakespeare’s
Education (2012). Her most recent
project involved directing Shakespeare’s Julius
Caesar in the original pronunciation. She teaches at the University of
Houston Downtown where
she recently received the Outstanding Adjunct Professor award.
Chesley
Krohn: An actress, choreographer,
director and producer, Chesley trained as a dancer and was a member of
Houston's Allegro Ballet Company. She
studied in New York City with Luigi and appeared on Broadway in A Chorus
Line. In Houston, she has played
leading roles with Alley Theatre, Theatre Under The Stars and Theatre Inc.,
among others. She has taught, directed,
and coached young professionals at Houston High School for the Performing and
Visual Arts. She received a Best
Director nomination from the Tommy Tune Awards for the school's recent
production of A Man of No Importance and most recently directed A Little Night Music and Pippin there.
Sonja Bruzauskas: Praised for her “captivating performance”,“entrancing vocal line” and
“youthful vigor”, German Mezzo Soprano Sonja Bruzauskas enraptures audiences'
throughout the United States and the world. Sonja has appeared with the
Staatsoperette Dresden, Volkstheater Rostock, Nordharzer Staedtebundtheater,
Filmorchester Babelsberg, Bochumer Symphoniker, Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra,
Santa Fe Opera, to name a few.In Texas, she has appeared as soloist with Da
Camera, the Bach Society, Mercury Baroque, Symphony of Southeast Texas, the
Greenbriar Consortium, the Houston Chamber Orchestra, ROCO, the Houston Chamber
Choir, the Dominic Walsh Dance Theatre and Ars Lyrica. Besides being a
performing artist, Sonja creates concerts and gives talks about interactive and
provocative approaches to music and thought.
Ann Thompson: Born in Indonesia and educated in Switzerland, Ann developed strong
cultural interests early on with a special love and enthusiasm for opera. Her series called Let's Go to the Opera includes
booklets and tapes giving background to a hundred and twenty operas and tapes
which the Library of Congress stocks for use by the visually handicapped. She gives pre-opera lectures for Houston
Grand Opera, provides descriptive services for blind patrons, and inspires
opera-goers with her talks in various locales in the Houston area
