Richard Seer
Chair, Graduate Theatre Department
An award-winning actor and director, Richard Seer has directed and/or performed on Broadway, off-Broadway, on film and television, and in over seventy productions at regional theatres in this country and Great Britain, including: The Goodman Theatre, The Kennedy Center, The Stratford Shakespeare Festival, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Huntington Theatre Company, San Jose Repertory Theatre, Studio Arena Theatre, The Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, and The Sybil Thorndike Repertory Theatre in England, to name a few. He originated the role of Young Charlie in the 1978 Tony Award-winning production of Hugh Leonard’s Da, and received the Theatre World Award for his performance. At The Old Globe, he has directed productions of The Price, Romeo & Juliet, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Trying, Fiction, Blue/Orange (Critics Circle Award), All My Sons, Da, and Old Wicked Songs (Patte Award). Other recent directing assignments include Third for the Huntington Theatre Company and Sonia Flew for the San Jose Repertory Theatre. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree in directing from Boston University, where he was awarded the prestigious Kahn Directing Award in 1985. In 1990 he was invited to return to Boston University’s School for the Arts as an Associate Professor of acting and directing. Professor Seer has been Director of The Old Globe/University of San Diego Graduate Theatre program since 1993.

Maria Carrera
Alexander Technique
Maria Carrera has taught the Alexander Technique for the MFA program since 1990. She trained at A.T.I. Los Angeles, with post-graduate study in the US and abroad. Certified by the American Society for the Alexander Technique, she has also served on its national board of directors. Her theatre background includes credits as a producer, director and playwright, and over a dozen years as a stage manager at the Old Globe Theatre. Maria holds a BA and MA in English Literature, a BA in Philosophy and is a member of A.E.A. She maintains a private teaching practice in San Diego.

Cynthia L. Caywood
Literature
Cynthia L. Caywood has been a member of the USD faculty since 1984. She has taught at Washburn University, Duke University, and Wake Forest University. She is currently director of USD’s Oxford programs, and Chair of the study abroad program. One of the founders of the Aphra Behn Society, she published a number of articles on Aphra Behn and Restoration theatre. She is also the editor of Teaching Writing: Pedagogy, Gender and Equity. In 1986 she received a teaching award from the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies and in 1998, she was awarded the Davies Award for Teaching Excellence.

Ray Chambers
Acting
Since first training with the Old Globe in the mid-eighties, Mr. Chambers has worked as a classical actor and director with numerous regional theatres across the country. For nearly two decades as an Associate Artist with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Ray has worked as actor, director, writer, and instructor and served as Director of the Master of Fine Arts/Professional Actor Training Program at ASF from 2001-2009. Regional acting credits include title roles in Hamlet, The Count of Monte Cristo, Richard III, Coriolanus, King John, Henry V, Tartuffe; and leading roles in Julius Caesar, The Winter's Tale, The Rivals, Henry IV, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, Great Expectations, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Saint Joan among many others. Credits at the Old Globe include Antony and Cleopatra, The Comedy of Errors, The School for Scandal, Coriolanus, Love’s Labours Lost, Hamlet and Macbeth. He has taught Acting and Classical Text in master classes and workshops for universities and theatres around the country and has served as a national board member of the University/Resident Theatre Association.

Gerhard Gessner
Yoga
Gerhard has been teaching yoga for over 18 years. He is trained in a variety of different styles of Hatha Yoga, including Ashtanga, Iyengar, Bikram Ananda and Contact Yoga. His non-dogmatic approach to yoga is eclectic and combines elements of all the styles he has studied, tailored to the needs of his students. His educational background includes a BA in Mechanical Engineering, a MA in Education and a MA in Counseling Psychology. He is a certified Massage Therapist, a certified Hatha Yoga teacher, and studied Dance and Movement Therapy at the Tamalpa Institute in San Francisco and with Gabrielle Roth at the Moving Center. Gerhard is owner and Director of Prana Yoga Center in La Jolla, California.

Jan Gist
Voice and Speech
Jan Gist has been the Resident Voice and Speech Coach at The Old Globe since Summer 2001. Prior to that, she was the Voice and Speech coach at Alabama Shakespeare Festival for 140 productions. Other credits include Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Utah Shakespearean Festival, The Shakespeare Theatre, Arena Stage, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, PlayMakers’ Repertory. Film credits include The Rosa Parks Story. Other teaching credits include California State University, Long Beach, Cal. Rep. Co., PlayMakers’ Rep., Voice And Speech Trainers Association Conference--Shakespeare's Shapely Language, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and Carnegie Mellon University. Business and Corporate Clients include: U.P.S, Vialogue, Rheem, Allegro Resorts, Virgil Scudder and Associates. Ms. Gist is an originating member of and has been published in the journals of the Voice And Speech Trainers Association, and has led many presentations, panels and workshops for American Theatre in Higher Education. Other publications include exercises in The Complete Voice and Speech Workout book and CD, and dialect contributions in More Stage Dialects. Jan has recently been featured on KPBS Radio's A Way With Words, and performed voice over work for the San Diego Museum of Art.

Peter Kanelos
Renaissance Literature
Peter Kanelos received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2002 and taught at Stanford as a postdoctoral fellow from 2002-3. He is an editor of the New Variorum edition of Twelfth Night and has published articles on Shakespeare, Montaigne and Vasari. Dr. Kanelos has lectured nationally and internationally on Shakespearean drama, and was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 2004 for work at the Blackfriars Theater in Virginia and the Globe Theater in London. He teaches in the English department at the University of San Diego and in the USD/Old Globe Master of Fine Arts in Acting program.

Fred Miller Robinson
Modern Drama
Fred Miller Robinson received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington and has taught modern literature and cultural studies, first at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, then at USD (1992 -present). He is the author of three books and numerous articles, most especially on comedy and comic theory, Samuel Beckett and Wallace Stevens. For nine years he reviewed books on cultural studies for The New York Times Book Review. He has won distinguished teaching awards at UMass and USD. He has taught Modern Drama in the Globe Theatres/USD MFA Program in Dramatic Arts since 1994. He is writing a book on the interculture of Ireland and America, for work on which he won a University Professorship at USD in 1997.

Liz Shipman
Movement
Liz Shipman is Co-Founder and Associate Director of the Kings County Shakespeare Company in New York City having served as its Co-Artistic Director from 1985-2001. Liz is a Certified (Laban) Movement Analyst, specializing in a movement-based approach to acting. She was movement teacher for Ruth Nerken’s “Technique for the Whole Actor” Studio from 1990-1997 and has taught all levels of students at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Manhattan Marymount College, The Atlantic Theatre Company, T. Schreiber Studio and the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (NYC). She served as a member of the core faculty of Webster University’s Conservatory of Theatre Arts in St. Louis from 2000-2005. She has directed and choreographed at Webster, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, New Avenue Theatre Project, Utah Shakespearean Festival, the Old Globe and elsewhere.

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