ROTIMIA@STANFORD.EDU MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM 107

Lecturer. Rotimi Agbabiaka is an actor, writer, director, and teacher. Most recently, Rotimi played the EmCee in Cabaret (Center Repertory Company), Oberon and Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Folger Theatre, Washington D.C.) and originated the roles of William Craft in The N***** Lovers (Magic Theatre), James Baldwin in In the Evening By The Moonlight (Lorraine Hansberry Theatre), and Cellphone/Narrator in If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhf*cka (Playwrights Horizons, Off-Broadway). 

Other acting credits include roles at Yale Repertory Theatre, American Conservatory Theater, California Shakespeare Theater, Marin Theatre Company, Shotgun Players, and TheatreWorks. Rotimi is also a company member of Word for Word, Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience (BACCE), and the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe. 

As a playwright, Rotimi penned and toured the solo shows Homeless, Type/Caste (Theatre Bay Area award), and MANIFESTO; the musical, Seeing Red—co-written with Joan Holden and Ira Marlowe and produced by the San Francisco Mime Troupe; and workshopped a new play, The Soul Never Dwells In A Dry Place, inspired by the art of Romare Bearden, at Cutting Ball Theater in 2024. 

Rotimi has taught acting, movement, and play creation at the Yale School of Drama, Middlebury College, Bennington College, Southern Illinois University, the California Institute of Integral Studies, and American Conservatory Theatre, among others. Directing credits include the world premieres of VS. (TheatreFIRST) and The Red Shades: A Trans Superhero Rock Opera (Z Space) as well as Shakepeare’s The Tempest (San Francisco Shakespeare Festival). Rotimi trained at the Moscow Art Theatre, received an MFA in Acting from Northern Illinois University, and has presented work at museums (the deYoung), in parks (with We Players), on street corners (with Jess Curtis’s GRAVITY), and on nightlife stages around the world (as alter ego Miss Cleo Patois). rotimionline.com

  BALLNINA@STANFORD.EDU  MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM 146

Lecturer, Set Design. Nina Ball (she/her) is a scenic designer, visual artist, and teacher based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has been seen at American Conservatory Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Rep., St. Louis Rep., Theatreworks, California Shakespeare Theater, Shotgun Players, San Francisco Playhouse, Marin Theatre Company,  Aurora Theatre Company, among many others. Recent productions include the west coast premiere of Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 at Shotgun Players (nominated for a SFBACC Award), Romeo and Juliet,  How I Learned What I Learned (transferred to Seattle Rep), and Confederates (transferred to St. Louis Rep) at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Hamlet and Twelfth Night at Marin Shakespeare Company, and In Every Generation at Theatreworks. Other awards include TBA awards for Blasted at Shotgun Players and The Nether at SF Playhouse. SFBACC awards for My Fair Lady at SF Playhouse, Metamorphosis at the Aurora.  

Ms. Ball is also a production designer and has worked on numerous film, TV and commercial productions locally and in LA. Notable projects include Pushing Dead, by Tom Brown, and A Blank Slate, by Sara Eliassen. She received her MFA in Scenic Design with a Costume Design secondary from San Francisco State University. Ms. Ball holds a BA in Biology with an emphasis in Marine Ecology from UC Santa Cruz and studied visual art and photography at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City. Ms. Ball has been a company member at Shotgun Players in Berkeley since 2009 and is a member of United Scenic Artists, Local 829. She teaches Scenic Design at Stanford University. 

  BBODURTH@STANFORD.EDU    MEMORIAL HALL ROOM 146

Senior Lecturer, Costume Design; Coordinator of the Theater-Making Concentration. Becky Bodurtha is a costume designer with regional, international and New York City credits. Recent credits include Felix Starro (Theatre Ma-Yi), Open (The Tank), 1000 Nights and One Day (Prospect Theatre Company), and Mr. Burns (NYU Gallatin). Other credits: Constellations (Wilma), The Strangest (East 4th Street), ACE (Margorie Deane), Among the Dead (Theatre Ma-Yi) Passover (Cherry Lane) The Wong Kids in the Secret of the Space Chupacabra, Go! (Theatre Ma-Yi), Livin’ La Vida Imelda (Theatre Ma-Yi), and This Lingering Life (HERE Arts). International credits include Movement for Humanity and Africa’s Hope for the Ubumuntu Festival in Kigali, Rwanda. Becky is the resident costume designer for Vermont Shakespeare Festival where she recently designed Taming of the Shrew and Julius Caesar. She received her undergraduate degree from Waldorf College and her MFA from the University of Iowa. Please visit her website at: www.beckybodurtha.com 

  DBRESENH@STANFORD.EDU   MEMORIAL HALL ROOM 110

Lecturer, Media Production. Bresenham is a reality television showrunner with an MFA from USC Film School and a J from Harvard Law School. He has produced and directed dozens of television shows including Whale Wars, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, The Simple Life, and 90 Day Fiancé.

  MATTCH@STANFORD.EDU     MEMORIAL HALL ROOM 210

Lecturer, Movement. Matt Chapman (he/him/they) is a performer, director, and teacher of physical theatre, movement, and clown. He is the Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Under the Table, collaborating on each of the company’s 13 works produced since its founding in 2001. Based in Oakland, CA, Matt began working with TAPS as a lecturer in Winter 2017.

Matt’s performances, directing, and teaching have happened across the world — in South Africa, Denmark, Colombia, the Netherlands, Canada, Mexico, and England. Matt has worked on the Faculties of several programs at American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, and spent years on the Faculty at Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre.

He has toured extensively to venues across North America – from Broadway’s Signature Theatre to a Senior’s Center in Saskatoon. His work in NYC has been seen at HERE Arts Center, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Williamsburg Art neXus, Under St. Marks, a hallway at City College, etc. He has collaborated with NYC’s Eavesdrop; Durban, South Africa’s African Dream Circus; Sweden’s Cirkus Cirkor; Denmark’s Filuren and Jomfru Ane Teatret; Blue Lake’s Dell’Arte Company; Philadelphia’s Hotel Obligado; Arcata, CA’s Pequeño Teatro DanceTheatre, and Clowns Without Borders. He also had the honor to work as Movement Consultant for Stanford’s The Good Person of Szechwan, directed by Mina Morita.

Matt writes music for and plays guitar in the Oakland punk band The Big Forgive, and is a graduate of Dell’Arte International and the University of Kansas. He was a recipient of Theatre Communications Group’s New Generations Future Leaders program.

  ECSHUCH@STANFORD.EDU MEMORIAL HALL ROOM 208

Lecturer, Theater-Making. Erika Chong Shuch is a choreographer, director, and performance maker who’s work spans devised experimental performance and social practice, and produces unexpected forms of audience engagement. Shuch co-founded For You, a performance collective that brings diverse strangers together and makes performances as gifts. 

For You has been commissioned to create work by Court Theatre and the Experimental Performance Initiative at the University of Chicago, The Momentary (AK), Cantor Arts Center at Stanford, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Erika has worked for theaters including SF Playhouse, The Arena, Roundhouse Theater/ Getty Villa, Theater for a New Audience, Hudson Valley Shakespeare, Pittsburg Public, Portland Center Stage, American Conservatory Theater, Folger Theater and Kennedy Center.  Erika was a 2022 finalist for SDC’s Fischandler Award and is a Fellow at Headlands Center for the Arts. Her work has been supported by the New England Foundation for the Arts and Creative Capital. foryou.productions

  AHAYES1@STANFORD.EDU (650) 721-3951   ROBLE GYM ROOM 111A

Senior Lecturer, Contemporary Dance, Performance & Choreography; Coordinator of the Dance Concentration. Aleta Hayes is a dancer, choreographer, performer, educator and lecturer. Hayes holds an M.F.A. (1993) in Dance and Choreography from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and a B.A. (1991), with Departmental Honors, in Drama, with a concentration in Dance and the Visual Arts from Stanford University.

Hayes worked in New York City for fifteen years, choreographing solo and group dance pieces. Performances interpolated acting and singing with dance. She had leading roles in major productions such as Jane Comfort’s dance/opera Asphalt (book by Carl Hancock Rux, music and lyrics by Toshi Reagon) and Robert Wilson’s The Temptation of St Anthony (with music and libretto by Bernice Johnson Reagon). Hayes taught for eight years at Princeton University in the Program in Theater and Dance and the Program in African American Studies. While at Princeton, she developed pedagogically innovative courses that combined cultural history, theory, and performance.

In 2004, Hayes returned to Stanford on a Ford Foundation Resident Dialogues Fellowship through the Committee on Black Performing Arts. A Lecturer since 2006, Hayes’s contemporary dance classes are a hybrid of dance, drama and performance. Introduction to Contemporary Modern Dance: ‘Liquid Flow’ is the gateway, foundational dance and movement course for Contemporary Dance in TAPS. Other notable classes include, Dance Improvisation StratLab, Afro-Styles and Dance-Making and Musical Theater Dance. For the course Stanford Dance Community: Inter-Style Choreography Workshop, taught since 2018, guest instructors include leaders and choreographers from dance clubs on campus.

The Chocolate Heads Band started as a performance-making workshop created by Hayes to teach choreography, interdisciplinary research, and collaboration. An admixture of dance styles, genres, and contemporary performance, this class welcomes student artists from dance, music, visual and spoken word art, and design, as well as from non-art fields. Taught each Fall as a choreography workshop and performer training lab, Chocolate Heads becomes a ‘prototypical’ dance troupe that performs frequently around the campus.

Hayes also teaches at the d.school, (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design) and other arts entities and programs on campus. At Stanford, Hayes has had many leading roles as a dancer, singer and actor including, most notably: Suzan-Lori Park’s In the Blood, directed by Professor Harry J. Elam, Jr. (2005). In the spring of 2006, she choreographed, performed a multimedia solo piece, Deianeira (an adoption of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis) created for her and directed by Drama and Classics Professor Rush Rehm. She performed the role of ‘Mama’ in Raisin in the Sun (2019), directed by Elam. Hayes has choreographed musicals and plays in TAPS, including Everybody (2020), directed by Michael Rau, ReViVal: Remembering the Afro Now-One Nation Portal to the Future (2019) directed by Amara Tabor-Smith, Spring Awakening (2016) directed by Elam, and Helen/Hecuba (2018), directed by Rehm.

  SJHUNT@STANFORD.EDU  MEMORIAL HALL ROOM 210

Lecturer, Voice and Acting; Coordinator of the Acting Concentration. Stephanie is an actor, director, and teacher of voice and acting. As a core member of the Bay Area theater company, Word for Word, Stephanie has acted in numerous productions, including Tobias Wolff’s Sanity, Colm Tóibín’s Silence, Upton Sinclair’s Oil! and Susan Glaspell’s A Jury of her Peers. For Word for Word, she directed the productions of Bullet in the Brain and Lady’s Dream by Tobias Wolff, Cornell Woolrich’s noir story Angel Face, and All Aunt Hagar’s Children by Edward P. Jones, which played at the Z Space before touring France. She has acted with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Campo Santo, Aurora Theatre, the Magic Theatre, Berkeley Shakespeare, the One Act Theater, and in New York at La MaMa. For two years with Pulp Playhouse, Stephanie performed late-night comedy improv with O-Lan Jones and Mike McShane at the Eureka Theater. She has taught voice at ACT in the Summer Training Congress, and at the University of San Francisco, Chabot College, San Francisco State and Sonoma State University. She has directed a number of university productions, most recently at USF, where she directed Twelfth Night, and adapted and directed Alice Munro’s The View from Castle Rock. Her teaching at Stanford has included Acting Fundamentals, Voice for the Actor, Voice II: Shakespeare and Greek Tragedies, Audition and Monologue, Scene Study, and a class focused on acting in the plays of Anton Chekhov. As a vocal coach, she has worked on five productions at Stanford – Cabaret, Everybody, As Soon as Impossible, Pali, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She has an MFA from the American Conservatory Theater and certification as an Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework. Stephanie is committed to creating and teaching ensemble-based theater with a focus on heightened language.

  AKETLEY@STANFORD.EDU    (650) 721-3890  ROBLE GYM ROOM 111

Advanced Lecturer, Ballet and Choreography. Alex Ketley is an independent choreographer, filmmaker, and the director of The Foundry. Formerly a classical dancer with the San Francisco Ballet and LINES Ballet, he left dancing professionally to create The Foundry as a platform to explore his interests in alternative methods of devising performance. The company has allowed Ketley the freedom to pursue projects that would be difficult to realize within his commissioning career. A few examples of these are: Syntax, an hour long duet systemically using the mechanics of language as an organizing mechanism; Lost Line researched how the application of environment affects the generation of movement and studied in direct response to California’s diverse physical landscapes; Please Love Me jettisoned the structure of performing in a theater context and was developed with a curiosity about how people genuinely connect and experience artwork; the No Hero Trilogy which was a multi-year project that explored what dance and performance means to the lives of people living throughout rural America, and Distal Imprint was a film created in collaboration with artist and Death-Row inmate Bill Clark. The Foundry’s diverse work has been enthusiastically received by audiences, the press, and funders.

For his independent work as a choreographer he has been commissioned extensively throughout the United States, as well as projects in Germany and Italy, and has received acknowledgement from the Hubbard Street National Choreographic Competition, the International Choreographic Competition of the Festival des Arts de Saint-Saveaur, the Choo-San Goh Award, the Princess Grace Award for Choreography, four Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography Residencies, the Gerbode-Hewlett Choreographer Award, the Eben Demarest Award, the National Choreographic Initiative Residency, a Kenneth Rainin Foundation New and Experimental Works Grant, three CHIME Fellowships, the Artistry Award from the Superfest International Disability Film Festival, and his work was featured on national television through an invitation from the show So You Think You Can Dance. His pieces and collaborations have also been awarded Isadora Duncan Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the categories of; Choreography, Company, and Ensemble, as well as nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Visual Design. In 2020 he became a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, one of the most prestigious honors in the United States recognizing “individuals who have demonstrated exceptional creative ability in the arts”.

As an educator he has taught extensively throughout the country and currently holds the position of Advanced Lecturer at Stanford University’s Theater and Performance Studies Department. He was the founding Resident Choreographer at the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance for fourteen years until its closure in 2018.

Since 2020 he has been collaborating with his friend Bill Clark who is a prolific artist and writer that has been incarcerated on Death Row for the past 33 years. Alex invited Bill as a guest for his Stanford University class called DanceAcution: Performance Practice, Death Row, and the Evolution of Cultural Reform. The class used Bill’s vast experience as an artist and incarcerated individual as the platform for the students to develop new performance work. Bill is now collaborating with The Foundry on a new evening length work titled An Approximation of Resilience set to premiere in 2025. The project has won the prestigious National Dance Project Award from the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) and generous support from the Luger Charitable Trust.

In addition to his artistic projects Alex has a daughter, Amara, who each day inspires him to see the world from her unique vantage point. His wife Aline is a dancer and an integral collaborator in all The Foundry’s projects created this decade. He is also on the Board of Directors of Death Penalty Focus, an organization whose work focuses on abolishing both the death penalty and LWOP (Life Without Parole).

  KLEINIMP@STANFORD.EDU    (650) 736-8387    MEMORIAL HALL ROOM 201

Advanced Lecturer, Improvisation. Dan Klein has returned to Stanford to teach Improvisational Theater and to direct the Stanford Improvisors. As an undergraduate at Stanford, he was a founding member of the SImps and perennial TA for Patricia Ryan Madson, his predecessor. After graduating, Klein joined the performing company BATS Improv in San Francisco, where he also coached and served as Dean of the BATS Improv School. As a renegade improv teacher, Klein has had appointments at the American Conservatory Theater, the Academy of Art University, the Berkeley Repertory Theater, Dominican University, Vector Conservatory, Menlo School, and has taught corporate workshops for clients like Visa, Cisco, Sun, Oracle, Schwab, Kaiser, Clorox, Cadence, Clif Bar, and others. He is also a member of the Kasper Hauser Comedy Group, authors of SkyMaul, the in-flight catalog parody.

  LAXMIK@STANFORD.EDU  MEMORIAL HALL ROOM 209

Advanced Lecturer, Stage Management. Laxmi Kumaran has been with TAPS for nine years. She splits her time between teaching at Stanford and at UC Berkeley in the Theater, Dance & Performance Studies Departments. Laxmi spent several years as the Production Stage Manager at California Shakespeare Theater and at San Jose Repertory Theater. Before moving to the Bay Area, Laxmi stage managed in Chicago for a variety of theaters, including the Goodman Theatre and the Court Theatre. Laxmi has taught in the theater departments at San Jose State, Northern Illinois, DePaul, and Northwestern universities, and at the University of California Santa Cruz. Laxmi is a board member of the Theater Arts Advisory Committee at Santa Rosa Junior College.

  CVMEJIA@STANFORD.EDU  MEMORIAL HALL 209

Lecturer, Lighting Design. Christian (he/they) believes that light has the ability to hold us in a moment and transport us to places both real and imagined. Light affects our perception, informs our emotional landscapes, and enhances the experiences that make up our lives. Thoughtful lighting can build expansive containers that help stories to move beyond words. 

Christian’s approach to design seeks to create environments that invite us to lean into and learn something about our shared humanity. His design practice includes live performance, architectural lighting, and immersive entertainment. His work has been seen on stages and in built environments around the world. He received his BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and his MFA from California Institute of the Arts. christianvmejia.com

  ANTOSHA5@STANFORD.EDU  ROBLE GYM 147

Lecturer, Ballet. Anton Pankevich received his ballet training at Vaganova Ballet Academy in Russia and later on went to study at School of American Ballet and San Francisco Ballet School. Has danced with New York City Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, Royal Ballet of London, Pacific Northwest Ballet and Ballet San Jose. Has worked as a ballet master and a guest teachers with: English National Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Wiesbaden Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet and Leipzig Ballet.

  VINTAGE@STANFORD.EDU     (650) 468-5862  ROBLE GYM ROOM 147

Advanced Lecturer, Social Dance and Dance History. Over 7,000 Stanford students have discovered dance in Richard’s classes, and the waiting lists for Richard’s classes are consistently longer than the enrollment caps. Many of Richard’s social dance students have gone on to take other TAPS dance classes, and have continued a life in dance after Stanford. Richard also teaches workshops across the country and Canada, and has taught dance in Paris, London, Rome, Venice, Spoleto, Prague, Vienna, Geneva, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kirov, Tokyo and Kyoto, including 22 workshops in Russia, 25 in France, and 27 in Japan.

Powers was selected by the Centennial Issue of Stanford Magazine as one of Stanford University’s most notable graduates of its first century. In 1999 he was awarded the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for distinctive and exceptional contributions to education at Stanford University. Before leaving Cincinnati for Stanford, Richard was recognized as “Artist of the Year” in the Post-Corbett Awards, Cincinnati’s foremost arts recognition.

In addition to his TAPS courses, Richard has taught courses in period movement for theater for American Conservatory Theater San Francisco, period movement for opera for the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and period movement for opera for the College Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati.

As a noted dance historian and choreographer, Richard choreographed Bill Irwin’s original production of Scapin (off Broadway), was the dance historian for the musical Titanic(Broadway), choreographed ragtime era dance for Faye Dunaway and Richard Widmark in Cold Sassy Tree, choreographed the 19th century ballroom dances for the Warner Bros. film North and South, trained the dancers in 19th century ballroom dances for the Tri-Star film Glory, and choreographed the Victorian ballroom dances for the public television film Mrs. Perkins’ Ball.

Richard’s numerous opera choreographies include the recent production of Alma Deutscher’s Cinderella for Opera San Jose, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Massenet’s Cendrillon, Monteverdi’s Madrigals of Love and War, Berlioz’s Beatrice and Benedict and Monteverdi’s Orfeo. Theater choreographies include Shakespeare in Hollywood, My Antonia and Arcadiafor TheatreWorks, and Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Shakespeare’s King Henry VIII for the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park.

Richard has directed performances of historic dance at the Smithsonian Institution, Henry Ford Museum, the National Governor’s Conference, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Ballet Company, the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival, leading the Palace Hotel’s Valentines Ball, St. Moritz, Switzerland (featured on CBS “60 Minutes”); and a performance for Prince Mikasa of Japan. His workshops have been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities; The Fine Arts Fund; Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (New York City); Ohio Arts Council; American Studies Association; The Omega Institute; National Stephen Foster Conference; Goethe House New York; Lincoln Center, N.Y., Danses de Bon Ton, Paris; Arts et Mouvement, Paris; the City of Kharkiv, Ukraine; and the Beseda Dance Theatre in Prague. Publications include Waltzing: A Manual for Dancing and Living, Redowa Press; Dancing Makes You Smarter, published in Australian Dance Review; and Guidelines for Dance Research, CDSS Journal.

  RREDDICK@STANFORD.EDU  ROBLE GYM ROOM 147

Lecturer, Hip-Hop. Ronnie Reddick is one of the Bay Area’s most dynamic and multi-talented choreographers with an edge of what’s happening in the world of dance and fashion today. This multi-faceted San Francisco based Choreographer/Dancer made his mark by combining Hip Hop, Jazz, Fashion and Theatrics to create one of the most explosive and dynamic styles to hit the dance scene recently, making him one of the most sought after Hip Hop/Contemporary choreographers in the Bay Area and beyond. Along with his busy career, Reddick is also the Choreographer/Show Director at Asia SF. This unique restaurant/dining experience is taking the world by storm and features one of the most beautiful gender illusionists in the world.

In the entertainment world, Reddick has worked with such artists as Michael & Janet Jackson, Deborah Cox, Paula Abdul, Kristine W., Tony, Toni, Tone, Jody Watley, Santana, Kelly Price, RuPaul, Robin Thicke, Snoop Dogg, Overtone Band and M.C. Hammer along with many corporations like Sony, Sony PlayStation, Intuit, Prudential, Gap, Macy’s, MAC Cosmetics, Nordstrom, Starbucks, API, Apple Computer, Google, Yahoo, Xilinx, Sun Micro Systems, BEBE, Univision Television, E*Trade, Coca Cola, and Microsoft.

In addition to teaching at Stanford, Reddick teaches at Santa Clara University and has taught master classes around the world, including Princeton University, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Canada. He continues to work with, train, and inspire dancers that are now dancing around the world. Reddick also teaches dancers about the business of dance and how to work in today’s world as a professional commercial dancer.

“Technique is only the beginning of what makes a memorable dancer, and we don’t start dancing to end up doing chorus,” says Reddick. “You have got to have that extra something.” It is through his experience and selfless devotion that Ronnie Reddick is inspiring a new generation of talent.

  LROWLAND@STANFORD.EDU  MEMORIAL HALL ROOM 201

Lecturer, Improv. Lisa Rowland is a San Francisco-based improviser, teacher and trainer. A mainstage company member at BATS Improv and a founding member of Improv Playhouse of San Francisco, she has performed and taught improvisation on stages throughout the Bay Area, and worldwide. She has headlined at improv festivals from Georgia to Germany, and has been a guest coach in improv communities as far away as Saudi Arabia and New Zealand.

Lisa graduated from Stanford in 2005 where she was a member of the Stanford Improvisors. She was lucky enough to study under professor emerita Patricia Ryan Madson, author of Improv Wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up (which Lisa highly recommends you procure and read right away). Lisa joined the TAPS teaching staff in 2014. She teaches beginning, intermediate, and advanced improvisation.

In addition to teaching theatrical improvisation, she also leads improv-based trainings for professional teams focusing on communication, collaboration and creativity. She is a communication skills trainer with the SF-based company Speechskills, and is also the co-host of a podcast entitled Monster Baby: A Curious Romp Through The Worlds of Mindfulness and Improvisation.

YOAVSHUT@STANFORD.EDU MEMORIAL HALL ROOM 111

Lecturer, Documentary Theater. Yoav Shutan-Goshen is an acclaimed playwright and screenwriter whose work has won international recognition. His works were presented at The Cameri, Beit Lessin, Gesher and Beersheba Theaters. He is the creator of the TV dramas ‘commandments’ (Apple TV), and ‘Double Panther’ (forthcoming, February 2025). Shutan-Goshen has been recognized for his work with nominations for IFA Best TV Drama Scriptwriter, and ITA for Best Playwright of the Year.

  RAIISAS@STANFORD.EDU  ROBLE GYM ROOM 111

Lecturer, Dance and Dance Studies. Raissa Simpson is a post-disciplinary artist, choreographer, scholar, and storyteller whose dances are at the intersection of complex racial and cultural identities. She values choreography as a form of academic scholarship and research as demonstrated in her book chapter “Writings On Dance: Artistic Reframing for Celestial Black Bodies” for Palgrave MacMillan, which offers considerations on how Afrofuturism can be staged in contemporary theater.

Raissa received her BFA in Dance Performance from the Purchase College, SUNY Conservatory of Dance and a MFA in Dramatic Art with a focus on Choreography and Direction from UC Davis. Her extensive performance career includes tenure with Robert Moses Kin and Joanna Haigood’s Zaccho Dance Theatre. In addition to three Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and the Margrit Mondavi Award, Simpson has received choreography honors from the San Francisco Arts Commission, Zellerbach Family Foundation, Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, Fleishhacker Foundation, California Arts Council, San Francisco Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Grants for the Arts, and the City of San Francisco’s Dream Keeper Initiative.

Since 2005, Raissa’s award-winning PUSH Dance Company has performed nationwide at Joyce SoHo, Aspen Fringe Festival, UC Santa Cruz, Dance St. Louis, Ferst Center in Atlanta, LA Women’s Theater Festival, Black Choreographers Festival, Links Hall in Chicago, and many other prime locations. She has held creative residencies at Dance Initiative Carbondale, Santa Clara University, Bayview Opera House, Sacramento State University, Margaret Jenkins’ CHIME, and Montalvo Arts Center with Related Tactics. She is an ongoing member of Dancing Around Race, a community engaged-participatory process that interrogates systemic racial inequity in dance.

Before her time with TAPS, Simpson held faculty positions at UC Davis, San Francisco State University, Santa Clara University, Sacramento State University as a visiting scholar, and San Jose State University’s Communication Studies Department. At TAPS, Raissa is responsible for teaching Contemporary Modern, choreographing numerous works and co-charing (2024-present) the Bay Area Dance Exchange.

In 2023, Raissa founded the Sanctuary, a dance space and cultural center for incubating rarely seen and unheard stories in downtown San Francisco. 

  PATRYAN@STANFORD.EDU

Senior Lecturer Emerita, Improvisation. Patricia Ryan Madson was the 1998 winner of the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for Outstanding Innovation in Undergraduate Education. She was on the faculty in the Drama Department at Stanford University from 1977 until 2005. She has served as the head of the Undergraduate Acting Program. Founder and coach of the Stanford Improvisors, she taught beginning and advanced level courses in improvisation for undergraduates as well as adults in Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program. In 1996 she founded the Creativity Initiative at Stanford, an interdisciplinary alliance of faculty who shared the belief that creativity can be taught.

Ryan Madson has taught “Design Improv” for the School of Engineering and was a Guest Lecturer for Engineering 145, Stanford Technology Ventures Program. She taught regularly for the Esalen Institute, and has given workshops for Sun Microsystems Japan Division, the California Institute for Integral Studies, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, the National Association of Drama Therapists, the Western Psychological Association, Duke University East Asian Studies Center, and the Meaningful Life Therapy Association in Japan. Ryan Madson combines her work in improvisation with work as a counselor using an Eastern approach to problem solving known as Constructive Living. Dr. David K. Reynolds certified her as a Constructive Living Instructor in 1987 at the Health Center Pacific on Maui. Additionally, she has been the American Coordinator of the Oomoto School of Traditional Japanese Arts in Kameoka, Japan. There she has studied tea ceremony and calligraphy.

Ryan Madson’s published writings include a chapter on constructive living in the 1995 anthology Mindfulness and Meaningful Work, edited by Claude Whitmyer (Parallex Press), as well as chapters in the SUNY Press books Plunging Through the Clouds and Flowing Bridges, Quiet Waters. Her first book, Improv Wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up was published by Random House (Bell Tower) in 2005, and named “One of the Best Spiritual Books of 2005” by Spirituality and Health. Improv Wisdom is also published as an Ebook and as an Audiobook read by the author. It has been translated and published into nine languages.