2008 Guest Artist Session Directors will be posted in February, 2008

PREVIOUS GUEST ARTIST SESSION DIRECTORS

JAN MANDEL

Session ONE Co-Director/Guest Artist

 

Jan Mandel has conducted hundreds of Theater Workshops and Arts Education Workshops for teachers, artists, high-school students and community members at schools, universities, conferences, prisons, hospitals, community centers, locally, nationally, and internationally in Canada, China and the Soviety Union.  Jan is a 28 year veteran Teacher of theater at St. Paul Central High School in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Her workshops and classroom experiences draw from across the arts and often include experiences in theare, poetry, digital photography, visual arts, and creative writing. She is best known for her work with Central Touring Theatre which she founded at St. Paul Central.  It is comprised of her advanced acting classes and trous to diverse communities through the Twin Cities, where students share their knowledge and developing leadership skills.  The Touring Theatre creates a safe space for students to write, perform and trou, bringing the voices of youth to the people in their communities.  Jan is also an instructor at the University of Minnesota in the Youth Studies Department.

 

Jan is the co-author of Acting, Learning and Change, a theatre methods book with a foreword by Shirley Brice Heath, published by Heinemann.  Jan's theatre methods book helped to lay the groundwork for the Arts Literacy Project launched at Brown University in 1997.  This project is based on the premise that partnerships between practicing teachers and professional artists create powerful literacy learning opportunities for students.  Project work has included university course work, professional development workshops for teachers and artists, and work in summer and school-year classrooms, primarily with urban youth and special education and ELL populations. For the past three years Jan has been working with Brown to deepen the connection of her current work ot the fight for literacy.  Jan is now sharing her knowledge with the Twin Cities community in her position as a Teacher on Special Assignment with the St. Paul Public Schools.

 

Bauen was delighted that Jan will be with us as an Education Fellow during the summer of 2007.  Jan lives in St. Paul with her son and holds a Masters Degree in Education from the University of Minnesota, with a major in Social Justice Theater.  She holds a BA in History and Visual Arts from Northern Illinois University.

 

RICHARD GEER
Session Three Co-Director/Guest Artist

Director and producer of community performance and an advocate for the uses of story and performance in community animation. People Magazine says, Director Richard Geer heals troubled communities with the magic of theater and the gift of new hope. Dr. Richard Geer created Community Performance, Inc., by and for the community to empower individuals and bring neighborhoods together. Recently Geer's work has expanded its focus to include ways in which arts-based community building can contribute to the larger cultural and economic development of a place. Working in partnership with communities and organizations, Geer has founded well over a dozen community performance projects including Swamp Gravy, Colquitt, Georgia, continuing to serve as Artistic Co-Director with CPI partner Jules Corriere, and Uptown Chicago's Scrap Metal SOUL, a multi-generational, multi-cultural, multi-economic background performance project. Geer's work, which American Theater Magazine calls a gem of cultural democracy has been showcased across America, as well as England, Scotland, Brazil and Chile. Previously Geer taught at Northwestern University, Dartmouth and the University of Northern Colorado. Early in his career Geer served as Director of Theater at the Stevens Perry Mansfield Camp, Steamboat Springs, CO and on the staff of the National Music Camp in Interlochen, MI. Geer holds a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University..

MICHAEL ROHD
Session Three Co-Director/Guest Artist

Creator, director and performer, Michael Rohd is founding artistic director of Sojourn Theatre in Portland, Oregon. His work includes The Justice Project, in an historic Federal Courthourse; The Visit, in an old High School; The warehouse performance journey 7 Great Loves (5 2003 Drammy awards including Best Production and Best Director); Witness Our Schools (9 months of Oregon and national touring) and Passing Glances: Mirrors and Windows in Allen County, Ohio, a documentary theatre piece about race and leadership supported by a 2001 Ford Foundation Animating Democracy grant.

COURTNEY DAVIS
Session Three Co-Director/Guest Artist

Courtney Davis is a performer, director and teacher, with ongoing work at Portland's Sojourn Theater, including a national tour of their year-long War Project and national touring as actor and teacher with Chicago's Child's Play Touring Theater. In Chicago, Courtney was a featured performer in Anatomy Theater Collectives site specific spectacle performance work, Many Things Are Destroying Me. She has co-directed the Wisdom Bridge Arts Project Summer Youth Camp in Chicago, teaches Butoh and has worked as a teaching artist at a variety of sites for Oregon's Artists Repertory Theater and Sojourn Theatre. Courtney's training includes study with Butoh Master Diego Pinon, New York's North American Cultural Laboratory, the Double Edge Theater, Andrew Wade with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and renowned Bosnian theater artist Emsa Lackovic. Courtney has her undergraduate degree from Virginia Tech's Theater Arts Department, where she studied with Bob Leonard, a pioneer in community-based performance. Leonard was a Bauen Camp Session Director/Guest Artist in 2003.

MAGGIE CARLSON
Session Two Co-Director/Guest Artist

Maggie Carlson is a studio artist and teacher who brings students of all ages in touch with their artistic sensibilities. In addition to her studio work which use painting and ceramics as mediums, Maggie taught art for more than 20 years in public schools, colleges and community settings. She began teaching in 1978, while serving as the NEA-sponsored Artist-in-Residence on the Crow Indian Reservation and founding Director of the Wyola Art Center. There she met her future husband, Bill Yellowtail, a Dartmouth-educated Crow tribal leader and rancher of Native and Irish-American ancestry. She went on to teach at Lodge Grass High School for eight years, then instructing students at Hawthorne School in Bozeman and the Custer County Art Center.