Instructors |
|
 Brian Glenn Bryson, Artistic Director of Cinnabar’s Young Rep, recently wrote and directed The Petaluma River Anthology for Petaluma’s Sesquicentennial, Zola’s Footprint for the Yes Foundation, and is currently preparing for his next Cinnabar Young Rep production: The HABIT Project. Mr. Bryson is a Director, a Teacher, and an Award Winning Playwright and Actor. He taught and directed at the Marin School of the Arts, the Yes Foundation, and Actors’ Theatre. In the Alps of Switzerland he was the Theatre Director and Acting Teacher of the Leysin International Boarding School. In Tucson, Arizona he worked as a Stunt-Man, produced his award winning play Following Star, and worked on the film Traffic with Benicio Del Toro and Steven Soderbergh. In Los Angeles he was a Story Editor for the Reality TV shows The Biggest Loser (NBC), Beauty & the Geek (WB), and For Love or Money (NBC). Actors’ Theatre produced his One-Act play, American Hat, while Mr. Bryson acted in the film Adaptation with Nicholas Cage and Spike Jonze, and the television show The West Wing. He even gave stand-up comedy a try and became a finalist on Soul Search. In San Francisco he performed his solo work “Romance: A One Man Show” to standing-room-only crowds and rave reviews. At the Mill Valley Film Festival he co-wrote and co-starred in the short film, The Belly Dance.
|
| |
 Amalia Martin Dobbins received her Bachelor of Music from Bucknell University and her Master’s in vocal performance from The San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She does choral, musical and stage direction for schools and children’s theaters throughout the Bay Area. Recent shows include Annie Jr. and Cinderella at Coram Deo Chorus, Oh Sister, Where Art Thou? for the Ross Valley YES! Foundation, Anything Goes! at the Marin School for the Arts and several camp shows at Cinnabar Young Repertory Theater. Amalia has conducted for Singers Marin, has been the director of the Coram Deo Chorus for homeschoolers in San Jose for three years and will be starting the Jubilate Deo Chorus for homeschoolers in the East Bay this fall. Amalia will also start as the music teacher at St. Isabella’s School in San Rafael in the fall of 2007.
Amalia is an active singer and performer as well. Credits include Amiens in As You Like It, Nicklausse in The Tales of Hoffmann, Arsamene in Serse, Hansel in Hansel and Gretel and Julia Child in the one-woman opera Bon Appetit! Amalia has a particular interest in new music and has premiered several new works including The Descent of Inanna by Marcia Buchard, Framed Woman by Janis Wilson and Jane Stuppin and Itasca by Eric Sawyer. She teaches Primary Musical Theater Workshop and Beginning Musical Theater workshop for Cinnabar Young Rep and has been the Music Director for Young Rep’s camps in 2006 and 2007.
Amalia lives in Fairfax with her husband and two cats.
|
| |
 Lisa Eldredge, Costume Designer
Lisa Eldredge has managed Cinnabar’s Wardrobe since 2001, cultivating a costume collection that bears witness to 35 years of rich Cinnabar drama. As Costume Designer Ms. Eldredge has worked with Sonoma City Opera, Bay Area Summer Opera Theater Institute (BASOTI), San Francisco Pocket Opera and Exit Theater’s DivaFest. Her professional season shows at Cinnabar include Enchanted April, Cavelleria Rusticana, La Curandera, The Girl of the Golden West, I Pagliacci, The Telephone, The Marriage of Figaro, The Moon, La Boheme, The Nightingale, The Cunning Little Vixen, and Dido and Aeneas. Over the last six years she has had the pleasure of costuming for Cinnabar Young Rep including Shakespearean productions, the musical theater of Offenbach and Gilbert and Sullivan and a number of original works for young performers commissioned by Cinnabar Theater. In 2004 Ms. Eldredge was a featured artist with the Petaluma Arts Council with a solo exhibit of her costumes, photos and commentary.
|
| |
 Jared Emerson-Johnson has been affiliated with Cinnabar's education program
for eleven years. Most recently he music directed and conducted the Cinnabar
Young Rep productions of Bluebeard and Orpheus in the Underworld. He has performed with various Bay Area companies including Cinnabar Opera, Sonoma City Opera and the San Francisco Lamplighters. Productions include Daughter of the Regiment, The Gondoliers, The Breasts of Tiresias, The Barber of Seville, Amahl and the Night Visitors, La Bohème, La Traviata, Cabaret, The Marriage of Figaro and No Regrets: The Songs of Edith Piaf. Jared is an alumnus of the Marin Symphony Youth Orchestra (concertmaster), the Santa Rosa Symphony Youth Orchestra (principal second violin), the Cornell Symphony Orchestra and the College of Marin Community Orchestra. He is also a composer/sound designer with credits on several leading
video game, advertising, and independent film titles. Jared holds a B.A. summa cum laude in music from Cornell University.
|
| |
 Julie Marie Lewis is a Performer/Educator, recently relocated to Sonoma County from Seattle. She has worked with children of all ages in a variety of settings including classroom, youth outreach and special needs. A proud member of Actor's Equity, she has been a guest artist in the Townhall Program in NYC, developed theater-based curriculum and directed many plays with young children. She has taught classes at Sonoma Dance Arts, and choreographed Aladdin, during the Summer Repertory Theater at SRJC. Julie's early training began in classical voice. In Seattle, she performed regularly with a few groups - a capella quartet, a blues band and Playback Theater, in addition to teaching, recording and roles in regional productions. Favorite roles include Cruella DeVille and (tap dancing) Orca Whale#4. |
|
| |
 Sheri Lee Miller is currently the Director of Education at Cinnabar Theater and Director of PR/Marketing for Heritage Music Theatre. Before that, she spent several years at Actors Theatre of Sonoma County as the Director of PR/Marketing and Associate Artistic Director. Sheri holds a B.A. in Drama from San Diego State University with double emphases in acting and directing. She has performed and directed at some of the leading theaters on the West Coast including, among others, Seattle Repertory Theatre, A Contemporary Theater, The Gaslamp Quarter Theater, Seattle Children’s Theater, Centerstage, Actors Theater, Sonoma County Repertory Theater, Cinnabar Theater and 6th Street Playhouse. She has directed, among others, Tartuffe, Death of a Salesman (starring Daniel Benzali), Leading Ladies, Boston Marriage, Over the River and Through the Woods, Stones in His Pockets, The Turn of the Screw, Company, The Bachelors, Communicating Doores, Escanaba in da Moonlight, Arcadia, How I Learned to Drive, Waiting for the Parade and A Member of the Wedding as well as the world premieres of Renaissance, The Tailor of Gloucester and Alice! Ms Miller has appeared in dozens of television commercials, voice-overs, industrial films and print. She is a member of Actors Equity Association and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. |
| |
 Nina Shuman is the music director and conductor for the Cinnabar Opera Theater. She holds degrees from Bennington and Dominican Colleges, and received scholarships and a grant from the Marin Educational Foundation to study orchestral conducting with Murry Sidlin at the Aspen Music Festival. She has led productions of operas by Monteverdi, Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Offenbach, Puccini, Bartok, Stravinsky, Janacek, Kurka, Ullmann, Poulenc, Menotti, Bernstein, Susa, Foss, Hoiby and Rodriguez, as well as numerous chamber orchestra concerts, opera galas and children’s programs. She has guest conducted for Opera Idaho, Sonoma City Opera, the Lamplighters, Berkeley Opera, North Bay Lyric Opera, Sonoma State University, the Marin Chamber Orchestra, and numerous choral organizations. She has also served as stage director and conductor for the Dominican College Opera Workshop, opera conductor and coach for the University of Texas at Austin, conductor for the Bay Area Summer Opera Theater Institute, and music director for the Harrower Summer Opera Workshop at Georgia State University.
|
| |
 Marcy Telles has written over 100 songs, some of which have been performed and recorded by local and national artists including Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, the Occidental Community Choir, Michael Smolens, Biaja Teal, A Few Good Friends, and Blake Derby. She has won several national awards for songwriting. She wrote her first libretto in 1973 for an incipient puppet troupe named Das Puppenspiel, who went on to win international awards. Throughout the mid-seventies, she performed as a singer-songwriter, opening for Vassar Clements, Pete Seeger, Aztec Two-step, and others. In 1981, she co-wrote and toured with Morning Glory Theatre’s production of Three Golden Hairs, a musical fairy tale for elementary school children. She was, for many years, a program director for the Occidental Community Choir, helping many choir members write their first songs. In 1994, her anthem, “Long and Fine Tradition,” was recorded by Margy Adams for an internationally distributed video by the Women’s History Project. In 1995, “Don’t Despair,” a song written for Cinnabar’s The Snow Queen, was performed by a national children’s choir in Washington, D.C., and that same year Marcy wrote several songs with Jeffrey Gaeto (the original composer for Pickle Family Circus) for a Japanese show called Viva! Musical Circus, directed by Tandy Beal. She has been writing children’s operas and musicals for Cinnabar since 1992, including The Snow Queen, It’s a Wonderful Life, and The Tailor of Gloucester. Two of her children’s operas—Brementown Musicians and Jack and the Beanstalk—were performed for children throughout Marin and Sonoma counties. The Snow Queen has now been performed all over the US and in parts of Canada. She also wrote the script for American OpStar, performed at Cinnabar last Spring as a fundraiser. Marcy is currently collaborating with composer Brian Rosen on Alice, a new musical for Cinnabar Young Rep, based on the children’s classic Alice in Wonderland. Alice isslated to premiere at the Petaluma Summer Music and Theater Festival in 2008.
|
| |
Arte Whyte has studied at the Drama Studio London at Berkeley, SF State University and U.C. Berkeley. He is a Certified/Recommended Stage Combat Instructor/Choreographer (SAFD). Teaching credits include Cinnabar Young Rep, Sonoma County Rep, JR Powers, Salmon Creek Schools, West County Theatre Arts Guild, Drama Studio (Young Actor’s Program) and Occidental Country Charter School. |
| |
 Janis Dunson Wilson is a published composer (ASCAP), choral and theater conductor, pianist, and organist. She received her undergraduate and master's degrees in composition from the University of Houston, where she studied with Michael Horvit and opera composer Carlisle Floyd. Janis did her post-master's work in the DMA composition program at the University of Southern California, where she was a teaching fellow and studied with Robert Linn and Morten Lauridsen.
She has been an adjunct in the Theater Department at SRJC since 1999. She teaches musical theater techniques, and recently served as an arranger and vocal coach for the 2007 SRT season at SRJC. Janis was the musical director for SRJC’s productions of Cinderella and the rock opera Tommy. She composed the musical scores for SRJC's productions of East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Alice. In addition to her work at SRJC, Janis teaches and directs in various musical theater venues in Sonoma County, including Alchemia, an innovative day program service in Petaluma for developmentally disabled adults, Cinnabar Opera Theater and Cinnabar Young Rep. The Sonoma County Chamber Singers featured Janis as their composer in residence during the 2006-2007 season. Janis is also the musical director/organist for St. Teresa's and St. Philip's Catholic Churches in Bodega and Occidental. Her original theatrical compositions include The Tailor of Gloucester (a family operetta); The Wedding (a full-length opera); and It's a Wonderful Life (a family musical based on the classic Frank Capra film), all commissioned by Cinnabar Opera Theater and Cinnabar Young Rep. Her music direction credits include Santa Rosa Players' productions of A Christmas Carol, Brigadoon, Holiday Magic, Anything Goes, and My Fair Lady, as well as Actors' Theatre productions of The Bachelors and Company in Santa Rosa.
|
|
