Our Faculty

To contact us:

PO Box 80892

Springfield, MA 01138

Phone: 413-739-1983

Fax: 413-746-3776

E-mail: steve@dramastudio.org

Steve Cary has been a freelance videographer for the past 25 years, involved in all aspects of production from proposing initial concepts and writing scripts to producing and editing. His many clients have included the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., CBS Sports, PBS, LEGO, and Florentine Films. Most recently, he has been teaching Video Production at Holyoke High School. Steve earned his BA in Film/Video Production at UMass in 1986. He lives in Forest Park and is a parent of a Drama Studio student.

 

 

Doug Foresta recently moved to the Western MA area (with his wife Nicole Baker-Foresta) from NYC where his plays were produced at Pulse Ensemble Theatre, Michael Howard Studios, Urban Myth, and Mint Theatre. His play Mall was presented at the Samuel French Play Festival 2000. His BA degree is from Rutgers University, and he has studied playwriting with Lee Gundersheimer, Stanley Kauffman, Jutka Devenyi, William Packard and J. Dakota Powell.

 

Steve Hays, Executive Director, the founder of Drama Studio, was Producing Director of Stage West from its inception in 1967 until 1984. He has directed Doors, Ozma of Oz, Wiley and the Hairy Man, Mother Hicks, The Secret Garden, Ordinary People, Ramona Quimby, The Birds, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Anne of Green Gables, The Italian Straw Hat, The Tempest, Very Good Eddie, and The Boy Friend for the Drama Studio. He is also a playwright and musician, with three of his plays, The Snow Queen, The Little Match Girl, and Me and Ruth , premiering at the Drama Studio.

 

Amelia Hays-Rivest has taught acting and movement for the Loon and Heron Theatre in Boston, Providence Hospital, the University of Hartford’s Summer Place, and the New England Dance Conservatory. She graduated from Smith College with a BA in education. She has directed In the Beginning and Beyond the Ridge and serves as Director of Curriculum at the Studio. At Trinity United Methodist Church she choreographs for the Dance Choir and the annual Boar’s Head Festival.

 

 

Daniel Morbyrne—Dan is entering his fourth year teaching at The Drama Studio where he also serves as Production Manager and directs the Fall, Winter, and Spring Tours. In addition to his work at The Studio, Dan is an Associate Artist with the Serious Play! Theatre Ensemble with whom he has worked as a director, actor, writer, editor, teacher, and fight choreographer. Dan recently directed State of Play Theatre’s Off-Broadway production of The City That Cried Wolf. Dan has taught classes and workshops at multiple institutions around the Pioneer Valley including Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School, UMass, Holyoke Community College, Westfield State College, and Commerce High School.

 

Martin Shell is Associate Professor and Director of Theatre Arts at Springfield College, where he is in his twelfth year. Some of the plays he has directed as Artistic Director of the Springfield College Theatre are House of Blue Leave, The Foreigner, A Lie of the Mind, Baby with the Bathwater, A Streetcar Named Desire, Antigone, Picnic, and Crimes of the Heart. During the summer Martin teaches with and chairs the Theatre Program for the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts. At Drama Studio Martin teaches Advanced Scene Study and Adult Basic Acting.  Martin serves on the Springfield Cultural Council and lives in the McKnight Hill neighborhood with his wife, Lynn, a visual artist, and their wonderful son, Wyatt, a junior at Central High School.

 

Derron M. Wood joined the Drama Studio faculty with his directing debut at our 1995 Festival with The Men’s Cottage. He has taught and directed projects in Connecticut at Connecticut College, the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the National Theatre Institute, and the Mystic Seaport Museum. Other projects took place at the Bread and Puppet Theatre (Vermont) and the Dance Place in Washington, DC. Directing highlights at the Studio have included Animal Farm, The Trojan Women, A Bird of Prey, The Miser, The Wrestling Season, Time on Fire, The Automata Pieta, and last season’s The King of Ireland’s Son and As You Life It. He serves as Artistic Associate at the Studio.