Gwendolyn Kelso

Adjunct Faculty, Acting for Non-Majors

Gwendolyn Kelso (MFA) is a professional actor (Austin Shakespeare, Repertory Theatre of Saint Louis, Saint Louis Shakespeare Festival, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Saint Louis Shakespeare Company, Gamut Classic Theatre, and Hedgepig Ensemble Theatre, New York), director (Austin Shakespeare, Hedgepig, Imagination Stage) and educator (American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Fort Lewis College, UT Austin, Adelphi University).

Gwen is a founding member of Hedgepig Ensemble Theatre, a New York-based company that has been featured in The New York Times, Playbill and American Theatre Magazine for their work on Expand the Cannon. 

Expand the Canon is a call to action for theatres to embrace and produce plays by women and non-binary writers as classics. We believe gender equity must be threaded throughout our work – on stage, back stage, and, of course, in whose stories we tell. You can hear more about the origin of the project and its aims in our podcast.

Emily Sapa

Adjunct Faculty, Alexander Technique

Emily Sapa is an AmSAT-certified teacher of the Alexander Technique, flutist, and music educator.

She teaches AT at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama and Point Park University Theatre Department. In her private practice in Pittsburgh, PA, she works with actors, musicians, and dancers, as well as people who are interested in improving coordination and developing new strategies for managing chronic pain. She teaches Alexander Technique workshops and classes throughout the Pittsburgh metro and surrounding tri-state area. Emily is an active member of the American Society for the Alexander Technique (AmSAT).

Giovanna Reyes-Mir

Adjunct Faculty, Music Theater

Giovanna Reyes-Mir, originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, is an accomplished professor of voice, choral conductor, and professional singer with over 20 years of experience in the Greater New York, Pittsburgh, and Washington DC areas. She serves as adjunct faculty for the Music Theater program in the School of Drama.

Ms. Reyes-Mir holds herself, as well as her students and clients, to the highest standard of musical excellence and possesses the required skill set to achieve this benchmark. Her extensive knowledge of vocal technique, style, and repertoire has led her students and clients to great success in prestigious programs, international renowned opera houses, and Broadway stages and tours. She currently maintains a private studio in New York and Pittsburgh.

Currently, Giovanna serves as Adjunct Faculty at Carnegie Mellon University School of Music and School of Drama, Point Park University’s Conservatory of Performing Arts, and Brenau University. Previous faculty highlights: Musical Theatre Program at Shenandoah Conservatory of Shenandoah University and The County College of Morris.

A native of Puerto Rico, Ms. Reyes-Mir has performed the roles in The Rape of Lucretia (Female Chorus), Carmen (Frasquita,), Faust (Marguerite), La Boheme (Mimí), Gianni Schicchi (Lauretta), Cosí Fan Tutte (Despina), La Traviata (Violetta), L’Amico Fritz (Suzel), Dialogues des Carmelites (Mere Marie), Amahl and the Night Visitors (Mother), Die Zauberflöte (2nd Lady), Trouble in Tahiti (Girl), La Straniera (Alaide), Pagliacci (Nedda), Cavalleria Rusticana (Santuzza), and many more. She has appeared in full productions and in concert with The Casals Festival Orchestra, Coópera: Project Opera of Manhattan, Orlando Opera, Spoleto Vocal Arts Symposium, International Institute of Vocal Arts, Modus Opera Company, Orquesta Sinfónica de Puerto Rico, Opera de Puerto Rico, Cleveland Heights Orchestra, Cleveland Institute of Music Opera Theatre, Brooklyn Conservatory Orchestra, etc.

Giovanna is an active member in the choral community, serving as choral clinician in conferences and adjudications. Before moving to Manhattan, Ms. Reyes-Mir was the Assistant Director of El Coro de Niños de San Juan. Formerly, she was the Director of Music Ministry at First Presbyterian Church of Winchester, VA, where she founded the Children’s Choir Church Music Festival, the First Friday Recital Series, and was the co-director of Sing Camp.

Education: Cleveland Institute of Music (B.M., M.M. in Vocal Performance), Estill Voice Training (Levels I & II), CCM Vocal Pedagogy Institute (Levels I, II, & III).

Tony McKay

Associate Professor of Acting

After receiving a BFA from Carnegie Mellon Drama in 1969, Professor McKay pursued an acting career in New York, where he appeared on Broadway in the Negro Ensemble Company’s, The First Breeze of Summer and Jean Kerr’s Lunch Hour directed by Mike Nichols starring Gilda Radner.

Prominent Off-Broadway credits feature Moonchildren at the Theater De Lys and Clarence at the Roundabout Theater. His many regional credits include the National Company of Moonchildren, as well as roles at the McCarter Theater, Meadow Brook Theater and the Zephyr Theater in San Francisco.

Professor McKay has continued to act in Pittsburgh appearing in Arthur Miller’s The Price and Cecil and Cleopatra, a play about an aging acting teacher. Movie roles include HBO’s Proximity and the independent film Milton’s Eyes. He played Ralph Nickleby in the School of Drama’s fabled production of Nicholas Nickleby and most recently appeared in CMU’s production The London Cuckolds.

As a director, Tony has staged numerous plays at venues such as Playwright’s Horizons, Jewish Repertory Theatre and Ensemble Studio Theater in New York, where he conceived and produced EST’s first one-act Marathon and where he was literary manager from ‘78 through ‘82. It was there that his first play The Buster Sealy Story was mounted with Ted Danson in the lead.

Abroad, he directed Hurd Hatfield in the one man play Whistler at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland and staged a production of Grapes of Wrath with CMU’s graduate actors at the Moscow Art Theatre School in Russia where he taught in that famed company’s training program. Highlights of his directing credits in the School of Drama include The Lower Depths, Waiting for Godot, The Merchant of Venice, Appointment in Samarra, The Front Desk and his collaborations with CMU’s Graduate Playwrights in the new play series.

When time permits, Tony continues his writing career. His play A Million Dollar Glass of Water was produced Ensemble Studio Theatre, and Father Figures, a trio of connected plays, was produced at the Hamburg Theater in Pittsburgh. He is developing a new script Endless Lawns at Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York.

He has also taught at Hunter College, American Academy of Dramatic Arts and New York University.

Gary Logan

Professor of Speech and Dialects

Gary Logan is a Professor of Speech and Dialects, and was formerly the director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Academy for Classical Acting at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he also taught Ear-Training and Acting: Shakespeare. He is the author of the highly acclaimed “The Eloquent Shakespeare: A Pronouncing Dictionary for the Complete Dramatic Works, with Notes to Untie the Modern Tongue” (University of Chicago Press), and is the recipient of a Tyrone Guthrie Award.

Logan has worked as a voice, text, and dialect coach on over 140 professional productions, with companies such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Stratford Festival of Canada, the Shakespeare Theatre, Folger Theatre, Studio Theatre, Signature Theatre, Everyman Theatre, Ford’s Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, the Denver Center, the Kennedy Center, Chautauqua Theatre, and many more. Frequently invited to be a Visiting Guest Artist to share his expertise in Phonetics, Shakespeare’s Language, and Dialects, he has taught at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow, Scotland, the Stratford Festival of Canada’s Birmingham Conservatory, Dartmouth College, and the Chautauqua Theatre Company Conservatory, just to name a few.

Logan has held permanent and adjunct positions at the Academy for Classical Acting, The George Washington University, the University of Maryland, the National Theatre Conservatory, where he was mentored by Tony Church, founding member of the RSC, the University of Denver, and the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Logan has directed over 40 plays, for professional theatres and for MFA programs, and has acted in scores of plays at the American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco, the Missouri Repertory Theatre, Kansas City, the Denver Center Theatre, Denver, and many others.

Logan was on the Board of Advisors for the National Center for Voice and Speech, and has been a senior faculty member of Canada’s annual National Voice Intensive for more than twenty years. He holds an MFA from ACT, where his teachers included Bill Ball, Edith Skinner, Yat Malmgren, Allen Fletcher, and Catherine Fitzmaurice.

Logan has been in or produced over 800 voice-overs, and has had poetry recently published in an anthology.

Mark Domencic

Adjunct Faculty, Music Theater

Mark Domencic is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Music (BFA and MM in piano performance) and Boston University (Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study in music education).

In addition to his duties in the School of Drama, Domencic also serves as Artist Lecturer in Music Theory in CMU’s School of Music, as well as Piano Instructor in Carnegie Mellon’s Music Extension Division. Outside of CMU, Domencic serves as the Artistic Director of ACT ONE Theatre School, where he has taught for over 25 years. As a pianist and music director, Domencic has also worked with various other musical and theatrical organizations throughout the Pittsburgh area, including the Pittsburgh CLO, Pittsburgh Musical Theater, Saint Vincent Summer Theatre, the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

Judith Conte

Teaching Professor of Dance

Ms. Conte, a member of the dance faculty member for over 30 years, has provided choreography and staging for more than 50 productions, and has produced Dance/Light, in association with colleagues from Design, Production and Management.

This is the largest cross option Drama project providing undergraduate and graduate students from all years the opportunity to interact and create new choreographic works. Ms Conte has also produced the Annual School of Drama Awards Ceremony coordinating the East and West Coast Drama Clans, and endowed awards from alumni, former faculty and special patrons.

Ms. Conte’s other choreographic credits include: Projekt Istropolitana Theater Festival Bratislava, Slovakia, “A Tribute to the Arts” Princess Grace Foundation New York, National Benefit for Astronaut Dr. Judith A. Resnik Washington, D.C., Hello…I’m Not in Right Now by Barbara Shottenfeld White Barn Theater, Westport, CT, Gateway to the Arts -50th Anniversary, honoring Rob Marshall.

FOR PITTSBURGH PUBLIC THEATER

King Hedley II, She Loves Me, The Cherry Orchard, Dancing at Lughnasa, Arcadia, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Over the Tavern, All the Rage, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Tangles.

FILM AND TELEVISION

Dorian Blues Day Dreamer Films Inc., The Boy Who Loved Trolls -PBS Wonderworks Series, Mister Roger’s Neighborhood WQED, Pittsburgh, Grandparent’s Day An Opera by Fred Rogers WQED, Pittsburgh.

DIRECTING

Waiting for the Parade Allegheny Highlands Regional Theater Ebensburgh, PA, A Little Night Musical – Concert Version, “Wheeling Symphony Wheeling, WV.”

Tomé Cousin

Professor of Dance

he/they

Tomé is a Professor of Dance in the School of Drama. He teaches contemporary and musical theater dance style classes, Theatrical/Film Intimacy Education, and is a Certified Mental Heath Aid.

An “interdisciplinary artist”, influenced by an eclectic range of creative mentors: Susan Stroman, Geoffrey Holder, Martha Clarke, George C. Wolfe, Ruth Maleczeh, Wendell Harrington, Luigi, Fred Rogers, John Weidman, Miquel Goudreau, Hector Mercado, Judith Leifer, Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane, Hope Clarke, Pina Bausch, Theo Bleckmann, Blondell Cummings and Meredith Monk.

As a result, he has molded an award-winning international career that includes collaborations in dance, theater, music, film, photography, television and literature. BA: Dance History, and Choreography, Point Park University and MFA in New Media Art and Performance (Long Island University). Mr. Cousin has composed over 70 original theater, dance, musical, new opera, film, and installation works for performance. A leading voice in theatrical intimacy advocacy for stage and screen, he is a in demand director / choreographer for his unique blend of dance, movement text and media, and is sought after as a curator and reconstructionist of original Broadway musicals. An advocate of diversity and inclusion, he is the author of multiple articles, essays three theatre studies books and creator of The Franklin Project (INTERVIEWS, ESSAYS AND ARTICLES ON DIVERSITY AND NON-TRADITIONAL CASTING FOR THEATRE PERFORMANCE).

Sam Turich

Adjunct Faculty, Acting

Sam Turich a writer, director, actor, and teacher, creates original plays, films and immersive works, including Daylighting the Stream on Governors Island in New York City, and with Bricolage Production Company, STRATA, OjO and DODO. His theatre directing credits include several productions at Quantum Theatre, including the world premieres of Gab Cody’s Inside Passage and Fat Beckett, and the innovative remote projects Constellations and Wild. His acting credits include feature film and network television roles, and work at theaters in New York and Pittsburgh. He wrote and directed the short film Mombies and the feature Progression, and directed the Emmy Award-winning PBS Kids series Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. Sam is a graduate of Columbia University and the British American Drama Academy, and holds an MFA from Chatham University. He’s the Head of Education for Bricolage Production Company. He is the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2023 Performer of the Year.

Rick Edinger

Area Chair of Acting & Music Theater
Associate Professor of Music Theater

he/they

As Area Chair of Acting & Music Theater, Rick supervises all artistic, administrative, and day-to-day support operations for our program that serves 96 students with 20 faculty and various administrative support staff. As Associate Professor of Music Theater, Rick is the vocal coach for the entire senior class of Music Theater students. He teaches courses in Music Theater Auditioning and Cabaret, and is the music director of our annual New York & Los Angeles Showcases, and often music director of our annual spring main stage musical production. Rick also serves as a School of Drama representative on the College of Fine Arts Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council.

Rick Edinger (he/they) is a proud queer AAPI educator, music director, vocal coach, pianist, and actor based in New York & Pittsburgh.

Edinger currently serves as Music Supervisor/ Vocal Arranger/ Conductor/ Keys 1 for The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical by Joe Iconis (Christopher Ashley, director), which had its world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse in Summer/ Fall 2023. The production will continue development in its East Coast premiere at Signature Theatre Arlington in Spring 2025. Edinger will reprise his role as Music Supervisor/ Conductor of Trading Places by Thomas Patrick Lennon, Alan Zachary, and Michael Weiner (Kenny Leon, director; Fatima Robinson, choreographer) in a Pre-Broadway Workshop in Fall 2024. Additionally, he will serve as Music Director of The Brass Teapot by Chaz Cardigan, Erik Kaiko, Tim Macy, and Ramaa Mosley (Catie Davis, director) at the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s Festival of New Musicals at New World Stages in Fall 2024.

Other recent credits include: Music Director for the world premiere of Tom Kitt, Brian Yorkey, and Kwame Kwei-Armah’s The Visitor at The Public Theater in New York (Daniel Sullivan, director; Lorin Latarro, choreographer) starring David Hyde Pierce; Music Supervisor of In the Mood by Karen Hartman (Kenny Leon, director); Music Supervisor/ Conductor of the pre-Broadway workshop of Trading Places (Kenny Leon, director; Fatima Robinson, choreographer); Music Director/ Conductor of the pre-Broadway workshop of JOY by AnnMarie Milazzo and Ken Davenport (Casey Hutchins, director; Andy Einhorn, music supervisor), followed by the world premier at George Street Playhouse; Music Director/ Keys for New City Music Theatre’s inaugural production of Songs for a New World at Radial Park in New York (Miles J. Sternfeld, director; Ahmad Simmons, choreographer) starring Nancy Opel, Liz Callaway, Bonnie Milligan, Christy Altomare, MK Morrissey, Bre Jackson, Ximone Rose, Grace Stockdale, Jason Gotay, Jay Armstrong Johnson, Michael James Scott, Kyle Taylor Parker, et al; Associate Music Director (Andy Einhorn, Conductor) for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Fiddler on the Roof: In Concert starring Shuler Hensley and Anne L. Nathan; Music Director for the developmental reading and industry presentation of Tom Mizer and Curtis Moore’s new musical, The Amazing Mr. X (Jenny Koons, director), starring Kate Baldwin, Krystina Alabado, Alexander Gemignani, & Nik Walker.

As an educator, Edinger serves as the Area Chair for the Acting/ Musical Theater program & Associate Professor of Musical Theater at Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama. Former faculty and guest positions include: Shenandoah Conservatory, New York University Tisch School of the Arts, The County College of Morris, The College of Saint Elizabeth, ArtsBridge, The Southeastern Summer Theatre Institute. He serves on the Board of Directors of The National Alliance for Musical Theatre and Theatre Gap Initiative.

In a former life, Edinger made their Broadway debut as an actor in the 2004 Tony-nominated Broadway revival of Pacific Overtures (dir. Amon Miyamoto) and the Broadway benefit concert production of Children and Art: A Tribute to Stephen Sondheim on the Eve of his 75th Birthday (Richard Maltby, Jr., director).

Edinger trained at Manhattan School of Music, Cleveland Institute of Music, Brooklyn College, and Hunter College. They are a proud member of the American Federation of Musicians (Local 802), Actors’ Equity Association, the Screen Actors Guild- American Federation of Television & Radio Artists, and Musicians United for Social Equity.