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Faculty & Staff

Barbara Bosch, Professor and Chair

Office: 522 HN
Email: bbosch@hunter.cuny.edu
Phone: (212) 772-5149
Fax: (212) 650-3584

Areas of Specialty: Acting, Directing, American Dramatic Literature.

Educational Background: M.F.A. Southern Methodist University, Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley.

Courses Taught: Acting (all levels), Shakespeare/Period Styles, Directing (all levels), American Realism Seminar.

Selected Work: Professor Bosch’s acting and directing credits include work at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Old Globe, Off and Off-Off Broadway. Regionally at the Magic Theater, Marin Theater Company, Sacramento Theater Company, and at Shakespeare Festivals in California, Texas, Maine, Wisconsin, Alaska, and Utah. She has worked internationally in the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the Czech Republic.

Joel Bassin, Assistant Professor

Office: 526 HN
Email: jbassi@hunter.cuny.edu
Phone: (212) 396-6068
Fax: (212) 650-3584

Areas of Specialty: Theatre Production and Arts Management.

Educational Background: B.A. Lake Forest College, M.F.A. Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts, Ph.D. CUNY Graduate School.

Courses Taught: Theatre Production, Stage and Theatre Management, Advanced Production, American Theatre and Drama: 1920-1950, Experimental Performance, Play Analysis, World Theatre I, Introduction to Theatre, Directing, Acting II.

Selected Work: Producer, Jim Findlay's Botanica, 3LD Art & Technology Center; Associate Producer, Steve Cuiffo, Trey Lyford, and Geoff Sobelle's Elephant Room, Philadelphia Live Arts Festival; Producer, Anita Gonzalez's Liverpool Trading, Dixon Place; Producer/Co-Director, James Manzello and Oliver Wason's Love In A Tub, La Mama; Managing Director, The Wooster Group; Associate Producer, Cynthia Hopkins' The Success of Failure...or, The Failure of Success; Company Manager, Mabou Mines; Marketing and Tour Director, Theatre de la Jeune Lune; Company Manager, Solo Voyages, directed by Joseph Chaikin, produced by Women's Interart Theatre and the American National Theatre at the Kennedy Center; Producer, Conduction 100 by Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris, Walker Art Center, Arizona State University, Nexus Art Center, and Tribeca Performing Arts Center; Producer, Joseph Chaikin in Struck Dumb and The War in Heaven, Genesis Theatre; Producer, Ron Litman's On a Clear Day You Can See Armageddon, Colonnades Theatre.

Mark Bly, Distinguished Lecturer

Office: 523D HN
Email: mbly@hunter.cuny.edu
Phone: (713) 448-0079
Fax: (212)772-4321

Areas of Specialty: Playwriting, Dramaturgy

Educational Background: M.A. Boston College, M.F.A. Yale School of Drama

Courses Taught: Playwriting, Dramaturgy

Selected Work: Editor of Production Notebooks: Theatre in Process, Volumes I, II, (TCG, 1996, 2001); Special Editor Yale Theatre, "The Return of the Dramaturgs,” Summer, 1986. “Impossible Things Happen Every Day: Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella at the Yale Repertory Theatre” Theatre Forum, Winter/Spring 2004; “Variations on an Obsession” (Moises Kaufman’s 33 Variations) American Theatre, March, 2009; “Bristling with Multiple Possibilities,” Dramaturgy Sourcebook, Editors Jonas, Proehl, and Lupu (Harcourt Brace, 1997).

Remarks: Bly was the Chair of the Playwriting Program at the Yale School of Drama from 1992-2004 while being the Associate Artistic Director at the Yale Rep. Over the past thirty years he has served as a Dramaturg, Director of New Play Development, and Associate Artistic Director at such theatres as the Arena Stage, Alley Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, Seattle Rep, and Yale Rep, dramaturging and producing over 150 plays. He has dramaturged on Broadway Emily Mann’s Execution of Justice (1985) and more recently Moises Kaufman’s 33 Variations. Bly has served as the Dramaturg for the world premieres of plays by Rajiv Joseph, Suzan Lori-Parks, Tim Blake Nelson, Sarah Ruhl, and Moises Kaufman. Bly has written for numerous publications: Yale Theatre as Contributing Editor and Advisory Editor, Theatre Forum, American Theatre, Theater Topics, and LMDA Review. In 2010 Bly received the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas G.E. Lessing Career Achievement Award, only the fifth time the award was bestowed in the organization’s history.

Ian Calderon, Professor

Office: 523C HN
Email: icaldero@hunter.cuny.edu
Phone: (212) 772-4321
Fax: (212)772-4321

Areas of Specialty: Theatre Architecture, Design and Lighting.

Educational Background: B.A. Hunter CUNY, M.F.A., Yale School of Drama.

Courses Taught: Theatre, Concepts in Light, Theatre Architecture Design Concepts.

Selected Work: Joe Papp's Public Theatre, Lincoln Center, O'Neill Center, La Mama ETC, The Museum of the City of New York, Mayor's Office for Cultural Affairs, Kennedy Center, Pratt Institute, MIT Media Lab, The Government of Jamaica, USC, American Playhouse, PBS, Sundance Institute and other cultural institutions.

Remarks: As a Hunter alumnus he has over 100 national and international theatre and television productions to his credit. On Broadway he designed That Championship Season, Timbuktu, Paul Robeson, The Art of Dining, Trelawney of the Wells, Man in the Moon Marigold, Sticks and Bones, The Dance of Death, among others, and has been nominated for two Tony Awards, the Drama Desk Award, and the Maharam Award. His work has been seen on London's West End and he is a member of the Society of British Theatre Designers. As a guest of The People's Republic of China he designed Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie in Beijing. For over a decade, at the O'Neill's Center he produced the New Drama for Television developing works that later aired on ABC network. He also produced television interviews; Katherine Hepburn with Dick Cavett, Ethel Merman with Gene Shallit, and Helen Hayes with Leonard Harris.

Dong-Shin Chang, Assistant Professor

Office: HN 520F
Email: dongshin.chang@hunter.cuny.edu
Phone: (212) 772-4807
Fax: (212) 650-3584

Areas of Specialty: Theatre History, Intercultural Performance, Race and Performance.

Educational Background: Ph.D., New York University.

Courses Taught: World Theatre (II), Play Analysis, Intercultural Performance.

Deepsikha Chatterjee, Lecturer

Office: 102 TH
Email: dchatter@hunter.cuny.edu
Phone: (212) 772-4653
Fax: (212) 650-3584

Areas of Specialty: Costume History, Costume and Fashion Design, Technology, Costume Crafts, South Asian Clothing and Costume.

Educational Background: Undergraduate Diploma in Fashion Design, NIFT, India; B.S. University of Madras, India; M.F.A. Florida State University.

Courses Taught: Costume History, Costume Design, Costume Technology, Stage Makeup.

Selected Work: Curse of the Starving Class, Jesus Hopped the A Train, Couple of White Chicks Sitting Around Talking, The Trip To Bountiful, Amadeus, Metamorphoses, Wiley and the Hairy Man.

Mira Felner, Professor

Office: 520B HN
Email: mfelner@hunter.cuny.edu
Phone: (212) 650-3338
Fax: (212) 650-3584

Mira Felner

Areas of Specialty: Acting practice and theory, directing practice and theory, theatre history, mime, masks.

Educational Background: Ph.D, New York University; Diplome d’Etudes Theatrales, Sorbonne.

Courses Taught: Acting (all levels), Shakespeare, Acting: Period Styles, Theatre History.

Selected Work: The World of Theatre: Tradition and Innovation (Allyn and Bacon, 2006), Free to Act: An Integrated Approach to Acting, 2nd edition (Allyn and Bacon, 2003), Apostles of Silence: The Modern French Mimes (Associated University Presses, 1985).

Remarks: Prof. Felner has acted and directed in the United States and France and headed a French language theatre in New York for several years. She is a specialist in mime and studied in Paris with Jacques Lecoq. She taught the first movement course affiliated with the Sorbonne’s Institut d”Etudes Theatrales. She has written extensively on movement in actor training. Her book Apostles of Silence was named “Outstanding Academic Book in Theatre, 1985-86” by Choice magazine. Her book Free to Act explores the physical base for acting technique. She is the American consultant editor of the Bloomsbury Theatre Guide.

Tina Howe, Playwright-in-Residence

Tina Howe’s most important plays include Birth and After Birth, Museum, The Art of Dining, Painting Churches, Coastal Disturbances, Approaching Zanzibar and Pride’s Crossing, as well as translations of Eugène Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano and The Lesson. These works premiered at the Public Theater, the Kennedy Center, Second Stage, The Old Globe Theatre, Lincoln Center Theater, the Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Atlantic Theater Company and Primary Stages. Among her many awards are an Obie for Distinguished Playwriting, a Tony nomination for Best Play, an Outer Circle Critics Award, a Rockefeller grant, two N.E.A. Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, the Sidney Kingsley Award, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, two honorary degrees and the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre. A two time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Ms. Howe has been a Visiting Professor at Hunter College since 1990 and is Playwright-in-Residence of the new Rita and Burton Goldberg MFA in Playwriting. Her works can be read in numerous anthologies as well as in Coastal Disturbances: Four Plays by Tina Howe and Birth and After Birth and Other Plays: A Marriage Cycle, both published by Theatre Communications Group. Her translations of Ionesco's The Bald Soprano and The Lesson have been published by Grove Press and Shrinking Violets and Towering Tiger Liles: Seven Brief Plays about Women in Distress, has been published by Samuel French. Ms. Howe is proud to have served on the council of the Dramatists Guild since 1990.

Judith Jablonka, Lecturer

Office: 520H HN
Email: jjablonk@hunter.cuny.edu
Phone: (212) 772-4642
Fax: (212) 650-3584

Jean Graham-Jones, Professor

Office: 523D HN
Email: jgraham-jones@gc.cuny.edu
Phone: (212) 772-4215 or (212) 817-8873
Fax: (212) 817-3476

Areas of Specialty: Latin American Theatre and Performance, Theatre and Performance Theory and Criticism; Translation.

Educational Background: Ph.D., 1993, University of California, Los Angeles

Courses Taught: History of Theatrical Theory, History of Theatre, Seminar on Latin American Theatre and Performance, World Theatre 1 and 3.

Selected Work: BAiT: Buenos Aires in Translation (2007); Reason Obscured: The Collected Plays of Ricardo Monti (2004); Exorcising History: Argentine Theater under Dictatorship (2000); and articles in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Latin American Theatre Review, Theatre Research International, Journal of Beckett Studies, Gestos, Tramoya, and Bulletin of the Comediantes.

Remarks: I am also on the faculty at the Graduate Center.

Jonathan Kalb, Professor

Office: 520D HN
Email: jkalb@hunter.cuny.edu
Phone: (212) 650-3082
Fax: (212) 650-3584

Jonathan Kalb

Areas of Specialty: Theater History, Dramatic Literature, Theater Criticism and Theory, Dramaturgy.

Educational Background: B.A. Wesleyan University; M.F.A., D.F.A. Yale School of Drama.

Courses Taught: World Theater I, II, III; 20th Century Aesthetics of Theater and Film; Theater Theory and Criticism; Play Analysis; Adaptation in Theater and Film; Avant-Garde Theater; Introduction to Theater; 20th Century German Theater; Dramaturgy Research and Case Studies; Critical Writing; Theater Theory and Criticism; Play Analysis; Beckett and His Heritage; Dramaturgy Research and Case Studies; Alternative Theater; Brecht and Artaud; Goethe’s Faust: Text, Background, Tradition.

Selected Work—Books: Beckett In Performance (Cambridge UP, 1989/1991); Free Admissions: Collected Theater Writings (Limelight Editions, 1993); The Theater of Heiner Müller, Cambridge UP, 1998; Revised and enlarged paperback, 2001); Play by Play: Theater Essays and Reviews, 1993-2002 (Limelight Editions, 2003); Great Lengths: Seven Works of Marathon Theater (University of Michigan Press, 2011/2013)
-- Recent Publications: "Introduction" to Ten Great Films, by Stanley Kauffmann (Sheep Meadow Press, 2012); "What is the Theater's Outer Limit of Great Length?", Theater 41:2 (2011); "The Mahabharata Twenty-Five Years Later: Peter Brook in conversation," Perfomring Arts Journal (PAJ 96), 32:3, Sept. 2010; "Amazing Untold Stories of Catalogues," Performing Arts Journal (PAJ 92) 31:2, May 2009; "Nothing to do with Patience: An Interview with Michael Thalheimer," Theater 39:1 (2009); Beckett After Beckett, Salmagundi, Fall-Winter 2008-09.

Remarks: Professor Kalb has twice won the country’s most prestigious prize for a drama critic, The George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. He won it in 1991 for his first book Beckett in Performance and his writings in The Village Voice, and again in 2012 for his book Great Lengths: Seven Works of Marathon Theater, which also won the George Freedley Award from the Theatre Library Association. Prof. Kalb has written theater criticism and feature articles for the New York Times and was the chief theater critic for New York Press from 1997-2001. His writing has appeared in many journals and book collections, including: Modern Drama, TDR, Performing Arts Journal, American Theatre, Theater, Theater Heute, Theater Three, Theatre Journal, TheatreForum, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Salmagundi, The Nation and The Threepenny Review. Prof. Kalb is the Literary Advisor for Theatre for a New Audience, where he works frequently as a dramaturg. He is also the founding editor of HotReview.org, the Hunter On-Line Theater Review, an open-source Web journal that has published more than 200 articles, essays, interviews and other writings by a wide range of authors, from talented novices to the nation’s foremost living theater writers.

Claudia Orenstein, Associate Professor

Office: 520A HN
Email: corenste@hunter.cuny.edu
Phone: (212) 772-4228
Fax: (212) 650-3584

Claudia Orenstein

Areas of Specialty: Asian Theatre, Interculturalism, Political Theatre, Puppetry.

Educational Background: B.A. University of Southern California; Ph.D. in Drama, Directing and Criticism, Stanford University.

Courses Taught: Introduction to Theatre, World Theater I , II, and III, Graduate Theatre History I, Asian Theatre, Theatre of Protest, Play Analysis, Puppetry and Performing Objects Onstage, Women in Theatre, Playmaking Workshop (with Putu Wijaya), The Performing Arts of Kerala, India (Study Abroad).

Selected Work: The World of Theatre: Tradition and Innovation (Allyn and Bacon, 2006); Festive Revolutions: The Politics of Popular Theatre and the San Francisco Mime Troupe (Univ. P of Mississippi, 1999)
--Publications: “Coming Full Circle: Performing Objects, New Media, and Interculturalism in New Puppetry” Indian Horizons, “Dangerous Business and The Body of Performance” Theatre India, “The Danish Festival at the New Victory Theatre: Puppetry and A New Perspective on Family Entertainment” TDR, “In and Out of Time: The Animated Art of Janie Geiser” Puck: La Marionnette et les Autres Arts, “Puppets Invade France: The XIVème Festival Mondial des Théâtres de Marionnettes” Theater, “Good Theatre In Bad Times: Mime Troupe Reader” Theater, “Kazuko Hohki: Objects of Contemplation” Animated Encounter: A Review of Puppetry and Related Arts, “Revolution Should Be Fun: A Critical Perspective on the San Francisco Mime Troupe” Restaging the Sixties: Radical Theaters and Their Legacies (University of Michigan Press, 2006).

Remarks: Claudia Orenstein is a scholar, actor, and director, who has worked and studied in the US, France, and Japan. Her current reaserch focuses on the use of mixed media in contemporary performing object theatre. She has also written on political theatre and interculturalism in Asian theatre. Her articles and reviews have been published in Asian Theatre Journal, Theatre, TDR, Theatre Symposium, Animated Encounter, Puck, and Mime Journal. She enjoys stylization in performance and has trained in various physical performance traditions including kabuki, kyogen, Balinese dance, commedia, and puppetry. Her 2001 production, The Bruegel Tiptych, was supported by a PSC-CUNY grant. In January 2008, she brought CUNY students to study kathakali dance-drama at the Kerala Kalamandalam Performing Arts Academy in India. She serves as Associate Editor of Asian Theatre Journal and as Board Member of both the Association for Asian Performance and UNIMA- USA. She is currently Chair of the International Community of the Center for Performance Research and Cultural Studies in South Asia, and she also holds an appointment at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Mia Rovegno, Assistant Professor

Office: 523A
Email: mrovegno@hunter.cuny.edu
Phone: (212) 650-3701
Fax: (212) 650-3584

Mia Rovegno

Areas of Specialty: Acting, Directing, Physical Theater, New Play Development.

Educational Background: BS in Performance Studies, Northwestern University; MFA in Directing, Brown University/Trinity Rep Consortium.

Courses Taught: Acting and Directing (all levels).

Selected Work: Good Goods (O'Neill Playwrights Conference), The Tenant (Associate Director, Woodshed Collective), Exquisite Corpse (Clubbed Thumb), The Civilan's Pretty Filthy II (Joe's Pub), The Divorce Tales Live (WNYC Greene Space), Love in the Time of Channukah (Ars Nova and Hangar Theater), The Blind (Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab), Origin Story (Hangar Theatre), The Friendship of her Thighs (The Tank), Girls on the Clock (Summer Playwrights Rep), Science Is Close (reading, Soho Rep), Underland (workshop, Dixon Place), Page Not Found (reading, The Civilians), Tartuffe (guest director, Brown Dept of Theatre and Performance Studies). Brown New Plays Festival: Inked Baby, Some of the Rooms, Diagram of a Kidnapping, fracture/mechanics. Brown/Trinity Rep: The Maids, Elektra, Polaroid Stories, 365 Days/365 Plays. Selected Assistant Directing: Broadway: Daniel Sullivan Time Stands Still (MTC); Off-Broadway: Ken Rus Schmoll What Once We Felt (LCT3); AD/Choreographer for Anne Kauffman Dot (Clubbed Thumb); Regional: Chris Bayes The Servant of Two Masters (Yale Rep); Anne Kauffman The Communist Dracula Pageant (A.R.T.). Upcoming: Burnt Umber by Erik Ehn (LaMaMa), We Play For The Gods (Co-creator/director, Women’s Project).

Remarks: Mia Rovegno has directed new work for Soho Rep, The Civilians, Ars Nova, The O’Neill, A.R.T., Clubbed Thumb, Partial Comfort, New Dramatists, Dixon Place; Regionally for The Hangar Theatre, Summer Playwrights Rep, Harvard Playwrights Festival, Brown/A.R.T. Institute Bakeoff and others. Her plays have been developed by P73, Culture Project and New Georges, and produced by Perishable Theater and foolsFURY. Mia has performed with Redmoon Theater, Shadowlight, Bread and Puppet, Intersection for the Arts, and others. She is a recipient of the Drama League Fellowship, P73 Yale Summer Residency, SDC Observership, and MTC’s Jonathan Alper Fellowship; Ockrent Fellowship nominee. Alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and Lincoln Center Directors Lab; Member of Women’s Project Directors Lab, The Civilians R & D Group, and New Georges’ The Jam (New Georges Affiliated Artist).

Michael E. Rutenberg, Professor

Office: 523B HN
Email: playact@earthlink.net
Phone: (212) 772-4231
Fax: (212) 650-3584

Michael E. Rutenberg

Areas of Specialty: Playwriting, Acting and Directing.

Educational Background: B.A. Brooklyn College; M.F.A., D.F.A. in Directing, Yale School of Drama.

Courses Taught: Playwriting, Acting, Directing.

Selected Work: Edward Albee: Playwright in Protest, (DBS Publications, Inc). Free verse translation and adaptation of Seneca’s Oedipus (Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers Inc.).

Remarks: Dr. Rutenberg is a lifetime member of the famed Actors Studio where he has developed and directed both new plays and revivals for public presentation. An active professional director in New York City, he has directed at The American Theatre of Actors, The West Bank Cafe, The Theatre for the New City, and The Corner Loft Theatre. Regionally, Dr. Rutenberg has directed at the Deertrees Summer Theatre in Maine, The Monticello Playhouse in New York State, and the Silo Circle Theatre in North Carolina. He is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, the Dramatists Guild, the Theatre League of South Florida, and the Mystery Writers of America, having written and directed the Off Broadway production of A Polite Case of Murder. Professor Rutenberg has been a visiting professor at Dartmouth College, Lynn University, and Digital Media Arts College, and a guest director at the Annual Theatre Festival in Key West, Florida. During summers he has taught master classes in playwriting at The Caldwell Theatre and the Hollywood Playhouse in Florida, and directed at the Public Theatre of South Florida. In 2003 his play The Candidate opened at Love Creek Productions in New York City. In 2004 he directed the New York premier of The Fist, a powerful drama depicting the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, at Theatre For The New City in New York City. That same year Love Creek Productions in New York City presented his play A Birthday Gift For Barbie. In 2004 and again in 2005 he was awarded the New York City Chancellor’s “Certificate of Recognition” for Scholarly Achievement. From January to June 2005 he received a State Department Fulbright Grant to Haifa University in Israel as Writer/Artist-in-Residence. In 2006, Professor Rutenberg received the Hunter College "Presidential Award For Excellence in Teaching" In 2006 he also directed The Jewish Theatre of New York's production of My Name Is Rabbi Meir Kahane as part of Theatre For the New City's 11th annual Lower East Side Festival of the Arts. In June, 2007 he wrote and directed Payback, a winning entry in the Samuel French 32nd Annual Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival. Payback was also a winning entry in 2008 at the Boca West Theatre Play Festival in Boca Raton, Florida. In March, 2008 at the “First International Conference on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” at Central Connecticut State College in Connecticut, Dr. Rutenberg delivered a paper entitled: “Teaching and Directing In Israel.”

Louisa Thompson, Associate Professor

Office: 520C HN
Email: lthomp@hunter.cuny.edu
Phone: (212) 650-3517
Fax: (212) 650-3584

Louisa Thompson

Areas of Specialty: Set and Costume Design.

Educational Background: B.F.A. Rhode Island School of Design, M.F.A. Yale School of Drama.

Courses Taught: Set Design, Costume Design, Visual Elements, Intro to Theatre, Theatres and Movie Palaces, New Play Workshop.

Selected Work: Set and costume design for Molly's Dream at Soho Repertory Theatre; set and costume design for First in Flight at Theaterworks USA; set design for [sic] at Soho Rep (Obie & Hewes Award); No. 11 at McGinn/Cazale Theater (Blue and White); Convenience and Tomato Plant Girl (Geva Theatre); Baby With the Bathwater (Triad Stage and Soho Rep); People are Wrong (P.S. 122); The Ladies (Dixon Place and The Civilians); 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com (The Cherry Lane Theatre); Canard, Canard, Goose (The Civilians); The Great Men of Science (The Empty Space); Garden (Geva Theatre); The America Play (Actors Express); Tulpa (Target Margin); The Cherry Orchard (SALT Theatre). Costume design for Tex Arcana Waltz (Basic Grammar); Ciao and Company (Barrington Stage Company); Leaving Queens (Portland Stage Company); Once Five years Pass (The Julliard School and Bard College).