The School of Theatre and Dance hosts a number of directors, choreographers, designers, dramaturgs, and guests offering workshops, talks, and masterclasses. These artists offer a broad range of practices, methods, identities, and outlooks to JMU’s Theatre and Dance students.

Theatre

 Gretta Daughtrey (Lighting Design) has designed with several local theatre companies, area schools, and universities. Recent dance projects include several performances during the VCU 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 academic years including both site and theatre work (Pathfinders, TWO TRUTHS: Truth 1, DanceNOW 2024, Enouement), Gretta has also designed for KDance at Firehouse Theatre and University of Richmond University Dancers Concert 2024 (Moving Bodies/Bodies Moving). Past theatrical designs for Richmond Shakes (Quill) include Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, and An Iliad.  She has also designed several productions for Henrico Theatre Company and the Festival of Arts at Dogwood Dell. Gretta works in Systems Integration for Barbizon, specifying lighting and control systems.

 Eamonn Farrell (Projections Design) is a New Jersey-based video designer and theater maker whose work focuses on investigations of how innovative technologies can support and elevate the work of live performers to create unforgettable experiences. With his company, Anonymous Ensemble, he has created dozens of original, media-infused shows, installations, and live webcasts in New York City and around the world. For two decades, Eamonn collaborated closely with the late Lee Breuer of Mabou Mines. Other design credits include: Sarah Michelson, Big Dance Theater, TFANA, B3 Dance (Bessie Nomination), The LA Phil, Parsons Dance, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Portland Center Stage, Palacio de Bellas Artes, and Megaron Musiki. Eamonn has taught projections design at Princeton, City College of New York, JMU and UVA.

 Scott Organ’s (New Work) plays have been commissioned by The Atlantic Theater Company, developed by theaters including The Barrow Group, The New Group, Page 73, South Coast Rep, and performed and workshopped throughout the United States, Europe and South America. His film ROOST was selected for the Toronto International Film Festival and has been distributed by IFC in theaters and streams under the title What Comes Around, directed by Amy Redford. Scott’s play The Thing With Feathers premiered at The Barrow Group in 2018. His play Phoenix premiered at the Humana Festival of New American Plays and was subsequently produced at The Barrow Group and through Rattlestick at Cherry Lane Theater. Phoenix has been translated into Portuguese, Spanish and French. His writing has been featured in Arts In The Armed Forces. Scott’s plays can be found in New Playwrights - The Best Plays 2010, Humana Festival 2010 – The Complete Plays, New American Short Plays 2005, Best American Short Plays and Great Short Plays. Scott is a writer on the short films Playdate (TriBeCa Film Festival, London City International Film Festival - 3rd place, Vimeo Staff Pick) The Board (TriBeCa Film Festival) and The One (Palm Springs International Film Festival) and the features Phoenix and the feature History of Technology (written with David Shane.)  

 Gwyneth Strope (New Work) is a playwright, actor, and visual artist with an M.F.A. in playwriting from Hollins University. Based in Roanoke, VA, she prides herself on being an interdisciplinary artist who writes and performs new works that envision, embody, and embolden the stories of women. Gwyneth's straight play, Chrysalis, won the David L. Shelton full-length play award for excellence in playwriting at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Region IV. Her play, In Bloom, is being performed in the TYA ThinkFest in Tampa and was nominated for Outstanding New Play during the 2023 St. Louis Theatre Circle award season. She is a proud member of the Dramatist's Guild. Her most recently produced works include To Bathe or Not to Bathe at Missouri S&T, In Bloom at Tesseract in St. Louis, and Chrysalis at Hollins University

 Daniella Toscano (Costume Design) is a visual artist with an MFA in Costume Design from the University of California, San Diego. She hails from Las Vegas, Nevada where she received her BA in Studio Art and Theater at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Alongside costume design projects, she’s also worked extensively in costume shops around the country in a variety of roles from stitcher to designer, and has explored and developed skills in multimedia design as a way to further explore theatrical storytelling in the digital landscape. Recent design credits include Branden Jacobs Jenkins’ Everybody (UCSD), Sophocles’ Elektra (UCSD), and the world premiere of Elephant (Benchmark Theatre).

Musical Theatre

 Or Matias (Music Direction) is an Obie award-winning composer, lyricist, music director, and content developer. Since graduating from Juilliard, Or has led projects and collaborated with some of the most dominant leaders of the entertainment industry, ranging from multi-platinum artists Josh Groban and Trans Siberian Orchestra to Tony Award winning director Rachel Chavkin, broadway composers Dave Malloy and Anaïs Mitchell, and countless other Broadway writers, directors, musicians and actors. Or's musical, The Wave, was the grand winner at the 2021 German Tony Awards (Deutscher Musical Theater Preis) and was awarded "Best Musical", "Best Composition", and "Best Book". Or has managed large creative teams through Broadway productions and has developed creative content from inception through multi-million dollar productions. He has worked on both the creative and operational sides, collaborating with artists and producers alike, from helping navigate budgets to selecting creative content and leading it to production. Or’s original compositions traverse media styles and genres, including pop music albums, musical theater and film, and he has generated substantial content for children, including an original children’s album and an animated 12-part children series in development.

 Brittney Griffin (Choreography) graduated from the University at Buffalo with a BFA in Dance. Credits include: Hairspray, 42nd Street (International), Dreamgirls National Broadway Tour (Dance Captain/Swing), Dreamgirls Non-Equity and South African Tour (Associate Director/Choreographer), Apollo Club Harlem, After Midnight (NCL). Film: Bolden, A Jazzmans Blues (Netflix). Winner of 2022 Connecticut Critics Circle Award for Best Choreography for Five Guys Named Moe (Playhouse on Park). Most recently she is the Associate Choreographer of Broadway's five time Tony Award winning musical Kimberly Akimbo.

Dance

 Brian Josiah Martinez (Choreography) embarked on his dance journey at Davidson High School in Mobile, AL, guided by the esteemed Angie Brocato Dussouy. At The University of Southern Mississippi, he excelled as the Teaching Assistant for Advanced Choreography. Graduating summa cum laude with honors in Dance Performance and Choreography, Brian guest-performed with Hub Dance Collective. Venturing to Chicago, Brian enriched his skills in Hubbard Street's Professional Program under the mentorship of Alexandra Wells. Brian later joined PARA.MAR Dance Theatre, collaborating with renowned choreographers Stephanie Martinez, Robyn Minekos Williams, and Helene Simoneau. In his choreographic pursuits, Brian has created captivating films for Chicago's New Dances and New York's Future Dance Festival, namely "Next to the Portrait of a Red Haired Lady" and "Breaking Mundane." Stepping onto the grand stage of the Lyric Opera in Carmen marked a pinnacle in his performance career before redirecting his focus to Boykin Dance Project, which he founded in 2022. Brian's choreographic ethos revolves around "contemporary, full-bodied theatrical gesture," a distinctive movement preference infusing dynamic performance with swift, purposeful movements. His most recent work, "Nonsense!” (2023), premiered at Boykin ONE in Spring 2023, exploring the whimsical essence of dreams through a multi-generational lens inspired by an aural landscape spanning the 1940s to the 1990s. Currently, Brian is immersed in developing "Real People, Not Paid Actors," his most seminal exploration of this movement practice to date.

 Julie Nakagawa (DanceWorks Chicago) was a featured dancer with Christopher D’Amboise’s Off Center Ballet, Cleveland Ballet, and Twyla Tharp Dance. She has also performed in Ruth Page’s Nutcracker and Die Fledermaus. Returning to Chicago upon her retirement from dancing, she has been especially interested in the development of dance artists and their related artistic collaborators. At the invitation of Lou Conte, Julie joined the staff of Lou Conte Dance Studio in January 1994 and rose to the position of Associate Director. In addition, she led Hubbard Street 2 from its inception in 1997 through February 2007 as the artistic director of the second company of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, nurturing young dancers and establishing the National Choreographic Competition to provide creative opportunities for emerging dance makers. Julie has taught classes for dance studios, university programs, and companies, locally, nationally, and internationally. She has served as a member and officer of the Board of Trustees of Dance/USA, has engaged as a mentor in multiple pairings through Dance/USA’s Institute for Leadership Training, has been a panelist for peer review panels including the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, McKnight Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Princess Grace Foundation, and US Artists International.

 Max Roman (Choreography), featured in Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch, is the founder and Artistic Director of GRIDLOCK Dance in Washington, DC. Her choreography is “intellectually probing, politically minded, and personally revelatory” (Dance Magazine), "boldly explores technology's downsides" (Washington City Paper), and provides "a searing comment on how pervasive social media and mobile devices affect human behavior" (Arts ATL).

 Vincent E Thomas (Choreography) received his MFA in Dance from Florida State University and a BME in Music from the University of South Carolina. He has danced with Dance Repertory Theatre (FSU), Randy James Dance Works (NY/NJ), EDGEWORKS Dance Theater (DC), and Liz Lerman Dance Exchange (MD). His choreography has been presented at various national and international venues including DUMBO Festival (NY), Philly Fringe (PA), Edinburgh Fringe Festival (UK-Scotland), Barcelona and Madrid, Spain, Avignon, France, Athens, Greece, Bari, Italy, Copenhagen, Denmark, Taipei, and Singapore. He received rave reviews for his performance of “Come Change” (2012) and “iWitness” (2014) in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. Vincent was the Movement Coach/Choreographer for  Everyman Theater’s Brother’s Size by Tarell Alvin McCraney, Mosaic Theatre’s Unexplored Interior by Jay Sander,  Everyman Theater’s Los Otros by Ellen Fitzhugh, and Mosaic Theatre’s The Art of Care by Derek Goldman. He is the Artistic Director/Choreographer of the national touring What’s Going On project. Vincent was awarded the 2017 Pola Nirenska Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance (DC), the 2019 University System of Maryland Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship & Creative Activity, 2020 MDEA Living Legacy Award, 2021 Baker Artist Award, a 2022 Baker Award Finalist, and a 2023 Black History Month Honoree for Richland District Two (SC). Vincent was awarded the 2024 Robert M. Trotter Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Oregon. He is the Founder/Artistic Director of VTDance, an Urban Bush Women BOLD Facilitator, faculty member for the UBW Summer Institutes (NY), Associate Choreographer for INTELLIGENCE Opera (with Jawole Zollar), Co-Choreographer for Scat! The Complex Lives of Al and Dot…Dot and Al Zollar (with Jawole Zollar), and Professor of Dance at Towson University (MD).

 Kia Smith (Choreography) is a dance-maker whose work fuses contemporary ballet and jazz dance. Also involved in Stage Direction for Opera, Kia is a newly appointed Assistant Director for Chautauqua Opera. Her work as the Founder of South Chicago Dance Theatre (SCDT) includes serving as the organization’s Resident Choreographer, Executive Director, and Artistic Director. Kia is the founder of an enduring Choreographic Diplomacy™ project that began in 2018 and presently spans the creation and presentation of new work with artists in Seoul, Korea; Arnhem, Netherlands; and Columbia, South America. Here, art making is a tool she uses to engage with diverse people to build collective experience, develop empathy in cross-cultural relations, and understand the importance of global citizenship. In 2022 Kia was named the “South-Side Diplomat of Dance” by the Chicago Reader. She is the daughter of a celebrated Chicago-based saxophonist. While she and her father were estranged for much of her life, she sees herself reflected in reviews written about his work and the ways in which he’s described as a composer and performer. In her dance making, she always had a vested interest in rhythm and musicality, and her creative process centers around an exploration of how to create both dissonance and harmony with sound. Showcasing form, energy and architecture, Kia's work derives from her subconscious, exploring disparate ideas from multiple vantage points such as movement invention, investigation of emotion, irony, and showmanship. Though Kia's work stems out of her experiences of living in the Black, female corporeal body, she is ultimately interested in the deconstruction and transcendence of race and in employing movement to build community. Using contemporary dance, Kia wishes to reflect upon the human condition, challenge notions of perspective, and increase opportunities for interconnected sensibilities throughout the global community.