Round 2 Juries for the Americas
Introducing the ShakeMeUP Film Festival Round 2 Senior & Junior High Juries for the Americas! These two teams of judges will determine which films submitted by students in North, South and Central America will enter ShakeMeUp's 3rd and final round. The winners will compete on a global stage against contestants from Africa, Asia and Europe. Round 2 winners will be announced on Friday, May 5. In the meantime, feel free to review Round 1 winners at www.youtube/shakmeupfilmfestival. ShakeMeUp's Senior & Junior High Juries for Africa, Asia and Europe will be introduced soon. Stay-tuned! For more detail about the the ShakeMeUp Film Festival, contact Director Doug Hart at [email protected].
Biographical Info about ShakeMeUp Judges
Judge IRWIN APPEL is Professor of Theater and Director of the BFA Actor Training Program at UC Santa Barbara. He is also a professional director, Equity actor and composer/sound designer, and has worked with Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Shakespeare Festival/LA, the New York, Oregon, Utah, New Jersey and Colorado Shakespeare Festivals, The Acting Company, Theatre For a New Audience, Hartford Stage, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, PCPA, both the National Theatre Conservatory and Colorado New Play Summit at the Denver Center of the Performing Arts, the Bread Load Acting Ensemble, and other prominent regional theaters.
Irwin is also artistic director of Naked Shakes, producing award-winning Shakespearean productions at UCSB and traveling to downtown Santa Barbara and Los Angeles since 2006. In 2016, he produced and directed The Death of Kings, his two-part original adaptation of eight Shakespearean history plays performed in repertory at UCSB. The Death of Kings won seven Santa Barbara Independent awards and six Regional BroadwayWorld awards for adaptation, direction, design and performance.
In 2015, Irwin led workshops and lectured about Naked Shakes at the International Platform for Performer Training in Zurich, Switzerland, along with the Institutes of English and American Studies at the Universities of Gdansk and Warsaw in Poland, as well as the Shakespeare Theatre of Gdansk. In summer 2017, he will be teaching and directing at the Prague Shakespeare Company in the Czech Republic, and Theater of Changes’ International Festival of Making Theater in Athens, Greece. He is a graduate of Princeton University and the Juilliard School.
Judge MICHAEL BAHR taught for fourteen years in the public school systems in Cedar City, Utah; Tremonton, Utah; and Bakersfield, California. He has received numerous teaching awards including Outstanding Teacher and the Apple Award (for excellence in education), and he was nominated for the Huntsman Award (for outstanding contributions to education). He is the Education Director of the Utah Shakespeare Festival and directs the Shakespeare-in-the-Schools Tour, serving 40,000 students with professional Shakespeare Productions. He also manages the High School Shakespeare Competition, an event that invites more than 2,500 students from 85 schools throughout Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, and California, and he has created the Bard’s Birthday Bash for local elementary school students.
Judge KRISTIN CLIPPARD has worked as a theatre artist (director, actor, teacher, administrator, writer, dramaturg, producer) across the United States for many years. She has toured her original one-person show, developed new plays on both coasts, trained dozens of teaching artists and created theatre with under served populations.
She has trained with Shakespeare & Company in Massachusetts, the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre in Florida, the National Conservatory Theatre in Colorado, foolsFury and the SITI Company in California. Kristin has taught theatre to all ages for Anne Arundel Community College, University of Iowa, University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music Preparatory Department, Utah Shakespeare Festival, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Cincinnati Opera, Victoria Theatre Association, California Shakespeare Theatre, TheatreWorks, Marin Theatre Company, Word for Word, Peninsula Youth Theatre and more. Formerly, Kristin served as the Education Associate for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival and as the Education Director for the Annapolis Shakespeare Company.
Some favorite acting roles were Joby in Anton in Show Business, Josie Hogan in the Moon for the Misbegotten, Adriana in The Comedy of Errors, and Jane Austen in Lady Susan. Selected directing credits include contemporary and new plays such as Love’s Fire (a collection of one acts based on Shakespearean sonnets), Loyalty and Betrayal (a community collaboration based on Julius Caesar), Landless by Andrew Saito, Collective Amnesia by Janet Schlapkohl, Champagne Gods by Emily Dendinger, Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure, Pericles, Dr. Faustus and She Stoops to Conquer. Kristin has assisted numerous directors and directed many staged readings of new work. Kristin has served on selection committees for new play competitions such as the Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco, Playfest in Orlando and the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis. Visit her website at www.kristinclippard.com.
Judge SUZANNE DEAN is the Associate Artistic and Development Director for Los Angeles based Shakespeare by the Sea, Co-Founder/Associate Artistic Director of Little Fish Theatre, Co-Producer of Shaking it Up With Shakespeare (an LA area youth program created in 2004), and Founder of Rebelfilm Productions, a film & video company. She served as the Chair of the We Are Shakespeare Digital Video Festival for the Shakespeare Theatre Association in 2016. She has served as an annual judge for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences College Television Awards. Suzanne also contributes as a grant writer and development consultant for non-profit arts organizations. She merges her performing, producing, artistic management, and development careers throughout Los Angeles and the Bay Area.
As an Actress, she is known for both her dramatic work and comedy with extensive experience in Noel Coward, Tennessee Williams, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee and Shakespeare - having performed leading roles in 20 of his plays, some multiple times. She is a Backstage West Garland nominee and a BroadwayWorld, OC Weekly, and StageSceneLA winner for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Betrayal, Much Ado About Nothing, Taming of the Shrew, Private Lives, Antony & Cleopatra, and Hedda Gabler, and originated the role of Peg Woffington in Peg & Garrick.
Suzanne is EMMY nominated for her Commercial production work, having managed over 120 commercials. As a theatre Producer & Director, she has overseen more than 170 stage productions, including an annual New Works Festival. She is a member of the Actor unions as well as the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Shakespeare Theatre Association, LA Stage Alliance, San Francisco Film Society, Theatre Bay Area and Women in Film.
Judge STEVEN FORRESTER is from Grand Rapids, Michigan and has worked professionally in the film and television industry since 1996.
Steven has accumulated a wide range of credits during that time on Academy Award winning Hollywood feature films, independent British films plus American & British BAFTA winning network television dramas & documentaries. From 'Saving Private Ryan' to 'Gravity' and 'Harry Potter' to the 'X-Men' films. Steven's experience is extensive and all encompassing, crossing different genres and styles on projects which have consistently pushed the boundaries of modern day filmmaking.
In addition to working on major feature films, Steven has also made a number of his own short films. 'Yours Accidentally', 'Toby's Odyssey' and 'Desperate Pursuit' all enjoyed extensive runs on the international film festival circuit and went on to win many awards and accolades - details of which can be found by clicking on the relevant Vimeo links.
He is currently developing the psychological feature length thriller 'The Man Who Forgot Himself' as well as a number of other exciting projects. Steven is a member of 'BAFTA', 'Directors UK' and 'The Guild of British Film & Television Editors.’
Judge IAN GALLANAR has over 30 years of experience in the professional theater as an actor, writer, director and Artistic Director. Ian has led a number of theater companies through periods of rapid growth.
His professional goal is to lead the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company to becoming a national center for excellence and energy for innovative and engaging live performances of Shakespeare and other classics.
Specialties: Leading emerging arts organizations through rapid growth, strategic planning for theater companies and organizations, directing live productions of classical theater.
Since 2007, Judge SCOTT JACKSON has served as the executive director of Shakespeare at Notre Dame, providing executive oversight for the many Shakespeare-related programs housed at the University of Notre Dame with a particular focus on engaging our local community through the works of William Shakespeare.
Previously, Scott served as executive director for the Fairbanks Shakespeare Theatre (FST) in Fairbanks, Alaska. At FST, he produced and performed in outdoor Shakespeare productions staged under the midnight sun at venues throughout Alaska and toured around the globe (most notably at the VIII World Shakespeare Congress in Brisbane, Australia, and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland). He has produced, directed, and performed in over 130 productions.
From 2000–2003, Scott was the business and legal affairs coordinator for Brighter Pictures, Ltd (now a part of Endemol UK), one of the United Kingdom’s most successful independent television and film production companies. He holds a BA in theatre from Indiana University Bloomington, as well as intensive study in acting at the London Centre for Theatre Studies. Scott served as the treasurer for the Shakespeare Theatre Association (2013-2017) and is an instructor of acting process at the University of Notre Dame. A firm believer in the power of Shakespeare and the theatre arts to effect positive social change, he teaches a weekly Shakespeare in a performance course at the Westville Correctional Facility near Michigan City, Indiana.
Judge MICHAEL LOMONICO shows his passion for Shakespeare by writing, speaking, and leading workshops whenever and wherever he can. It is his goal to change the way that Shakespeare is taught in this country, and so far he has taught Shakespeare courses and workshops for teachers and students in 38 states as well as in Canada and England.
Michael is the Senior Consultant on National Education for the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. Since 1986, he has worked at the Teaching Shakespeare Institute at the Folger as the Institute Director and Master Teacher and. He has organized and directed two-day and week-long Folger Institutes across the U.S. He also serves as Secretary for the Shakespeare Theater Association.
Michael is the author of a novel, That Shakespeare Kid and the reference book, Shakespeare 101, published by Random House. He recently published the Second Edition of The Shakespeare Book of Lists. He was the founder and editor of Shakespeare magazine, published by Cambridge University Press and Georgetown University. He was an assistant to the editor for the curriculum section of all three volumes of the Folger’s Shakespeare Set Free series, published by Washington Square Press. He was also the technical editor to The Complete Idiots Guide to Shakespeare.
He was the guest editor for September 2009 "Teaching Shakespeare" edition of the English Journaland was also the guest editor for the CEA Critic, a publication of the College English Association.
Michael taught high school English on Long Island for 33 years and English Methods at Stony Brook University.
Judge GRANT MUDGE has twenty years experience as an Artistic Director, for both the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival and Richmond Shakespeare. During that time, from 2005-2009 also joined the faculty at Maggie L. Walker Governor's School as Director of Drama. MLWGS is one of the nation's top 25 public high schools.
Specialties: Theatrical performance and direction, teaching, lecturing, budgeting, theatre architecture and planning, Shakespeare, early modern period, Elizabethan and Jacobean England, modern Shakespeare theatre companies, performing arts.
Judge ERIC RASMUSSEN is Foundation Professor and Chair of English at the University of Nevada. He is the editor of the Royal Shakespeare Company's edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare and the president of the Reno-Tahoe International Film Festival.
Judge KEN SCHRETZMANN is an American film editor known for his work in feature animation. He most recently edited the blockbusters The Secret Life of Pets and Dr. Seuss' The Lorax for Illumination Entertainment. A long-time editor at Pixar Animation Studios, his credits include Monsters, Inc., Cars, and Toy Story 3, for which he received an ACE Eddie Award for Best Edited Animated Feature. He also edited the Showtime documentary Comedy Warriors: Healing Through Humor, which received the Television Academy Honors. Schretzmann learned his craft as an assistant editor on films such as Men in Black, Get Shorty, and Fried Green Tomatoes. A member of American Cinema Editors, he lives in Northern California.
Judge CURT L. TOFTELAND brings thirty-nine years of professional theatre experience to his current role as a freelance theatre artist - director, actor, producer, playwright, writer, teacher, program developer, prison arts practitioner, and consultant.
Curt is the Founder of the internationally acclaimed Shakespeare Behind Bars (SBB) program, now in its 21st year of continuous operation. From 1995-2008, Curt facilitated the SBB/KY program at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in LaGrange, Kentucky. During his thirteen year tenure, Curt produced and directed fourteen Shakespeare productions. Several participants in the SBB/KY program have garnered multiple Pen Literary Prison Writing Awards.
During the 2003 SBB production of The Tempest, Philomath Films chronicled the process in a documentary that premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and forty+film festivals around the world winning a total of eleven film awards. Additionally, Curt has worked as a prison arts practitioner in the Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women - where he taught college classes for the Jefferson Community and Technical College and created a Ten Minute Playwriting Program, and the Kentucky State Reformatory - where he taught JCTC theatre classes.
In the summer of 2010, Curt partnered with filmmaker/ director/ producer Robby Henson and playwright Elizabeth Orndorf to create Voices Inside - a 10-minute playwriting program - funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, at the Northpoint Training Center in Burgin, Kentucky. Now in its seventh year of funding by NEA, the program has generated inmate-authored plays that have gone on to be professionally produced at Theatrelab, an Off-Off-Broadway theatre, and the T-Shrieber Play Festival, both in New York City, and given readings at Actor’s Theatre of Louisville.
Participants in the Voices Inside program has garnered one publication, four Pen Literary Prison Writing Awards, and one participant’s play was a finalist in Actors Theatre of Louisville’s 2015 National 10 Minute Playwriting Contest. Curt is an Associate Producer of I Come From: Imagination is Free, a documentary by filmmaker Robby Henson. The documentary features spoken word poets in prisons in Kentucky.
In 2011, Curt created the Shakespeare Behind Bars program at the Earnest C. Brooks Correctional Facility (Level II & IV security) in Muskegon Heights, Michigan. In 2012, Curt launched the first Michigan co-gender juvenile Shakespeare Behind Bars (Ottawa County Juvenile Detention Center). Additional Shakespeare Behind Bars programs created at E.C. Brooks include: the Journeymen (for offenders under the age of 25) and Shakespeare in Housing Units. In 2014, Curt created three Shakespeare Behind Bars programs at the first Level I minimum security prison (West Shoreline Correctional Facility in Muskegon Heights, Michigan).
Curt currently facilitates seven Shakespeare Behind Bars programs in two Michigan prisons serving over one hundred prisoners each week.
Judge JIM VOLZ is an international arts consultant, author, producer and professor based in Orange County at California State University, Fullerton. He served as a longtime critic/arts columnist for New York's Back Stage and is the founding editor of the Shakespeare Theatre Association’s international publication, quarto. He has produced over 100 professional productions, consulted for over 100 arts institutions and published more than 100 articles on management, arts criticism, Shakespeare, and theatre in Oxford University Press’ Theatre Research International, Hollywood’s Drama-Logue, New York’s Back Stage, and myriad other articles for national and international publications.
Jim is also the 2011 recipient of the American Shakespeare Center’s international Burbage Award for “advancing the enjoyment of the works of William Shakespeare for the delight and instruction of the world” and was inducted into the prestigious College of Fellows of the American Theatre at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. in 2014.
He is a current member of the American Theatre Critics Association and a voting member for the prestigious Tony Award’s Regional Theatre Award. His acclaimed book, How to Run a Theatre is in its 3rd Edition (London’s Methuen Books) and Working in American Theatre (Methuen Books) and The Back Stage Guide to Working in Regional Theater are ongoing textbooks in undergraduate and graduate programs internationally. From 1982-1991, Jim orchestrated the tremendous growth of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival as managing director in partnership with Artistic Directors Martin L. Platt and Kent Thompson.
Judge LISA WOLPE is an actress, director, teacher, playwright and producer. She is also an international activist working for the empowerment of women and diversity on the stage. Since 1993 she has been the Founding Producing Artistic Director of the all-female, multicultural Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company (23 seasons), where she produces, directs, and has performed roles including Hamlet, Richard III, Angelo, Leontes, Romeo, Shylock, and Iago.
Lisa is currently touring her solo show Shakespeare & the Alchemy of Gender to venues around the world. She has directed and acted regionally at theaters including Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Orlando Shakespeare, Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Repertory Company, Shakespeare & Company, Arizona Theater Company, San Diego Repertory Theater, and more. LAWSC was named by LA Magazine as “one of the ten coolest things to do in Los Angeles”, and has been featured on PBS, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS News.
Honors for Ms. Wolpe include the Lee Melville Award for Sustained Excellence from Playwright’s Arena; the 2008 L.A. Drama Critic's Award for Sustained Excellence, the Key to Harlem, a Congressional Certificate of Merit, a Certificate of Recognition from the City of New York, The Key to Harlem for her all-female production with Take Wing and Soar, NBC News’ “Local Hero” award, the Jacob Bronowski Award for Theater Excellence, Women in Theater’s “Red Carpet” “Woman of the Year” Awards, the Women’s Theater Festival’s “Rainbow Award” for promoting Diversity in L.A. Theater, Whittier College’s Distinguished Artist Award, and many honors for acting and directing including Best Leading Actress Awards for her Hamlet and Shylock for LAWSC. Her next project is directing and playing Iago in Othello for Harlem Shakespeare Festival.
Acting credits include Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Polina in Seagull and Jason in Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella), Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Shakespeare & Company, Orlando Shakespeare Festival, San Diego Repertory Theater, Arizona Theater Company, Southwest Shakespeare Company. Shakespearean leading roles include Hamlet, Iago, Angelo, Richard III, Benedick, Shylock, Henry V, Leontes, Viola, Paulina, Rosalind, and many more.
She has directed plays for many companies and universities including Shakespeare & Company, the California Shakespeare Festival, Boston Theater Works, Sedona Shakespeare Festival, the Actor's Gang, American Conservatory Theater, the University of Southern California, UCLA, Cal Poly Pomona, AMDA, Emerson, Wellesley, Boston University, NYU, AADA, ASC, ACA and MIT.