Round 3 ShakeMeUp Jury Convening!

Introducing 2018 ShakeMeUp Film Festival's 3rd & Final Round Judges!

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.

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. He is 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. 

Based out of Prague, Czech Republic, Jessica is the co-CEO, Company Manager and an Associate Artist for Prague Shakespeare Company the Czech Republic’s professional English-language theatre. 

Her film and TV work includes the upcoming feature films Unlocked starring Michael Douglas, Orlando Bloom, Noomi Rapace and John Malkovich and Puerto Ricans In Paris starring Rosario Dawson, Rosie Perez and Luis Guzman. Jessica also appeared on ABC-TV as series-regular Rabia in MISSING starring Ashley Judd, Sean Bean and Cliff Curtis.

She has also been seen on the internet in ?koda's web series: Meet The Engineer and is known throughout the anime world for her work voicing hundreds of characters in Japanese animated series such as GATE, Akame ga Kill!, Hello Kitty, Angelic Layer, High School of the Dead and Azumanga Daioh. Jessica is a company voice artist with Studio Center where she has lent her voice to the Spiderwoman web comics and numerous national commercials and campaigns.

Jessica Boone also stared as Lady Macbeth in Macbeth for the Prague Shakespeare Company. With the Prague Shakespeare and Company Company at the Estates Theatre (National Theatre) in Prague, Czech Republic she has recently been seen as Constanze in Amadeus, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Hermione in The Winter's Tale and Lady Anne in Richard III. In April 2016 appearred on tour with Academy-Award nominated composer Patrick Doyle, conductor James Sherman and actor Guy Roberts in Patrick Doyle's Music of Shakespeare in Orlando, Florida produced by Orlando Shakespeare Theater in partnership with UCF and as Lady Macbeth in Macbeth and Hero in Much Ado About Nothing from Prague Shakespeare Company at the Great Hall of the Historic Library of Alexandria, Egypt.

Other recent appearances with PSC include Vanda in Venus in Fur in Prague at Divadlo Kolowrat and on tour to Main Street Theater Company in Houston, Texas and Budapest, Hungary with the Budapest English Theatre, and Viola in Twelfth Night and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth also on tour to Houston, Texas with Main Street Theater Company, Rosalind in As You Like It at the Estates Theater, Hero in Much Ado About Nothing, Katherine / Boy in Henry V, Innogen in Cymbeline, and Fools for Love: Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Other PSC work includes Ophelia in Hamlet, Lady Anne in Richard III, Regan in King Lear and Rosalind in As You Like It at Vysehrad and on tour for the inaugural season of the Krumlov Shakespeare Festival in ?esky Krumlov.

American theatre appearances include Main Street Theater in the regional premiere of Tom Stoppard’s Tony Award winning Coast of Utopia trilogy (Natasha Tuchkova Ogareva), Or (Nell Gwynne) and The Heidi Chronicles. She spent five consecutive seasons as a company member with the Houston Shakespeare Festival where her appearances included leading roles in A Midsummer Night's Dream (Helena), Pericles (Thaisa), Cymbeline (Innogen), Romeo and Juliet (Juliet) as well as supporting roles in Love's Labor's Lost, The Tempest, Julius Caesar and Titus Andronicus. She has performed with The Alley Theatre in A Christmas Carol (Martha Cratchit) and The Virginia Musical Theater in Ballroom (Diane). With The Children's Theatre Festival, she performed in two new musicals composed by Jerry Bock, The New Adventures of Pinocchio and The Land of Broken Toys. Other CTF credits include The Emperor's New Clothes, Aesop's Fables and Peter and the Wolf.

Jessica graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Acting and Directing from The University of Houston School of Theatre & Dance where she performed with the Stuart Ostrow Musical Theatre Collaboration in Merrily We Roll Along (Mary Flynn), Bronx Bashert (Stella), and the title role in Lady Windermere's Fan. She spent three years bringing the Bard to Houston schools in Romeo and Juliet (Juliet) and Much Ado About Nothing (Beatrice) with Shakespeare Outreach, an arm of the Shakespeare Globe Center of the Southwest.

Jessica is a recognized actor/combatant by the Society of American Fight Directors and a proud member of Actors' Equity Association and British Equity.

Guy Roberts is the Founder, CEO and Artistic Director of the Prague Shakespeare Company (PSC). He is a 2015 recipient of the Tomas Garrigue Masaryk Medal of Honor from the Masaryk Democratic Movement in recognition for his work promoting arts and artistic freedom. In 2014 Guy was awarded the inaugural Sidney Berger Award by the Shakespeare Theatre Association in recognition of his outstanding talent and dedication to the works of William Shakespeare. His European theatrical credits with PSC include productions of: As You Like It (at the Estates Theater – also performed in ?esky Krumlov with the Krumlov Shakespeare Festival), Globe Theatre on Tour: Hamlet at Prague Castle, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Richard III, Macbeth, Cymbeline, Henry V, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Women of Will: the Complete Journey, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), His own adaptations, including One Man Hamlet and a five-actor version of Romeo and Juliet (co-produced with Bear Educational Theatre, and toured in schools throughout France, Austria, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic), His original play Shakespeare’s Country Matters, Venus and Adonis, The Murder of Gonzago, AmeriKAfka, The Duchess of Malfi, The Long Christmas Dinner and Venus in Fur

As an actor for PSC he has appeared in Venus in Fur and in Shakespeare plays as Richard III, Macbeth, Hamlet, Henry V, Benedick, Iachimo, Mercutio, Sir Toby Belch, Edmund and Jaques. Shakespearean roles for the Huntington Theatre Company, Berkeley Rep, George Street Playhouse, Austin Playhouse, State Theater Company, Mermaid Theatre, Austin Shakespeare and Divadlo Miloco, include Macbeth, Iago, Richard III, Mercutio, Hamlet, Henry V, Puck, Caliban, Demetrius and Romeo.

Guy was named Honorary Houstonian at the 2013 Houston Press Theatre Awards for his PSC touring productions in collaboration with Main Street Theater Company (MST) in Houston, Texas. For PSC/MST he was director and appeared as the leads in Macbeth, Richard III, and Henry V. He received the Houston Press Theatre Award and Broadway World Houston Theatre Award for Best Director for Henry V. For MST he also appeared as Michael Bakunin in their production of The Coast of Utopia trilogy.

Guy founded and served as the Artistic Director of the Mermaid Theatre Company, a US-based classical theatre company from 1996-2012. From 2001-2007, he was Artistic Director of the Austin Shakespeare Festival (ASF). As the Artistic Director of the Mermaid Theatre Company and the Austin Shakespeare Festival, Guy led those organizations to 92 B. Iden Payne and Austin Critic’s Table Award nominations for Theatre Excellence and has personally received 42 B. Iden Payne and Austin Critic’s Table Award nominations for Theatre Excellence as producer, director and actor – winning multiple awards for Best Drama, Best Comedy, Best Director and Best Actor.

As producer, director and actor, his other New York and American Regional productions include: The American premiere of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of David Johnston’s translation of Lope de Vega’s The Dog in the Manger, Henry V, Othello, As You Like It, King Lear, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Titus Andronicus, Richard III, The Tempest, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, The Rivals, The Glass Menagerie, La Ronde, Warren’s Profession, Wit, Undiscovered Country, The Lady from the Sea, The Importance of Being Earnest, Spring’s Awakening, The Rover, Of Mice and Men, A Streetcar Named Desire, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde

Guy’s other appearances in Houston include Hamlet in his one man adaptation of the play produced in collaboration with Classical Theatre Company as well as Pericles in Pericles, Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing for Houston Shakespeare Festival.

He has worked and studied with such theatre notables as Maria Aitken, Michael Langham, Tina Packer, Richard Cottrell, Irene Worth, Barry Edelstein, Mark Brokaw, Jane Nichols, Paul Robeling, Megan Cole, Jacques Cartier, Sharon Ott, Michael Bloom, Charles Towers, Peter Altman, Edward Gilbert, Scott Kanoff, Susan Kerner, Eric Shaeffer, Ron Holgate, Seanna McKenna, Fiona Reid, Michelle Farr, Juni Dahr and Franchelle Stewart Dorn. As a fight choreographer/director, his work has been seen throughout America in various stage plays, operas and ballets, as well as with the first national company of the Broadway show Big! The Musical, which he also toured nationally with as a stage manager.

In addition to teaching at numerous theatre schools in New York, Boston and Texas, Guy also travels extensively conducting Shakespeare and Leadership workshops for Sigma Breakthrough Technologies, Inc., training corporate executives and managers in the art of leadership using essential Shakespearean lessons as a model for dealing with modern-day corporate challenges. He is a member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, the Society of American Fight Directors and the Shakespeare Theatre Association.

Guy resides in Prague, Czech Republic and is the proud father of Isabella. 

Doug Hart (the one on the right) has taught and promoted Shakespeare's works for over 12 years. He is also Chief Instigator and Director of Prague Shakespeare Company's ShakeMeUp Film Festival.