2023-24 Faculty
Tony Fuemmeler
Head of Training Programs & Full Time Faculty (Mask Making & Performance, Commedia)
Tony is a theater artist exploring transformation, expression, and story through masks and puppetry. Tony has designed masks, coached actors in movement, puppeteered, and directed shows around the country. He was also privileged to be the mask-maker for the youth musical MAYA in Mumbai, India in 2014. A graduate of the University of Kansas and Dell’Arte PTP, Tony has also trained in traditional mask carving and masked dance in Bali with Nyoman Setiawan and I.B. Gusto; neutral mask and bouffon with Giovanni Fusetti; and studied leather mask making and commedia with the Sartori family at the Centro Maschere e Strutture Gestuali. Tony continued his exploration in devising mask plays with the internationally renowned Familie Flöz.
Outside of the theater, his masks have appeared in exhibitions such as Missing Your Face (2021), Maskibition (2020, 2012) and Reveal:Conceal (2019). He was also the lead artist for an international collaborative installation of emotion masks titled A Universal Feeling (2019).
Julie Douglas
Head of Arts Engagement & Full Time Faculty
In her role as Head of Arts Engagement at Dell’Arte, Julie Douglas mindfully integrates community engagement opportunities into the school as full time faculty, into artistic productions as a resident artist in the Company, and in organizational leadership. She facilitates a variety of engagement activities, exchanges, service projects, and learning opportunities between local community groups and Dell’Arte. This includes partnerships with the Wiyot, Yurok, and Hoopa tribes, Club Triangle, Arts in Correction and more. She is currently piloting a Healthcare Clowning program at Dell’Arte that includes training and engagement at eldercare facilities. Julie also directed the 42nd Annual Dell’Arte Company Holiday Show, “Nightlight”, which toured to rural communities throughout Humboldt county.
Before returning to Dell’Arte in 2021, she spent 11 years in the Bay Area where she performed with We Players, S.F. Shakes, Idiot String, Cutting Ball, Impact Theatre, Shotgun Players, as well as in clown cabarets and devised theater festivals. Julie was a medical clown with the Medical Clown Project for six and half years, connecting and playing with youth and elders at a variety of facilities. While in the Bay Area she was on faculty at American Conservatory Theatre and St. Mary’s College as well as a teaching-artist with a variety of Bay Area schools and companies from youth to adults.
She is a certified Michael Chekhov Technique instructor and is a recent graduate of SOMA studios Alexander Technique Teacher Training program. Julie is a 2010 alumna of Dell’Arte International’s MFA and holds a B.A. in Theatre Arts from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Julie believes in being pro-actively committed to de-center white privilege, cultivating belonging and solidarity through creative play, and continuously honing her skills as a thoughtful and adept co-conspirator in the movement for social justice.
Janessa Johnsrude
Director, Prison Arts Theater Program & Dell’Arte Abroad: Bali
Janessa Johnsrude is a collaborative performance artist and teacher currently serving as the Director of Dell’Arte’s Prison Arts Theatre Program and the Dell’Arte Abroad: Bali Program. In addition, she serves as Associate Faculty (Drama) for the College of the Redwood’s Pelican Bay State Prison Scholars Program. She is a graduate of Dell’Arte’s MFA program in Ensemble-based Physical Theatre.
For the last 15 years, Janessa has been happily focused on creating, producing, and performing original actor-created theatre and teaching the craft of storytelling, embodied character, cabaret, and ensemble generated performance rooted in exploration of the natural world and activism. She has toured her original work from scrappy San Francisco nightclubs to off-Broadway to International Theatre Festivals to the Cairo Opera House (and in between!). Janessa has been a guest lecturer/teacher at universities/academies/colleges in Canada, Zimbabwe and throughout the U.S and has designed theatre curriculums and created original performances with and for an extensive variety of populations and age groups. Her teaching practice with individuals experiencing incarceration has become focused on trauma-informed healing through storytelling.
Samantha Williams-Gray
Prison Arts Theater Program
Samantha Williams-Gray is a Tlingit Indian born in the southern mountains of Oregon and raised in the wilds of Humboldt County, California. Samantha currently lives in coastal Humboldt County and works in Northern California. She earned her BA in Native American Studies from Humboldt State University, and her MA in Psychology from Meridian University. She is presently working on art projects that will conclude her training with a certification in Expressive Arts, from Tamalpa Institute. Samantha weaves together trauma-informed approaches, expressive arts, visual arts, and Indigenous wisdom and healing practices into her work. She uses the intersecting points of people, politics, history, and healing to inform her transformative approach to performance and education.
Samantha’s recent work includes: Teaching Artist with Dell’Arte’s Arts In Corrections Theater Program at Pelican Bay State Prison, January 2023 – present; Teaching Artist with Playhouse Arts Skue-yech Son-eye-nah Program, 2023 – present; The Bartow Project, a collaboration between the Wiyot Tribe and Dell’Arte, 2020 – 2022; and Director of the film Work Is Ceremony, 2022.
Michelle Matlock
Adjunct Faculty – Clown; Summer – The Clown Core, Clown PLUS, Intro to Medical Clowning
Michelle is a performing artist, producer, teacher, director and creative coach. Michelle has been a part of the entertainment industry for over 25 years and had the honor of being the first African American person to create a main clown character for Cirque du Soleil. Michelle toured with Cirque’s big top show OVO for close to 10 years. Currently Michelle resides in Washington State and is the founder of Circle Up Productions, a live entertainment and performing arts education company, a creative team member of Puget Sound Revels and Director of the Tacoma Light Trail. Prior to Cirque du Soleil, Michelle spent 15 years living and working in New York City. During that time, she toured their critically acclaimed solo show The Mammy Project across North and South America and was recently awarded a 2023 NEA grant to bring the show back to life. Michelle has had the pleasure of working in the downtown NYC theater and circus scene, playing with Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit, Circus Amok and The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus. Michelle studied theater for 3 years at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. and is a Graduate of the National Shakespeare Conservatory in New York City.
Avner Eisenberg
Guest Faculty – Intro to Eccentric Performing Principles
Hailed as one of the greatest clowns of all time, Avner Eisenberg is often a featured performer in comedy, magic, clown, and theatre festivals. After earning a theater degree from the University of Washington, Avner studied in Paris with Lecoq and on his return to the US taught at Dell’Arte. In addition to a busy performance schedule, Avner has taught master classes in clowning and Eccentric Performing in the United States, France, Germany, Finland, Belgium, Japan and Spain. He has developed silent theatre skills as a therapeutic tool and also teaches workshops for students and professionals in health care, education and counseling, as well as theatre. He lives on an island off the coast of Maine and would really rather be sailing. Read more about Avner on his website.
Michael Fields
Guest Faculty – Grand Guignol
Michael Fields was one of the original Dell’Arte Company members and a teacher of Melodrama with a penchant for horror. As a member of Dell’Arte’s performing ensemble for over 40 years, and its founding producing artistic director, Michael has been a recipient of San Francisco, San Diego Critics Circle and Los Angeles Critics awards for Performance and Writing. He has co-authored and performed in over 40 Dell’Arte productions and was past president of International Theatre Institute/USA and a member of the TCG board of directors. He has taught various physical theater forms and community engagement practices at CalArts, the Dutch National Theatre School, and Teater Studio in Stockholm, among many others. He has directed productions around the world, including the National Theatres of Denmark, The Netherlands and Sweden. He was also the director of CSSSA (California State Summer School for the Arts). He recently started his own producing group called LONGSHADR (www.longshadr.com).
Debbie McMahon
Guest Faculty – Grand Guignol
Debbie McMahon is a theatrical director, deviser and performer, and Artistic Director of Grand Guignolers. With the Guignolers she creates and directs critically-acclaimed productions which utilize new blends of traditional physical theater genres—melodrama, commedia dell’arte, clown, Grand Guignol, dance, vaudeville and puppetry—in a 1920’s Parisian event-like atmosphere. She graduated Dell’Arte School of Physical Theatre after earning an M.A. in Performance Studies at NYU. Debbie is a Producer for Directors Lab West. She taught and directed as Associate Professor of physical theater at USC, has been a movement coach for numerous productions and has clowned with Cirque du Soleil.
Jeff Raz
Guest Faculty – AppliedClown, Intro to Medical Clowning
Jeff Raz co-founded the Medical Clown Project with his wife, Dr. Sherry Sherman, in 2010. He has also performed nationally and internationally for decades, starring as an acrobat, juggler and clown in circuses including Cirque du Soleil and the Pickle Family Circus, and as an actor in theaters from Berkeley Rep to Broadway. Jeff’s three novels, The Circus Trilogy, and his upcoming non-fiction book An International Circus Affair, are inspired by his career. He is a graduate of Dell’Arte International, where he has also taught, and was the co-founder of Vaudeville Nouveau, the New Vaudeville Festival and The Clown Conservatory. In addition, he has directed dozens of circus, dance, puppet, and theater productions and worked globally as a communications consultant.
Recent Faculty
Cleo DeOrio
Summer Physical Theater Intensive Faculty
Cleo DeOrio (she/her) is a Physical Theatre and Dance artist-teacher from Cleveland, Ohio. Cleo received a BA at Baldwin Wallace University, where she focused her studies in Directing and Choreography, and an MFA from Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre, where she developed works such as Citizens of Nowhere and Visions of a Crying Girl. Cleo specializes in storytelling through movement, physical character development, emotional embodiment, and devising. Cleo is currently the Operations Supervisor at the San Gabriel Mission Playhouse. Vist her website at cleodeorio.com
Ming Hudson
Summer Physical Theater Intensive Faculty
Ming is a Vancouver based artist who pays rent on the lands stolen from the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. For 20 years, she has worked as a freelance performer, devised theatre creator, collaborative director, independent producer, and teaching artist locally, across Canada, and abroad. Her specializations are in physical theatre and the creation of new work as a collective ensemble. A graduate of the Advanced Devising Practice program at LISPA (now arthaus.berlin), Ming also holds a MA in Ensemble Theatre (Rose Bruford), and a BFA in Acting (UVic). Select teaching credits include: University of British Columbia, University of Victoria, Dell’Arte International, Canadian College of Performing Arts, Studio 58, Bard on the Beach, and The Arts Club. www.minghudson.com
Contramestre Espaço Oliveira
Summer Physical Theater Intensive Faculty – Capoeira and Acrobatics
Espaço is a Brazilian Capoeira, Dancer, and Movement Artist, who has dedicated his life to the art of Capoeira ever since he discovered the practice at 18 years old in São Paulo, Brazil. After several years of intensive training, he began teaching Capoeira, choreographing, and performing with his group for cultural and folkloric events, television, and Carnevale. He left Brazil in 2006 to cycle for two years, pedaling through 10 countries and over 12,000 miles to California, with the purpose of teaching and studying at Capoeira schools all along the journey. In the U.S., he has taught Capoeira in organizations throughout the Bay Area and formed his own academy in Petaluma where he taught for twelve years. He is now based in Humboldt and excited to be teaching at Dell’Arte.
David Powell
Part Time – Voice Faculty
David is a classically trained vocalist, theatre maker, storyteller, and lifelong student of the theatre. He holds a B.A. in Music performance with an emphasis in opera at Cal Poly Humboldt, and an M.F.A. from Dell’Arte International. While expanding his career in New York he completed several postgraduate programs specializing in opera. Most notably performing at Lincoln Center, the Symphony Space, and the Columbia Masters theatre festival. David has taught theatre masterclasses in New York and Philadelphia and for over a decade has created new works with the Dell’Arte Company Players which were toured across California.
With his musical roots firmly in the Italian tradition of Bel Canto and theatre training in the lineage of Le Coq coupled with Alexander Technique, he has dedicated himself to the study of the instrument that is the body. David specializes in healthy vocal production to create sustainable sound in all aspects of performance. He teaches voice, character development through voice, soundscape creation, and the sculpting of theatre space through living sound. In addition to teaching at Dell’Arte, he works as a director/musical director for several local theatre companies, runs a private voice studio, directs the Christ Church choir in Eureka, and is a frequent guest artist with the Eureka Symphony.
