Disability Studies

Ron Jenkins

Professor of Theater

Ronald Jenkins, a former Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellow, has facilitated theater workshops in prisons in Italy, Indonesia and the United States. Jenkins specializes in documentary theater focusing on themes of social transformation and human rights.He has directed and/or translated the play of the Italian Nobel Laureate Dario Fo, and the Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol for numerous theaters, including the Yale Repertory Theater, the American Repertory Theater at Harvard, and the Royal Shakespeare Company in London. His most recent book, Saraswati in Bali, is the third in a trilogy documenting sacred temple performances in Indonesia as catalysts for community activism. His articles have appeared in The Drama Review, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, UNESCO Theater Bulletin, The Jakarta Post, and The New York Times.  A former circus clown, Professor Jenkins holds a doctorate from Harvard and a master's degree in buffoonery from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College.

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Marcela I. Oteíza

Associate Professor of Theater

Visual Artist and Scenic Designer, Marcela I. Oteíza teaches studio courses in design and media for the performing arts. Prof. Oteíza’s artistic practice and scholarly research in scenography are centered on the trans-disciplinary nature of design for performance, existing simultaneously as both spatial and time-based phenomena across multiple artistic practices. Her current research focuses on contemporary street-performance objects and how they are designed, utilized and understood within their context. Prof. Oteíza is currently a fellow at the College of the Environment (COE), with the project, Street Performance Contemporary Objects: The Self and the Automaton, within the COE 2018-2019 theme: Ecocentrism: Valuing the Other. Prof. Oteíza teaches in the departments of Theater and Dance, as well as in the Integrated Design, Engineering, & Applied Science program (IDEAS).Some of Prof. Oteíza's design credits include scenic design for La Canción by Candido Tirado, directed by Edward Torres, NYC, 2016 (awarded ACE and ATI prize for best production) and scenic design for Shakespeare's Richard III, directed by David Jaffe, exhibited at World Stage Design (WSD – 2013) Cardiff, Wales (OISTAT). She specializes in collaborative and non-text-based work, such as The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy directed by Rinde Eckert, a 2012 Doris Duke Performing Arts fellow. A designed object from this production was shown at Object Exhibit at The Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, 2015. One of her recent projects is a video-documentary: Santiago (en) vivo, based on street performances in Santiago, Chile, which was recently screened at the Centro Cultural Palacio de la Moneda, as part of the selection of the Teatro Internacional Santiago a Mil, 2018. She continues to collaborate with the Judy Dworin Performance Project (JDPP), for which she has done several scenic and media designs. Her article “City as Site: Street Performance and Site Permeability during the Santiago a Mil Theater Festival, Chile, 2012-2015” was recently published in the Series Scenography Expanded: An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design, edited by Joslin Mckinney and Scott Palmer, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. She holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a BFA in fine arts from the University of Chile.

https://www.oteizadesign.org/performance-design

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Katherine Brewer Ball

Assistant Professor of Theater

Katherine Brewer Ball is a writer based in New York. She is an Assistant Professor of Theater and affiliated faculty in African American Studies.  She previously served as the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Wesleyan’s Center for the Humanities from 2013-2014. She is also faculty at the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance. Brewer Ball earned her PhD in Performance Studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2013. Her research and teaching interests include theater, visual culture, Black, Indigenous, and Latina/o aesthetics, feminist theory, queer studies, and psychoanalysis. Her current book project, The Only Way Out Is In: The Black, Brown & Queer Performance of Escape, traces contemporary literature, theater, and performance works by Glenn Ligon, Tony Kushner, Sharon Hayes, and Junot Díaz. Brewer Ball is currently conducting research on a second book project which focuses on contemporary Alaska Native performance and art. Brewer Ball is a member of the Sexual Politics Sexual Poetics queer theory collective and in 2015 she was named a finalist for the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Her writing has been published, or is forthcoming, in Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, Artforum.com, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, Criticism, RECAPS, Little Joe, Dirty Looks, ASAP/Journal, Media-N: Journal of the New Media Caucus, and by ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives. In addition to teaching, Brewer Ball curates performance and art events, including the NYC performance salon, Adult Contemporary, and publishes non-fiction.

http://www.katiebrewerball.com/

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Edward Torres

Assistant Professor of the Practice, Theater

Edward Torres co-founded Teatro Vista (Chicago) with Henry Godinez in 1990 and served as the company’s Artistic Director until 2013. Recent theater credits include the California premiere of Water by the Spoonful and the World Premiere of The Happiest Song Plays Last, both by Pulitzer Prize Winner Quiara Alegría Hudes, as well as MacBeth for The Public Theater’s Mobile Shakespeare Unit, and a workshop of Like They Magical for Playwrights Realm in New York City. Torres directed the World Premiere of The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity at Victory Gardens, which was named Best Play of 2009 by the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and Time Out Chicago; was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and earned Joseph Jefferson Awards for Best Production and Best Director. He also directed subsequent productions at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles and at Second Stage Theater in New York (Lortel Award for Outstanding Play and Obie Award for Best New American Play) Torres received a 2010 3Arts Artist Award and was a guest director at the 2011 Eugene O’Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference. Torres is also a visiting director at The Public Theater/New York University’s RELOADED program led by Oskar Eustis and Suzanne Lori Parks. He directed Mosque Alert by Jamil Khoury for Silk Road Rising in Chicago last Winter and worked on the World Premiere of a musical titled La canción by Cándido Tirado with music and lyrics by Grammy Award Winner Vico C for Repertorio Español in New York City. Torres directed Wesleayn's fall 2015 production of Marisol by José Rivera and taught directing courses in 2016-217. In 2017-2018, he will continue teaching directing and will direct the fall production of The Pillowman by Martin McDonough. Torres holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Roosevelt University and a Masters of Fine Arts from Columbia College in Chicago.

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Robert Baumgartner, Jr.

Visiting Artist-in-Residence in Theater

Rob Baumgartner, Jr. is a New York based composer/lyricist and musical director. His original musicals include: The Jungle (Johnny Mercer Writers Colony), Adam Lives (Goodspeed Festival of New Musicals, Johnny Mercer Writers Colony, Baldwin Wallace First Takes, New York Theatre Barn, NAMT, Cap21),  Date of a Lifetime (NYMF, New Jersey Rep), Alone World (Lincoln Center Directors Lab, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, West Village Musical Theatre Festival - winner of Best Score), What the Moon Saw (Cap21), Under Construction (NYU), The Hole (St. Clements ’09), Radiant Ruby (Vital Theatre  Company ’05) and Lullabies. Rob has served as an assistant to composers Galt MacDermot, Debra Barsha,  and Rob Reale. He was lucky enough to work beside Mr. MacDermot on his 2008 Broadway revival of Hair. He is musical director and orchestrator for the upcoming revival of Inner City. Rob is a graduate of the Musical Theatre Writing MFA program at Tisch School of the Arts. In addition to Wesleyan, Rob is a proud faculty member at Cap21/Molloy College, Harlem School for the Arts, and New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts.

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