Alumni

We will update this page every semester so, ALUMNI, send us your information! Let us know where you are, what you are doing and please send brief bios and pictures of your work. We want to include you! Send your information to William.Winsor@mail.wvu.edu

Frank Pando, BFA Acting, 1997
Frank is pursuing an acting career in New York City and has a recurring role on the award-winning HBO series The Sopranos.

Diane Puhalla, BFA Design/Technology, 1990
Diane has been working in the film industry as a draper/cutter and has done costumes for such films as Titantic, and Tom Hank’s That Thing You Do.

Joe Mortimer, MFA Acting, 1995
Currently, Joe is pursuing an acting career in Hollywood; you have seen him on many national commercials including the recent advertisements for Ritz Crackers.

Tom Houchins, BFA Design/Technology, 1990
Tom has been a costumer for the television series Dharma and Greg and for several films.

Michelle Moody, MFA Design/Technology, 2000
Michelle has completed several seasons as the Properties Supervisor with the prestigious Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California.

Jamie Whoolery, BFA Design/Technology, 2004
After graduating, Jamie moved immediately to the Contemporary American Theatre Festival, where he was the Sound Engineer. Update: Currently, Jamie is Sound Supervisor for the Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell, Mass.

Wendy Gathers, BFA Design/Technology, 2004
Wendy graduated with an emphasis in lighting and landed the Projection Engineer slot on the current Miss Saigon national tour before classes ended.

Marlon M. Bailey, MFA Acting, 1994
Marlon is currently a Ph.D. candidate in African-American Studies at the University of California-Berkeley. Last year, he starred as Boy Willie in August Wilson’s Piano Lesson at the Plowshares Theatre in Detroit. He has been in twenty-one professional productions in Michigan, Minnesota, and Kentucky, as well as in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

Stephanie Shaw, BFA Design/Technology, 1999
Upon finishing her graduate degree, Stephanie was hired as the Costume Shop Supervisor at Purdue University.

Heather Pratt, BFA Acting, 2004
Dan Forsythe, MFA Acting, 2002
Heather Pratt and Dan Forsythe are joining the company of Theatre 4 in Cincinnati in the fall of 2004. Update: Heather and Dan just completed the national tour of Sleepy Hollow and The Shoemaker and the Christmas Elves for Theatre IV in Cincinnati.

Frank Pando, BFA Acting, 1997

Frank landed a role in the Broadway Revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, starring John C. Reilly and Natasha Richardson, at the Roundabout Theater Company, staged at the legendary Studio 54 in New York City. Frank has also been seen in the HBO series, The Sopranos, among other television and theatre credits. 

Richard Kuranda, BFA Acting, 1991

Richard is currently the Producing Director of The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in Waterford, Conn. In addition to his homestead in Connecticut, Richard and his wife, Alicia Regan, maintain a home in New York City with their daughter. Richard also serves as the Artistic Director of Epic Repertory Theatre Company in New York. He is a member of the Actors Studio, the Dramatists Guild, and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers (SSDC), among others. 

Sean Cercone, MFA Acting, 2001

Sean is currently the Artistic Director of the Carousel, a 1,150-seat Equity Dinner Theatre, located in Akron, Ohio. Sean was recently named to Crain’s business list of the Top 40 professionals under 40 years old and is also serving on the National Alliance of Musical Theatre’s (NAMT) Festival of New Works Committee. Other current projects include mounting the new musical by Michael Mann, with lyrics by Jerry Garcia, called Cumberland Blues, and the East Coast premiere of a re-written Footloose.

Nina Domingue-Glover, MFA Acting, 2002

Nina was recently pictured in the October issue of American Theater as an "artist to watch" in Cleveland. She received an award for "Memorably Distinctive Performances in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Nickel and Dimed and Sincerity Forever"  from the Cleveland Theater Collective and was cast in a new television show, Out of Darkness, set and filmed in Cleveland.

Michael McKowen, BFA Design/Technology, 1996

Upon graduating from WVU, Michael attended graduate school at NYU where he was awarded a Dean’s Fellowship. Since graduating, he has freelanced and worked at Rodney Gordon Studios on Broadway productions including: Nine, Wicked, and The Boy From Oz. Moving into film art direction, Michael designed the national award-winning piece in the Coca Cola Refreshing Filmmakers competition.

 

Christopher Gadomski, Design/Technology, 2001

Upon graduation, Christopher was hired as an exhibitions preparatory for the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History. Currently, he is the Technical Director at Indiana University Northwest, where he has designed lights and scenery for You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.

Nicole Mazon, BFA Acting, 2004

After spending several months working in Spain, Nicole is now in Alpena, Mich., working at the Thunderbay Theatre. She was cast in Hyronamous A. Frog, and Schooner Christmas.

Katie (Damp) Klossner, MFA Acting, 1991

Since graduating from WVU, Katie has acted in or directed close to 75 productions across the United States. She moved to Colorado in 1995 to become the Theatre Program Director at Colorado University-Colorado Springs, and started her own theatre company, Castle Rock Players, in 1997.  Currently, she is a freelance director living in Castle Rock, Colo., with her husband and four great children.

Janessa Louse Pyles, BFA Design/Technology, 2003

After graduation, Janessa was highlighted in the pages of the June 2004 issue of Newtype USA, a magazine that focuses on Japanese animation video games and general pop culture. Janessa was the featured “cosplayer” (Costume + Play = Costume Play). 

Erin Kuehl, BFA Design/Technology, 2004

After graduating from WVU with an emphasis in lighting, Erin worked as a lighting designer and teacher, instructing children ages 10-17 at the French Woods Performing Arts Festival. She is currently working at the City Theatre in Pittsburgh as an Assistant to the Production Manager.

Jason Goldenberg, BFA Design/Technology, 1998

Currently, Jason is working in Las Vegas for PRG Lighting as a system engineer/technician. He has worked on projects at the Aladdin Performing Arts Center and the Celine Dion Theatre at Caesars Palace, as well as show control retrofit at the Fio and soon to be La Reve (The Wynn) front feature lighting, which will be the world’s largest and most complex lighting system.

Eric Hertsch, BFA Design/Technology, 2004

Eric is currently working for Frost Lighting in Washington, D.C., where he does special event lighting, including exhibit work for the Smithsonian.

Jacqueline Collins Kilduff, MFA Acting, 1993

Jacqueline is currently working with the Department of the Army as an Entertainment Director, assigned to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Belgium. She and her husband welcomed twin girls on October 11, 2003. Her theatre recently won the Department of the Army's Irving Berlin Trophy for Programming Excellence.

Matt Sincell, BFA Acting, 2001. Click here for pictures.
Matt’s busy acting career has kept him traveling from New York to London. He is currently playing Romeo in the West End theatre production of Shakespeare’s R&J. In between jaunts to London, Matt commuted to West Virginia and starred in a short film entitled The Man Who Stole the Moon. Other movie roles include a part in Gods and Generals. Update: This past August, Matt was selected, through an audition process, as one of two Americans to participate in an International Artistic Residency at The Globe Theatre in London. There were ten participants from five countries, including South Africa, Canada, Denmark, and New Zealand. Matt was sponsored by The Chicago Shakespeare Theatre.

Marjorie Baer, BFA Design/Technology, 1998. Click here for pictures.
Marjorie recently finished her MFA from Cal Arts where she was a costume design fellow. Photographs of her design work can be seen here and in the recent Cal Arts brochure. Her latest projects include on-site work for an MTV shoot and her acceptance into the Los Angeles Costumer’s Guild as an assistant designer and illustrator.

Nicole Frachiseur, MFA Design/Technology, 2003
After finishing a summer job at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, this costume design graduate heads to New York and a job as a costumer at the Julliard School for the Arts.

Virginia Johnson, MFA Design/Technology, 2003
Virginia has been the Head of Design at Tufts University for three years and works extensively in the Boston area as a costume designer, including work for NOVA on their Typhoid Mary documentary.

Missy Hairston, BFA Acting, 2001
Upon graduation Missy immediately move to New York City where she has performed at the Stand Up New York Comedy Club and the Grammercy Comedy Cub. She won the Funniest person in Queens contest and placed third in the Funniest Person in New York City contest; both sponsored by Stand Up New York Comedy Club. She now resides in Hollywood where she is pursuing a career in sit-com television.

Kiersten Moore, MFA Design/Technology, 2001
Kiersten moved to Washington, DC, after graduation and became assistant to the Artistic Director at the Arena Stage. She is currently working on a film project in New York thanks to her World Wide Web–published thesis on Richard III. A film director found her work while researching his film project and gave her a call.

Kim Parrish BFA PDSM, 1994
Kim is currently one of the television hostesses on QVC.

Kim Webster, BFA Acting, 1994
Kim is pursuing an acting career in television and film in Los Angeles and plays the recurring role of Ginger on the NBC television series The West Wing.