About the Department of Theatre
Get to know the faculty, staff, and history of Theatre at Kean.
Kean's Department of Theatre is staffed by a dedicated team of professionals, passionate about educating the next wave of theatre artists, educators, and scholars.
Office Staff and Department Specialists
Collette Kennedy
Theatre Department Office Administrative Assistant
Petar Cvijanovic
Student Office Assistant
Full Time Faculty
Past Directing and Performance Faculty
Zella Fry, J. L. Lowenstein, Jay Teran, James Murphy, Ernest Wiggins, Anna DeMers
Past Design and Technology Faculty
Bill Baycraft, Richard Turick, Nadine Charlsen, Margaret (Peggy) Dunn, Josh Langman
With Gratitude to past English Department Faculty: Lenore Vaughn-Eames, Sybil Browne, Ruth Kane, Matthew Dolkey, Estelle Ritchie, and W. John Bauer.
Adjunct Faculty
Our adjunct specialists teach courses across our curriculum in design, dance, singing, and performance. Current faculty pictured below.
Professor Charlie Del Risco
APA Performer's Presence; APA Senior Acting Showcase
Professor Heather Harrington
APA Technique and Theory of Modern; Dance History; Dance Composition
Professor Kathleen Kelly
Introduction to Theatre; Acting 1: The Actor Prepares
Professor Peggy Samuels
Stage Management Class; MainStage Stage Management mentor
Professor Stephanie Silver-Silberstein
Acting 1: The Actor Prepares
Professor Susie Speidel
Scene to Song; Intro to Theatre; Acting 1: The Actor Prepares; Theatre Administration
Professor Marissa Wolf
Introduction to Theatre; Improvisation; Senior Seminar; Senior Portfolio
Professor John Wooten
Playwrighting; Acting as a Profession BFA capstone; Premiere Stages Artistic Director; Kean University Vice President of Arts Programming
Theatre at Kean has a long and rich history. For an overview of our history and development, from the earliest days of theatre as a campus student organization to our current department and season structure, please check out the document linked below, originally published in part as the playbill for the 2009 review Encore! A Kean Theatre Retrospective directed by Professor Holly Logue.