I find that that challenge is the reason people show up. Because at the end of it when they say, 'I got up and I did that song, or that monologue, or that scene, or the play,' that's something that they found that they couldn't get anywhere else.
A 20-year veteran of Broadway, Off Broadway, Broadway National Tour, and regional productions, Chauntee’ Schuler Irving joins the Duke faculty as assistant professor of the practice in Theater Studies after teaching appointments at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and the American Music and Dramatic Academy in Los Angeles. Her pedagogy centers embodied performative practices that bring equitable and inclusive approaches to the forefront of actor training.
“What I do, as a coach, is I invite them not to a safe space but to a brave space, in which we collectively decide to support each other, to step into the unknown, to try something new, to fail, and then try again and see what happens.”
Johann Montozzi-Wood (he/they) joins Duke in fall 2022 as assistant professor of the practice in Theater Studies. With a decade of performing experience in regional theaters, dance companies, amusement parks and cruise lines around the world, they approach their work as a creative midwife for emergent artists and a slightly witchy facilitator of embodied story-weaving through queer performance, worldbuilding and folk songs.
Theater Studies