Staff
Program Coordinator and Instructor
Lisa Fay is an award winning performer, teacher and creator of movement based theatre. Since 1991 her composition and performance work has included collaboration with artist Jeff Glassman. Her work has been presented throughout the United States in theatres, universities and on public television. Since 1999 she has coordinated the INNER VOICES Social Issues Theatre program and served as the program’s ensemble director. Among many endeavors as an artist and cultural worker, Ms. Fay has served as a multi-arts panelist for the Illinois Arts Council and on focus groups for the Cultural Workers Conference, also for the Illinois Arts Council. Currently she is serving on the City of Urbana Public Arts Task Force.
Assistant Program Coordinator and Instructor
Latrelle Bright is a director, performer and arts advocate. She has served as founding artistic director of The Renaissance Guild, San Antonio’s black theatre company, Director of Audience Development for Voices of the South in Memphis and Assistant Program Director for the Heifer Theatre Project in Little Rock with Heifer International, a world hunger relief and sustainability organization. In addition to her theatre work, she was a paralegal in the corporate world and served her community volunteering with Big Brothers Big Sisters, Alamo Theatre Arts Council, on the board of the YWCA and as a facilitator for dialogues on race through the Common Ground program. She has received awards for her innovative programming and directing, spoken at a number of events about the power of social entrepreneurship and has been recognized as a Young Leader of Color by TCG. Latrelle graduated from the University of Memphis with an MFA in Directing with a focus on narrative theatre, devised works and audience theory. Her latest venture, inquisition performance project, focuses on the creation of new works and peripheral events around social issues within communities.
Instructor
Jeff Glassman received a BA at the UIUC in am Individual Plan of Study (IPS) of performing arts, visual arts, anthropology and 18 months of foreign travel. He was a core performer in Shozo Sato’s early Kabuki Theatre productions, a student of experimental composition with Herbert Brun in music, of Claude Kipnis in mime, Rob Fisher in sculpture, and of Heinz von Foerster in cybernetics at the Biological Computer Laboratory. He co-founded the United Mime Workers experimental theatre company, which toured in the US, Eastern and Western Europe, Cuba and Mexico for fifteen years, and led post-performance discussions with each audience. Working with the UMW he received a Choreography Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He wrote, performed, taught and toured with the Performers’ Workshop Ensemble in the US and Europe for ten years. He has collaborated in performance works by poet Michael Holloway. He co-founded the Champaign County Consortium for Cultural Arts in the ‘70s and was active in the Alliance for Cultural Democracy in the ‘80s. Recently, he has been a Visiting Artist and Visiting Faculty at The Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington, and an artist in residence in Italy and Korea.
Jeff established a professional duo with Lisa Fay in 1991, creating experimental works and touring for eighteen years and presently. They have been invited Artists-in-Residence at numerous universities and guest artists at gatherings, symposia and conferences such as the American Society for Cybernetics. Among other awards, they have received two Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowships. Their work has been described as “…dazzling sophistication, virtuoso level of characterization…” in the Village Voice, and with “I think Lisa Fay and Jeff Glassman belong in some category of genius” in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The Lisa Fay and Jeff Glassman Duo is an active member company of the Network of Ensemble Theatres.
Graduate Assistant
Scott A. Harman is a graduate student from the Department of Theatre, where he is pursuing an MA in Theatre History. He received his BA in Theatre from Alma College, where he later taught for three years. He has worked professionally and as an educator in Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York. He just completed his eleventh summer at the world-renowned Interlochen Arts Camp, where he serves as Director of Intermediate Theatre Workshop. He is also on the faculty of Parkland College. His research is currently focused on acting theory and pedagogy, with particular interest in cognitive theories of acting.
Technical Production Manager
Mina Sohaj has come to the United States from Serbia where she received her BA in theatre production and cultural management at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. She has just completed her MA degree in theatre and is now a first year PhD student at the Department of Theatre at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Mina’s experience includes performing as well as producing and organizing theatrical and other cultural events, most recently the Belgrade Summer Festival 09. Currently, besides working as a tech production manager for Inner Voices, she works as an assistant to Professor Kathy Perkins. Her research interests include, but are not limited to, performing in times of conflict, multiethnic theatre, the Balkan region and contemporary drama.
Consultants
Dynesha D. Mason is a Visiting Clinical Clinician at the Counseling Center. She is a generalist clinician with a special interest in working with US racial and ethnic minorities, issues related to religion and spirituality, sexual diversity, couples, loss and grief, trauma, men of Color, identity development, and gender; Dynesha is an advocate for social justice. She currently serves as a consultant to Inner Voices, but prefers to be referred to as the resident Inner Voices “junkie.” Dynesha began working with Inner Voices in 2007, and after a brief hiatus from the University community, returned during the fall of 2009. She has had an ongoing love affair with the theatre since childhood and as a counselor has found ways inject theatre - the objectified “other” - in her clinical work.
Jerry Obidumpka, Ph.D. (Community Health Education, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Post-Doctorate in International Health Education, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
