Meet our Staff
Philip C. Sneed
Producing Artistic Director
philip.sneed@colorado.edu
Philip is a professional theatre artist and manager, having recently served for twelve years as Artistic Director or Producing Artistic Director of The Foothill Theatre Company/Sierra Shakespeare Festival (FTC/SSF), based in Nevada City, California, and also producing in Incline Village, Nevada. He is a director, actor, writer and teacher of theatre. Philip has most recently completed a season as Associate Artist at Sacramento Theatre Company. He received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Colorado-Boulder, and an MFA in Acting from the University of California-San Diego. As a teacher, Philip has taught at Sierra College, University of California at Davis and San Diego, United States International University, Southern Oregon State College, the La Jolla Playhouse and the Old Globe Theatre. In the spring of 2004, he served as Guest Director at the University of California-Berkeley, directing students in a production of the play Marat/Sade. Philip is a winner of the Dr. Leland and Sally Lewis Performing Arts Award, and his company’s presentation of the Maxim Gorky Theatre’s Ivanov – performed in Russian with simultaneous translation - was recently awarded “Best Cultural Exchange” by the Sacramento News and Review. He is also an active member of the Shakespeare Theatre Association of America, at whose annual conference he recently made a presentation called “Hamlet in Vladivostok, a Dream in California: Adventures in Bilingual Shakespeare”, based on his experiences with bilingual classics.
Lynn Nichols
General Manager/Casting Director
shakes@colorado.edu
In addition to his duties as General Manager and Casting Director, Lynn directed the the 2001 production of As You Like It and the 1996 production of Othello for CSF. He is a senior instructor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at CU, Boulder, where he has directed The Learned Ladies, Frankenstein, Mother Courage and Her Children, The Cripple of Innishman, A Midsummer Night's Dream (all female cast), The Curse of the Starving Class, Shakespeare's Women, The Illusion, Tartuffe, Dancing at Lughnasa, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and A Flea in Her Ear. He also directed for Actors Ensemble theatre company of Boulder, where his credits include Cloud 9, On the Verge, The Nerd, Return to the Forbidden Planet and, for the Boulder Chautauqua's 100th Anniversary, the musical Quilters. His Ph.D. dissertation is titled "The Evolution of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival." This is Lynn's nineteenth year with the Festival.
Ray Kemble
Business Manager
kemble@colorado.edu
Ray, a native New Yorker, has been active in Colorado regional theatre since 1970, as a theatre administrator and as an actor. He served as Administrative Director of the Compass Theatre Company and performed in various theatres, to include Germinal Stage Denver, RiverTree Theatre, Aurora Fox Theatre, Arvada Center for the Arts and Theatre-Under-Glass. Ray became the CSF Business Manager in 1995 and has appeared on the Festival stage in the CSF '97 season as Agamemnon in Troilus and Cressida and as Lord Montague in Romeo and Juliet, in the CSF '98 season as the Duke of York in Richard II, in the '00 season in the title role in Julius Caesar, and most recently, as Adam in the '01 CSF production of As You Like It. As a playwright, Ray is the author of Libbie, a one-actor dramatization of the life of Elizabeth Bacon Custer; also, Frankenstein (an adaptation; directed at the University of Colorado at Boulder in '05 by CSF General Manager Lynn Nichols), and All That I Have Lost, a dramatic compilation of war poetry (to be presented in the CU '06 season, directed by CSF's Lynn Nichols).
Mell McDonnell
Marketing & Public Relations Director
shakespr@colorado.edu
Mell McDonnell began her career as a teacher of English at the Univeristy of Cincinnati and the University of New Orleans, where she taught drama, poetry and writing. She then worked for 15 years as a public relations/marketing writer and consultant in the financial industry. Mell fell in love with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in 1982—the year she moved from New Orleans to Colorado. A long-term Festival volunteer and twice president of the CSF Guild, she finds providing public relations and marketing skills to the Festival to be the ultimately fulfilling job.
Tara Olney
Development Director
tara.olney@cufund.org
Tara joined the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in November, 2007 as the Director of Development. She has spent the last two and a half years working in Development at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. Tara moved to Colorado with her husband three years ago so that he could pursue his PhD. in Economics at CU Boulder. Prior to the move, they lived in both New York and Philadelphia, where Tara worked as a Development Associate at the University of Pennsylvania. She attended the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington and received dual degrees in English and Art.
Steven McDonald
Operations Manager
mcdonas@colorado.edu
Steven is production manager for the University of Colorado at Boulder's Department of Theatre and Dance where, as a member of the theatre design and technology faculty, he regularly designs and teaches sound, lighting and stage management. Mr. McDonald, who earned his M.F.A. from the University of California-Irvine, previously worked for CSF in marketing, stage management and as the audience services director and production manager.
Kerry Cripe
Production Director
kerry.cripe@colorado.edu
Kerry holds an M.F.A. in Technical Theatre from Florida State University and a B.F.A. from the University ofEvansville, Indiana. He has been teaching technical theatre on the university level for nine years and is currently a technical director and senior instructor for the University of Colorado at Boulder. Some of Kerry's other professional credits include five seasons at the New Harmony Theatre in New Harmony, Indiana, and eight seasons at the Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, Utah.
Melinda J. Scott
Education Director
Melinda has served as CSF's Education Outreach Director since September 2001, cultivating programs that use a comprehensive approach to engage learners and teachers in Shakespeare’s text and times. Recently she directed The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged for Poudre High School in Fort Collins. As a member of the Shakespeare Oratorio Society she directed Twelfth Night for their twelfth year and portrayed Lady Macbeth in their thirteenth production. She is the voice of Ann Morris in the audiotour of “Temple of the Warriors: Rebuilding a Maya Monument,” on exhibit at the CU Museum until February 2008. She was a faculty member of Boulder Conservatory Theatre — serving two years as a member of their artistic team. Her directing credits with BCT include The Lady's Not for Burning, an adaptation of The Phantom Tollbooth — performed at the National Conference of the American Alliance for Theatre & Education, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Miracle Worker — interpreted for the Deaf by ASL student interpreters from New Vista High School. She also created the set and sound design. Melinda has worked at New Vista High School with students in a touring production of a Shakespearean collage and also taught “Shakespeare in Production.” Among her favorite performance credits: Sarah in Quilters, excerpts from Romeo & Juliet with Colorado Music Festival Director Michael Christie conducting Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet, and work with Jack Crouch and Robert Benedetti in CSF’s 30th Anniversary Season. Melinda, who has acted in four seasons for CSF, received her B.F.A degree in theatre performance from CU–Boulder.
Pam Johnson
Box Office Administrative Manager/Group Sales Coordinator
Pam Johnson is from Ft. Worth, Texas, where she was a U.S. Postal Service employee for 15 years. She nowworks for the University of Colorado at Boulder's box office as the Colorado Shakespeare Festival's Box Office Co-Manager.
Amanda Holden
Education Programs Manager
Amanda joined CSF after two years of teaching Shakespeare, drama, and yoga in Hong Kong. A Massachusetts native, Amanda holds a B.A. from Trinity College, Conn. in Theater and French, and has directed children/teenage productions for the Rebel Shakespeare Company in Salem, Mass. since 2000. She received her M.A. in Theater at CU Boulder in 2006, and is currently pursuing her doctorate in theater at CU.
Kathrine Warren
Assistant to the Marketing Director
Greg Thorson
Assistant to the General Manager
Ken Gamauf
Webmaster
Laura Elizabeth Jarvis
PR/Marketing Intern
