Winter Masterclasses

Franchelle Stewart Dorn

Franchelle Stewart Dorn is a professor at University of Texas-Austin in the Department of Theatre and Dance. Her teaching has been recognized with the SFA Excellence in Teaching Award and she is part of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers and a Regents’ Outstanding Teacher. She was inducted into the National Theater Conference, and the National Association of Acting Teachers. As an actor, her credits include performances at Shakespeare Theatre Company, Arena Stage, American Conservatory Theatre, Yale Rep, Long Wharf, George Street Playhouse, Great Lakes Shakespeare Theater, Cleveland Playhouse, Arizona State Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre, Everyman, Guthrie, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Contemporary American Theatre Festival and Penumbra. She has been seen Off-Broadway at Red Bull and Signature. She appeared on television as Dr. Rita Madison on NBC’s “Another World” and as a host for PBS’ Working Women and Literary Visions.  She has done more than 400 industrials, commercials, and voice-overs. Franchelle has been nominated for eight Helen Hayes Awards, winning three; Austin Critics’ Circle for Best Actor in a Play: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Edge of Peace, and Medea. She received her M.F.A. from Yale University. 

Parker Esse

Parker Esse is a multi-award-winning and story-driven director/choreographer. After performing regionally, in national tours, and as a featured performer on Broadway in the Tony Award-winning Fosse, he began collaborating exclusively on multiple regional and Broadway shows as associate director/choreographer, including Broadway's Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Award nominated Finian's Rainbow and A Tale of Two Cities, as well as five-star studded NY City Center Encores! productions. As a choreographer, Parker exploded onto the scene with the groundbreaking and re-imagined Oklahoma! (Arena Stage) as well as Stephen Sondheim and Wynton Marsalis’ A Bed and a Chair directed by John Doyle (NY City Center Encores!). Parker has directed/choreographed for numerous NYC, regional and international theatres and is an eight-time Helen Hayes Nominee for Best Choreography, winning for Arena Stage's Oklahoma!, The Pajama Game starring Donna McKechnie, and most recently for Anything Goes starring Corbin Bleu. Recent director and/or choreographer credits include: the highly acclaimed revival of Rags (Goodspeed); La Traviata (The Kennedy Center’s WNO); pre-Broadway Toronto engagement of Jukebox Hero featuring Foreigner's Greatest Hits (Ed Mirvish Theatre); pre-Broadway world premiere of Love And Other Fables (Theatre By The Sea); 45 Minutes From Coontown(York Theatre Co.); The Buddy Holly Story (Casa Manana); Lyrics & Lyricists Celebrates Oklahoma! at 75 (92nd St. Y); seven seasons for the Physician’s Mutual of Omaha Symphony Orchestra Christmas Celebration; and multiple pre-Broadway new works, Equity showcases, and 29-Hour Readings. Most recently, last fall DC saw Parker’s Helen Hayes nominated choreography for the record-breaking hit show Disney’s Newsies (Arena Stage). BFA NYU Tisch.

Nehal Joshi

Nehal Joshi considers Arena Stage one of his artistic homes. He has appeared in five productions at Arena, most memorably as Ali Hakim in Oklahoma! and Amir in Disgraced. He was born and raised in Northern Virginia and has appeared onstage at several local theaters. He has appeared on Broadway in All My Sons, School of Rock, Threepenny Opera, Gettin' the Band Back Together, and Les Misérables (Original Revival Cast). His Off-Broadway credits include Falling for Eve, Working (2008 revision), and Grand Hotel (Encores!). Regionally, he has worked at Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Goodman Theatre, Dallas Theater Center, La Jolla Playhouse, Huntington Theater, and The Kennedy Center among others. His Film/TV credits include The Wire (HBO), Blackout (BET), Law & Order: SVU (NBC) and Search Party (TBS). He is the voice of the Worgen Vendors on the hit video game World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. www.nehaljoshi.com    

Jacqueline E. Lawton

Jacqueline E. Lawton is a playwright, dramaturg, producer and advocate for Access, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the American Theater. Her produced plays include:  Blood-bound and Tongue-tied; The Hampton Years; Intelligence; Mad Breed; and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. She received her M.F.A. in playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. She is a 2012 TCG Young Leaders of Color award recipient and an alum of National New Play Network (NNPN), Arena Stage's Playwrights' Arena, and Center Stage’s Playwrights Collective. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Dramatic Art at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a dramaturg for PlayMakers Repertory Company. She is also the Dramatist Guild’s Regional Representative for North Carolina. 

Eduardo Machado

Eduardo Machado was born in Cuba and came to the United States when he was nine. He is the author of over 40 plays, including The Cook, Havana is Waiting, The Modern Ladies of Guanabacoa, Fabiola, Broken Eggs and Stevie Wants to Play the Blues. His plays have been produced at Seattle Repertory, The Goodman, Hartford Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Mark Taper Forum, Long Wharf, Hampstead Theatre in London, The Cherry Lane Theatre, Theater for the New City and Repertorio Español, among many others. He was formerly artistic director of INTAR Theatre in NY and has been a Professor of Playwriting at NYU Tisch and Columbia. He is the co-author of Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile’s Hunger for Home and his plays are published by Samuel French and TCG.

Christi Spann

Christi B. Spann has 20 years of professional theater experience. She's been working as a stage manager in D.C. since 2011. Favorite Arena Stage productions include A Raisin in the Sun, A Thousand Splendid Suns and Hold These Truths. She previously spent 12 seasons on the stage management staff at the Denver Center Theatre Company and has also worked with The Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, Minn. and Virginia Repertory Theatre in Richmond, VA. She resides in Southwest D.C. with her husband and cat and is passing the pandemic days working remotely for a healthcare agency. 

Seema Sueko

Seema Sueko grew up in Honolulu, surrounded by the political passion, groan-worthy humor, and inventiveness of her Pakistani father and a Japanese American mother who could read people in an instant, but was more interested in kindness than judgement. Their influence can be found in large and small ways in all of Seema’s work as a theater director and arts leader who directs stage, film, consensus organizing and R&D projects and productions for theaters, think tanks and the community.

Seema recently directed the film Veterans Day 2020 for Atlantic Council and Arena Stage. She served as Deputy Artistic Director of Arena Stage from 2016-2020, where she created the Theater Artists Marketplace, brought playwrights and policy leaders together at the Power Play Summit, spearheaded the Artistic Director Intensive, and directed productions of Smart People, The Price, The Heiress and Right to be Forgotten. Prior, she was Associate Artistic Director at Pasadena Playhouse and Executive Artistic Director of Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company, which she co-founded in San Diego. She has directed and acted at theaters across the U.S. including Denver Center, Ford’s Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse, People’s Light, The Old Globe, Yale Rep, 5th Avenue Theatre, Native Voices, and Mo`olelo, among others. Her work has been recognized by the Chicago Jeff Awards, NAACP San Diego, American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Asian Pacific American Friends of the Theater, San Diego Craig Noel Awards, and the California State Assembly. Seema serves on the Executive Board of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society and was recently named a finalist for the SDCF Zelda Fichander Award. https://www.seemasueko.com/