Alumni Biographies A-D

Cassie Abate - Actress - Natioal Tour of Urban Cowboy. Regional: West Side Story, Peter Pan, and Beauty and the Beast with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival42nd Street with Northshore Music Theatre. Choreography: Cabaret, The Music Man, Showtune, Guys and Dolls, Tintypes and Moby Dick: The MusicalCassie's Website


Janet Aldrich - Actress - Broadway: Starmites, Me and My Girl, The Three Musketeers, Annie, Broadway, Wanted Dean or Alive, and I've Got a Feeling. Regional/off-Broadway: Applause, Anything Goes, Into the Woods, Comedy of Errors, They're Playing are Song and more. Film: Jails Hospitals and Wip Hop, Une Femme Ou Deux, Ringers. TV:Another World, Guiding Light, As The World Turns, Ryan's Hope, Saturday Night Live.


Bill Altfield - is a senior public corruption prosecutor with the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office. However, he has had a life-long passion for the theater having attained a Bachelor in Fine Arts in Theater from the University of Miami. Bill has been very active with Theater in Miami-Dade including The Country Club of Coral Gables, TZIC Players, Palmer Trinity School, the Miami Civic Theater, the Dave and Mary Alper JCC Players, the Miami Children's Theater and as a Board Member of the Miami Stage Company which produced one of the first community theater productions of CATS performed in the United States. He was recently seen in Cabaret and he starred as "Felix Ungar" in The Odd Couple. He also played the role of "Hysterium" in A Funny Thing Happened on The Way to The Forum. He also directed the JCC Player's last, yet most successful JCC production, of Rogers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! Featured roles include "Nicely Nicely Johnson" from Guys and Dolls, "Commander Harbison" in Rogers and Hammerstein's South Pacific and "Alonzo" in CATS.


Majel Barrett - Actor - Producer - worked at the Desilu Studios on several TV shows, including Bonanza, The Untouchables, The Lucy Show, andThe Lieutenant. She played Gwen Rutherford on Leave it to Beaver. She was also in the film Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter. She is the widow of television director - producer - writer and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. She has been in every incarnation of the popular science fiction Star Trek, franchise since the very beginning. She was Executive Producer of Earth: Final Conflict, and later Andromeda. Barrett also played the character Dr. Julianne Belman in Earth: Final Conflict. She made a guest appearance in a Babylon 5, and The Family Guy.


Anastasia Barzee - Actor - Encore's Golden Boy, Kennedy Center'sSondheim Celebration Merrily We Roll Along (Beth) and Lincoln CenterSondheim Celebration concert. Created the role of Josephine inNapoleon at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London's West End. Broadway:Urinetown (Hope), Miss Saigon (Ellen), Jekyll and Hyde (Emma). LA:Sunset Boulevard (Betty), City of Angels (Mallory), Present Laughter(Daphne; LA Drama Critics Award), Groucho; A Life in Revue (the 13 women), For Reprise!, The Most Happy Fella (Rosabella) and Anything Goes (Hope). TV/Film: "Murder, She Wrote;" "Ally McBeal;" "Herman's Head;" "Barkley's Beat;" "Get A Life;" "Dream On;" "Designing Women;" "Days of Our Lives;" George Lavoo'sDog Lover.


Steven Bauer -Actor - Film: ScarfaceRaveTraffic, Forever Lulu, Thief of Hearts, Pit Fighter, Dead Lenny, Venus & Vegas, Bulletface, Dark World, and many more. TV: Walker, Texas Ranger, For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story , Nash Bridges, UC: Undercover, King of Texas, South Beach.

Brad Bauner currently serves as the Associate Producer of the Post Street Theatre and Marines Memorial Theatre in San Francisco.   Past productions include Eddie Izzard Work in Progress,  Adam Pascal Live!, Marc Salem’s Mind GamesTRUMBO with Brian Dennehy, Here Lies Jenny with Bebe Neuwirth, and The 25th Annual Putnum County Spelling Bee among many others.  He is also the Associate General Manger of the smash hit STOMP currently on national tour and in its 14th year off-Broadway and STOMP OUT LOUD in Las Vegas.  Brad was a producer of The World AIDS Day Concert Presentation of The Secret Garden whichPlaybill.com called, “One of the 10 Best Theatrical Performances of 2005”.  Brad’s other producing credits include the The Riot Act, John Walker: the Musical at the 2004 New York Fringe Festival and Tory Ross’s cabaret Rejected Showgirl.


Michael Becker - IT Specialist - Producer and Developer at /vid/Hack/ Productions - Creative Multi-Media Web Developer specializing in New Media with extensive experience in developing, maintaining, redesigning, and marketing websites and web applications. He is currently working with IBM supportinga media library for a major movie studio. He has worked as Senior Programer for Walt Disney Studios and served as Web Master for the Dr. Phil Show. He is Owner- Webmaster - Designer and CoHost of the Reel Horror Podcast.


Fred Bimbler - Entertainment lawyer (NYC) - is a partner with Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams, & Sheppard LLP where he practices primarily in the area of transactional entertainment law, representing producers and the production of theatrical and motion picture projects at all levels, though he also actively represents Latin media stars, individual actors, personalities, models, playwrights, musicians, photographers, and designers in all media. He is an affiliate member of the League of American Theatres and Producers


Randy Bobish - Randy Bobish - Actor - Broadway: 42nd Street, Fiddler on the Roof, Anything Goes. National Tours: Sunset Boulevard, Grease.Randy's Website


Lindsey Brooks - is the Associate General Manager of the Manhattan Theatre Club where her work includes negotiating artist contracts and assisting the general manager.


Bruce Brown - is a well known spokesman, announcer, master of ceremonies, and voiceover artist. He was the announcer on Michael Moore's weekly TV series TV Nation and The Awful Truth. He has appeared in many films including Eddie and the Cruisers, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, andTomorrow Night. He is an officer in The Lambs, the oldest Theatrical Club in America.


Mary Bryant - Broadway Press Agent - Her first Broadway job was as the assistant press agent on George Abbott's Fiorello! in 1959, followed byToys in the Attic, Tenderloin, Write Me a Murder, Take Her, She's Mine and The Aspern Papers. In 1962 she became a senior press agent opening her own office with Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, directed by Abbott (or "Mr. Abbott" as he was known). She went on to represent Mr. Abbott's productions ofNever Too Late, Flora, The Red Menace, Anya and Music Is.

With Fiorello!, she began a career-long working relationship with director-producer Harold Prince. Ms. Bryant was the press agent for the original Broadway productions of the Harold Prince-Stephen Sondheim musicals Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd and Merrily We Roll Along.

She also represented director Prince's productions of She Loves Me, It's A Bird…It's a Plane…It’s Superman, Cabaret, Zorba, The Visit, Love for Love, On the Twentieth Century, Evita, A Doll's Life, End Of The World, Grind, Roza, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Show Boatand Candide.

In 1992, Ms. Bryant became the New York based publicist for Canadian impresario Garth Drabinsky's Livent, Inc., where she also represented Barrymore, Ragtime and Fosse. Some of the other 50 Broadway productions she represented include Side by Side by Sondheim, The Member of the Wedding, The Rules of the Game, Holiday, Chemin de Fer, All the Girls Came Out to Play, Abelard and Heloise, Grin and Bare It!, Postcards and Poor Bitos.


Kieth Buterbaugh - Actor - Broadway: Phantom (Raoul), Company(Harry). Off-Broadway: Little Prince, Mademoiselle Colombe (w/Tammy Grimes). Nat’l tour: Show Boat (Ravenal), Phantom of the Opera(Raoul/Phantom), The King and . Regional: Company (Cincinnati Playhouse), ATL’s My WayThe Sound of MusicCamelot, Secret Garden, Sondheim’s Passion. Opera: Marriage of Figaro (Cincinnati Opera), Die Fledermaus, La Bohème, Barber of Seville, Carousel (Billy Bigelow/Augusta Opera). TV: “Chapelle’s Show,” “Skitch Henderson: A Man and His Music – 80 Years.” Film: Crime Partners.


Erisa Byrd - Actress - Currently lives in Los Angeles, CA and is a full time mother, singer, actor, and private Pole Dance and Fitness Instructor for her company [flirtEmotion] http://flirtemotion.com/.


Adam Caldwell - Casting Director - Producer - Assistant producer onPippin: The World AIDS Day Concert. He has worked at Papermill Playhouse as a director's assistant/casting assistant/teaching artist, and was recently an assistant director on Joy Off-Broadway. He was a founding member of WetLab at Ensemble Studio Theatre. He is currently a Casting Director for Cindy Tolan Casting in NYC.


Xavier Cano - Actor - Played Sonny LaTierri in Grease on Broadway. He created the role of Jorge in the new musical Mariel at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. He has performed in West Side Story at the Fulton Opera House,Barrington Stage Company, and was in the West Side Story on the European Tour. He also played Jaun in Altar Boyz for numerous regional theatres. He danced and sang on the Veendam for Holland America Cruises and Stiletto Entertainment.


Bob Clark - Director - Film: Baby Geniuses 1 & 2, Unleashed, Porky's, Porky's II, A Christmas Story; TV: Maniac Magee, Catch a Falling Star, The Ransom of Red Chief, and more.


Lewis Cleale - Actor - made his Broadway debut in the 1995 Johnny Burke revue Swinging on a Star, for which he received a Drama Desk Award nomination as Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical. Additional Broadway credits include the revival of Once Upon a Mattress with Sarah Jessica Parker, the Michel Legrand musicalAmour, and the hit Spamalot. Off-Broadway, he has appeared in Call Me Madam opposite Tyne Daly and A New Brain with Malcolm Gets and Kristin Chenoweth for Lincoln Center Theater.

Cleale portrayed Joe Gillis opposite Petula Clark's Norma Desmond in the national tour of Sunset Boulevard, and went on the road again as Lieut. Joe Cable in South Pacific.

In Washington, D.C., Cleale portrayed John Adams in 1776 at Ford's Theatre and Giorgio in Stephen Sondheim's Passion at the Signature Theatre, for which he won the Helen Hayes Award. He has appeared in leading roles at Goodspeed Opera, George Street Playhouse, Cleveland Opera, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Long Beach Civic Light Opera, and The Muny in St. Louis. He also performs as one of the Broadway Tenors.

Cleale's recordings include William Finn's Infinite Joy, Adam Guettel's Myths and Hymns, the RCA Victor anthology Great Musicals, and the original cast albums of Once Upon a Mattress, Swinging on a Star, Call Me Madam, and Amour.


Dave Clemmons - Actor - Casting Director - Clemmons Casting is credited with casting over 80 Broadway, Off-Broadway, National Touring, and Regional productions. Broadway credits include: Talk Radio, Spring Awakening, Ring of Fire, In My Life, Brooklyn, Dracula: The Musical, The Boy From Oz, The Civil War. National Tours include:Cinderella, The Civil War, Cats, Swing!, Fosse, Jekyll & Hyde, Chicago, Starlight Express. Off-Broadway: Bat Boy, Love, Janis, The Prince & The Pauper, Zanna Don’t!, The Donkey Show, They Wrote That?, and the 2000 revival of Godspell at the York Theatre. As a performer, Dave has appeared on Broadway in The Civil War, The Scarlet Pimpernel Les Miserables and in the special concert Linda Eder at the Gershwin. Dave's Website


Carl Cofield - Actor - off-Broadway: Ruined, The Inn Gathering, Cobbproduced by Kevin Spacey. Washington, DC credits: Polk County, The Misanthrope (Arena Stage), The Old Settler (The Studio Theater, DC). For the Alabama Shakespeare Festival: Regina Taylor's A Night In Tunisia, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Comedy of Errors, Hamlet, Coriolanus, Private Lives, Merry Wives of Windsor (Shakespeare Santa CruzHenry V, Mud, River, Stone, Arms and the Man (The Acting Company), Polk County (McCarter Theatre). Television: Law & Order (NBC), Angel City (CBS), The Last POW: The Bobby Garwood Story (CBS).


Sherry Cohen - Stage Manager - Broadway: Mama Mia, Minnelli on Minnelli, Miss Saigon, Phantom, Cats, Marilyn, Peter Pan, A Broadway Musical. Broadway Benefit Concerts:On the Twentieth Century, Children and Art, Hair, Chess, Into the Woods.


Jeff Coopwood - Actor - sang for four seasons with the Florida Grand Opera. He appeared in several tours regional productions including the Broadway National Tour of Timbuktu! with Eartha Kitt. He was the Emmy nominated host of both $100,000 Fortune Hunt and Know Your Heritage, both nationally syndicated television game shows. He guest starred on Oprah Winfery's Brewster Place. Also an Emmy nominee for his voiceover work and a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Jeff was the "Voice of The Borg", uttering the now famous line "Resistance is futile" in Star Trek: First Contact.


Jane Daly - Actress - Film: Airport 77, Gross Anatomy, North Dallas Forty, Nightwalker;TV: Capitol, Roomies, Beverly Hills 90210, JAG, Sisters, Judging Amy, ER, Joan of Arcadia, Nip/Tuck, and more. Jane's Website <


Erica Dorfler - Actor - National tours: Mamma Mia, Rent and Thoroughly Modern Millie International: original cast of The Festival of the Lion King(Nala) in Hong Kong, directed by Lynne Taylor-Corbett Regional: All Shook Up (Lorraine) at New Theatre in Kansas...that's upcoming this summer. And when back in the city I've been an assistant for East of Doheny, the producer of Grey Gardens and associate producer for shows like Sweet Smell of Success and Deaf West's Big River.


Michael Dunn - Actor - probably best known for his recurring role as mad scientist Dr. Miguelito Loveless, perpetually pursued by Secret Service agents James West and Artemus Gordon in the 1960s TV series The Wild Wild West. Dunn also gained wide exposure in his role as Alexander, a courageous court jester, in the Star Trek episodePlato's Stepchildren. In 1963, he was nominated for a Tony Award for his role as Cousin Lymon in the Edward Albee stage play, Ballad of the Sad Cafe. He also received an Oscar nomination for his role as the cynical Karl Glocken in Ship of Fools (Columbia Pictures, 1965, directed by Stanley Kramer).