ABOUT ME

Hello and welcome! My name is Barbara and I use she/her pronouns.  I’m a professional actor, associate professor of theatre, freelance director, and coach of voice and speech, heightened language text and dialects, among other things.  I have lived in the Chicagoland area for almost 30 years and love working in and contributing to Chicago theatre.  I have a passion for nature, parakeets, how we think about actor training, and deep thoughts and conversations.

 Even though I’ve been working professionally in Equity theatres as an actor since 1999, I fell in love with storytelling and transformative performance much earlier.  When I was growing up I expressed myself mainly through ballet, piano and oboe – too shy to want to speak on stage! – but dancing and playing in orchestras taught me how to contribute to an ensemble, how to build something with others, how to carry focus and how to generously support others in service of a story or an experience. Later, I loved being able to find characters through my voice – perfecting different vocal textures and dialects, breath patterns and physical habits, and finding that a whole new personality and mindset emerged with those changes.  The desire to try on different vocal and physical habits, combined with natural curiosity and “ferocious listening” (as a mentor of mine once called it) have served me well as an actor, and I still think that creating and inhabiting characters is the best way to live multiple lives, to learn empathy, and grow in your own humanity.

As an actor, my favorite credits include The Importance of Being Earnest, The Winter’s Tale, You Can’t Take it With You, and Dancing at Lughnasa (Oak Park Festival Theatre); All My Sons and Les Liaisons Dangereuses (American Players Theatre); Hamlet, Heartbreak House, A Little Night Music, and Misalliance(Writers Theatre);The Country Girl (Illinois Theatre Center); Marionette Macbeth (Chicago Shakespeare Theater at New Victory Theatre, NYC); The Moliere Comedies, The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, Richard II, The School for Scandal, and All’s Well That Ends Well (Chicago Shakespeare Theater); Lady Windermere’s Fan (Northlight Theatre); A Christmas Carol, Wit (Goodman Theatre); Hard Times(Lookingglass Theatre); Arms and the Man, The Devil’s Disciple, Major Barbara, Coward in Two Keys, and What Every Woman Knows (ShawChicago); and numerous appearances with the Shakespeare Project of Chicago, where I served as associate artistic director from 2010-2018.  TV and film credits include Chicago Fire, Operator, and The Legend of Amba.

My professional directing credits include The Tempest, Elizabeth Rex and Macbeth (Oak Park Festival Theatre); Shrewish (her original adaptation commissioned by Artemisia Theatre); Candida, Hay Fever, Misalliance, and Private Lives (ShawChicago); and Coriolanus, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Winter’s Tale, All’s Well That Ends Well, Troilus and Cressida, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and The 50 Minute Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare Project of Chicago).  For CCPA at Roosevelt University, I’ve directed The Misanthrope, Pride and Prejudice, Votes for Women, Best Love Scenes Ever!, In Arabia We’d All Be Kings, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Ovidian Myths, Something Shaw and Spoon River: Coming Home.

I served as artistic director of Oak Park Festival Theatre (one of the oldest Equity outdoor theatres in the United States) from 2018-2022, and I’m a current company member.  I also remain active at two other artistic homes: Shakespeare Project of Chicago and Misalliance Repertory Theatre (formerly ShawChicago).  I’ve previously taught at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music and at North Central College, and I have 25 years of experience as an executive leadership coach with Speak by Design, a firm founded by fellow CCPA alumnus Stephanie Bickel.  I’m a member of Actors’ Equity Association (AEA), the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Radio and Television Artists (SAG-AFTRA), and I’m an associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC).

But enough about me!  How can I help YOU?