Christopher Bohan (Senior Instructor) has been with the department of theater at Case Western Reserve University since 2012. He teaches acting and improvisation to the undergraduates, and acting and audition technique to MFA students. For the department, he directs undergraduate productions, and is the director of undergraduate recruitment.

For the undergraduate program, Chris has directed Electra, Uncle Vanya, The Bald Soprano, and Proof, as well as a virtual production of Bus Stop. In 2021, along with undergrads and several MFA alums, Chris played Bernard Nightengale in the inaugural production of the Maltz Performing Arts Center’s production of Arcadia.

Currently, Chris is doing research on the intersections of improvisation and cognitive behavioral therapy with Dr. Amy Przeworski from the CWRU Department of Psychology. Project DRAMA is funded by the CWRU Expanding Horizons and The National Endowment for the Arts.

In addition to his work with the theater department at CWRU, Chris works as a teacher and professional actor in the Cleveland area. Recently, he starred as Mr. Bennet and Charlotte Lucas in the Cleveland Play House production of Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice, and played the roles of Sam and Clay in the CPH production of Primary Trust directed by Sideeq Heard. Recent film credits include: Unsinkable: The Untold Story and Lost and Found in Cleveland.

Chris has been teaching the Michael Chekhov technique with the Great Lakes Michael Chekhov Consortium since 2015, and was recently named to the board of the organization and became a lead teacher with the program. GLMCC offers a certification program in the Michael Chekhov technique to actors and theater educators.

He graduated from Lehigh University in 1994 with a BA in theatre and economics. He received his MFA in Performance from The Hilberry Theatre at Wayne State University in 2007. He is a founding member of Cleveland’s longest running improvisational comedy company, Something Dada, and was a regular performer until 2003. Chris is a proud member of the Actor’s Equity Association (AEA), and SAG-AFTRA. He lives in University Heights, Ohio with his wife and two children.

Hayley Drew Jannielli (she/they) is an actor, voice educator, dialect coach and Assistant Professor of Voice and Acting at CWRU Theater. Originally from San Diego, Hayley earned her M.F.A. in Acting from the University of California, Irvine. She is a Designated Linklater Voice Teacher, trained in Knight-Thompson Speechwork, and a core officer of The Voice and Speech Trainers Association (VASTA).

Hayley recently served as vocal coach for A Knock on the Roof at New York Theatre Workshop directed by Obie award-winner Oliver Butler. She is currently the voice & speech coach for Freak the Mighty (dir. Michael Barakiva), a new musical that premiered at Cleveland Play House and transferred to Seattle Rep. Other CPH credits include Tartuffe (dir. Jason O’Connell), Epiphany (dir. Don Carrier), and Much Ado About Nothing (dir. Teri McMahon). As a performer, Hayley has worked Off-Broadway, regionally and in TV/film. For two consecutive years she served as the Swing and Dance Captain on the National Tour of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

Before joining Case’s faculty, Hayley lived in New York City for nine years where she was Head of Voice & Speech at CAP21/Molloy University and taught coursework in acting, voice, and improvisation at NYU (The Lee Strasberg Studio), Long Island University (The New Group), the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, and The Linklater Center.

A former professional ballet dancer trained at the School of American Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and Joffrey Ballet, Hayley’s pedagogy rebels directly against the perfectionism and hierarchy of the classical ballet world. Embodiment, connection, and play are the cornerstones of what Hayley aims to cultivate in the acting studio and beyond.Through the incremental unwinding of physical and psychological rigidity, actors unlock freedom and access impulse onstage.

Hayley is a proud member of AEA and SAG-AFTRA and offers private coaching through her company Moveo Voice. (www.HayleyDrew.com)

Darryl Lewis is an award-winning baritone, actor, director, educator, and arts administrator whose career spans opera, musical theater, dramatic theater, film, and arts education. He holds a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from Mercyhurst University, a Master of Music in Performance, and a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from Kent State University. A proud member of Actors' Equity Association since 2008 and a SAG-AFTRA eligible performer, Lewis has built a career that bridges professional performance with a deep commitment to arts education and community engagement.

Lewis has performed with organizations including Chautauqua Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre, the Rome Opera Festival, the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, and numerous professional theaters throughout the region. His versatile repertoire encompasses opera, concert work, musical theater, and dramatic performance. He has appeared as a featured soloist at Severance Music Center with the Cleveland Pops Orchestra and has performed the National Anthem for the Cleveland Browns and Cleveland Guardians. His stage credits include The Full Monty, Blind Injustice, A Christmas Carol, and numerous leading roles throughout Northeast Ohio. His film work includes Beneath the Lights, which was filmed in Lorain, Ohio.

An accomplished educator, Lewis serves on the faculty of Case Western Reserve University, where he teaches graduate actors in the MFA Acting Program, helping students integrate vocal technique, performance practice, and storytelling into their artistic development. He also serves as Director of Music and Theatre at Andrews Osborne Academy, where he teaches music, theater, choir, acting, piano, technical theater, and directing while producing a comprehensive performing arts program for students in grades 6–12.

Lewis is currently in his sixth season as Artistic Director of the Willoughby Summer Theater Festival, a nonprofit initiative dedicated to making high-quality live theater accessible to the community through free professional-caliber performances. Under his leadership, the festival has grown into a vibrant cultural tradition that removes financial barriers to the arts while providing performance opportunities for local artists, students, and community members. The festival's mission is to strengthen Northeast Ohio through exceptional live theater, music, and educational programming that brings people together and demonstrates that the performing arts should be accessible to everyone.

Throughout his career, Lewis has remained committed to developing the next generation of artists while advocating for the transformative power of the performing arts in education and community life. Whether on the concert stage, in the classroom, or leading large-scale theatrical productions, he is dedicated to fostering artistic excellence, collaboration, and meaningful connections through performance.

Eliza Ladd Schwarz is a director, choreographer, movement designer, performer, stage writer, and song maker from NYC. She has collaborated with Sideeq Heard, Terri McMahon, Israel Horovitz, Adam Rapp, Karen O, Peter Amster, Eleanor Holdridge, Don Carrier, Jerrold Scott, Benny Sato Ambush, Jonathan Epstein, Greg Leaming, Andrei Malaev Babel, Jessie Jou, James Dean Palmer, and Leigh Fondakowski. Select productions, as movement designer/choreographer: Primary Trust, Epiphany, The Liar, The Learned Ladies, The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, Nora, As you like It, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing (twice), The Tempest (twice), Romeo and Juliet, Antigone, Oedipus, How I Learned to Drive, Everybody, Drunken City, Reckless, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Sense and Sensibility, Middletown, Casa Cushman, Stick Fly, and Men On Boats.

Eliza brings a wealth of knowledge to the collaborative process, including in the realms of movement for the actor, historical dance, Le Coq, Grotowski, Shakespeare, the Viewpoints, contemporary composition, contemplative practice, object work, intimacy coordination, Moment Work, devising, clown, Capoeira, Ashaya Yoga, Developmental Movement Technique, Body Mind Centering, and ensemble development.

After ten years teaching at the FSU/Asolo Conservatory MFA, Eliza is thrilled to be entering her fourth year on the faculty at CWRU/Cleveland Playhouse MFA, where she teaches MFA Movement, Devising Original Theater, and Acting. At CWRU, through the Glennan Fellowship, she developed a new curriculum, Live Sound Action: Learning at the Crossroads of Theatrical Training, and Spiritual Practice (THTR351) - an articulation of her performance research which integrates physical and musical storytelling with contemporary spiritual exploration and practice.

Eliza has created original multi-disciplinary work in NYC at PS 122, Dixon Place, Movement Research, the Knitting Factory, Joyce Soho, and United Solo, and performed at La Mama, the Kitchen, NY Theater Workshop, and St. Ann’s Warehouse, as well as in Massachusetts with Shakespeare and Company. Notable recent projects include original works of ensemble music theatre Selfie of the Ancients and Tigers Above, Tigers Below, both curated by New Music New College Foundation; Agridulce/Bittersweet, an Andrew W. Mellon funded bi-lingual community project; Work/Play/Work, a theatrical ensemble zoom response to the 2020 call for social justice; and her solo works Gravity and Levity and Autobiography of the Human Species, both presented by Sarasota Contemporary Dance and in NYC. In 2025 Eliza directed Men On Boats at CWRU.

Eliza won the Audience Encore Award for her ensemble musical Elephants and Gold, produced at the Boulder Fringe and the Berkshire Fringe, and wrote and performed On Est Déshabillé, a comedy about death produced at the United Solo Theatre Festival and The Berkshire Fringe. Eliza is the recipient of a Franklin Furnace Emerging Artist Award for her original performance work, a Puffin Foundation Grant in support of her Live Sound Action theater training, and an Andrew W Mellon Foundation Grant for “Devised Theater and Collaboration for Social Engagement.”

In addition to ongoing work at CWRU and CPH, Eliza is working on two devised pieces: a reinvented version of her solo, Autobiography of the Human Species and a new ensemble piece, Amidst All This: A Eulogy for the Earth, digging into the human capacity to survive and respond to climate change and disaster. Eliza is also touring her workshop/performance, Digging Deep, The Body as Palimpsest, a pop-up contemporary memorial, previously shared at Midwest Climate Summit, ATME and ATHE.

Eliza holds a BA in Comparative Religion from Harvard University and an MFA in Theater: Contemporary Performance from Naropa University. www.elizaladd.com

Jerrold Scott is a director, actor, and speech consultant who has served on the CWRU faculty since 2000. He was appointed chair of the Department of Theater in 2015 and served until 2023. In 2017 he was appointed the Katharine Bakeless Nason Professor in Theater and Drama. Jerrold teaches speech and phonetics, dialects, and classical acting technique in the MFA program, and directs in the ensemble productions. He continues to work occasionally as an actor, and recently completed his PhD in History at CWRU, focusing on the life of 19thcentury theater critic and soldier Adam Badeau.

As a director, he has helmed shows up and down the East Coast and Midwest. His local credits include Season’s Greetings, Hay Fever, She Stoops to Conquer, The Philadelphia Story, Present Laughter, Heartbreak House, and The Real Thing for the MFA acting program; Arcadia, The Rocky Horror Show, Urinetown, and The Glass Menagerie at the CWRU Department of Theater; and Polish Joke, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and A Doll’s House at the Beck Center for the Arts.

Jerrold also works as a speech, text and dialect coach, and served as the resident dialect coach at Cleveland Play House for over a decade. He has also coached locally at Great Lakes Theatre Festival and Dobama Theatre, and regionally at The Studio Theatre, Wooly Mammoth Theatre, and Round House Theatre in Washington and at CATCO in Columbus.

David made his feature film debut in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. His television credits include guest appearances on Grey’s Anatomy, Dexter, House, and Manhunt. Recent film/TV roles include Netflix’s Shirley (opposite Academy Award winner Regina King and nominee Lucas Hedges), The Mayor of Kingstown, and the LeBron James biopic Shooting Stars for Peacock.

He has worked with a number of Oscar, Golden Globe, and Emmy Award-winning actors including Tom Hanks, Robert DeNiro, Taraji P. Henson, Jon Hamm, and Helen Hunt. He is a member of SAG-AFTRA and Actors Equity Association (AEA).

His stage credits include South Coast Repertory, Chautauqua Theatre Company, None Too Fragile, and Dobama. Most recently, he appeared in A Doll’s House Pt.2 at the Beck Center and Rajiv Joseph's Describe the Night for Ensemble Theatre. David has an MFA in Acting and Directing from California State University, Long Beach, and an undergraduate degree from the University of Evansville.

Kenya Woods, a native of Cleveland, Ohio holds more than 30 years of experience in dance performance, choreography, teaching, and leadership. She holds a degree in Dance from Tennessee State University and is trained in Classical Ballet. Dr. Diane McIntyre, Madame Darvash, and Lynn Simonson are powerhouses in the dance community who have influenced her teaching style.

She is certified in the Lester Horton Pedagogy, the official technique taught at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. Theatrical Choreography and Directorial credits include: Cabaret (The Maltz/CWRU MFA and Undergraduate Program), Everybody (CWRU MFA Program), (Blood At the Root (CWRU Undergraduate Program), A Son Is Given (The Hanna Theater), Rent (Cain Park), The Bubbly Brown Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin and Passing Strange (Karamu House), The Little Mermaid, Scrooge: The Musical, Brooklyn: The Musical and Ain’t Misbehavin’ (Near West Theatre Co-Director/Choreographer), Through Her Eyes, The Absolutely Amazing and True Adventures of Miss Joan Southgate and Ya Mama! (Cleveland Public Theater, New York International Fringe, and Hollywood Fringe), Once on This Island (Playhouse Square, CSA Theater Elite), and Bunnicula (Cleveland PlayHouse). Kenya is currently a faculty teacher of Dance at Case Western Reserve University for students in the MFA Theater Program. She continues to teach dance to students of all ages and lead programs that help cultivate technique, artistry, body awareness, empowerment, and appreciation for dance.