CWRU/CPH MFA Acting Program Presents Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing
Posted October 9, 2025 in Press Releases
WHAT:
Wit flies, love blossoms, and deception dances in the sun-drenched courtyards of Messina in this fresh and fiery production of Much Ado About Nothing. Shakespeare’s beloved comedy crackles with humor, heart, and heartbreak as sparring lovers Beatrice and Benedick wage their war of words, unaware that their friends are scheming to bring them together. Meanwhile, young romance is tested by a cruel trick, and a band of unlikely heroes must stumble their way to the truth.
This vibrant staging pulses with energy, emotional depth, and razor-sharp performances. Under the direction of Terri McMahon, this classic comedy proves that even in a world full of gossip, mistaken identities, and social games—love, in all its messy glory, will have the final word.
Join the Case Western Reserve University MFA actors for an unforgettable evening of laughter, longing, and lyrical brilliance. This is Much Ado as you’ve never seen it—passionate, poignant, and unmistakably alive.
Director Terri McMahon says, “The grad students at Case Western are hungry to wrap their hearts, minds and mouths around William Shakespeare’s stories and perfectly tuned narrative structure. His images, wordplay and characters full of contradictions are exactly what they need to address in their training to play any kind of role in any kind of medium in their future. There is no other author as full of surprises, ferocity and effort to be fully human as are found in Shakespeare’s canon.”
CWRU/CPH MFA Acting Program/Production Liason Donald C. Carrier adds, “I am so thrilled to welcome Terri McMahon as our guest director! The vast experience she brings as an actor and director at many of America's preeminent classical theaters gives our students an enormous opportunity for growth.
A complex play like Much Ado About Nothing, with its comic form balanced with drama and suspense, invites the Class of 2026 to employ the technical, interpretive, and imaginative skills that they have cultivated while training here in Cleveland.”
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Much Ado About Nothing
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Terri McMahon
WHEN: November 5 - 15, 2025
WHERE: The Helen Lab Theatre in Playhouse Square, 1501 Dodge Court, Cleveland, OH 44114
TICKETS: Single tickets are $16. Students can receive $8 tickets with promo code STU and a valid student ID.
INFO: For information and to purchase tickets, visit clevelandplayhouse.com or call 216-241-6000
PRESS: Contact Chad Peterson, Director of Marketing and Communications at cpeterson@clevelandplayhouse.com or call 216-400-7020
WHO:
THE CAST
MADALYN BAKER (Hero/Watch)
MEREDITH NELSON (Leonata)
ADAM ORTEGA (Benedick)
BYRON JOHNSON (Don Pedro)
BRIANNA MILLER (Beatrice)
CALDER MEIS (Claudio)
BRENDAN LOWRY (Borachio)
CHRISTINA MCSHEFFREY (Margaret/Dogberry)
AUSTIN VANDEGRIFT (Friar/Sexton)
NASH FEILER (Don John/Watch)
THE CREATIVE TEAM
TERRI MCMAHON (Director) Regional directing credits include Oregon Shakespeare Festival (The Merry Wives of Windsor); Great Lakes Theater / Idaho Shakespeare Festival / Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival (The Merry Wives of Windsor); American Players Theatre (The Merry Wives of Windsor); Santa Cruz Shakespeare Festival (A Midsummer Night’s Dream); Island Shakespeare Festival (Othello, King Lear); Arabian Shakespeare Festival (Macbeth); and University of Utah ATP (Love’s Labor’s Lost). Also directed and adapted OSF School Visit Program touring performances; devised and directed an OSF Green Show called “Give It Up for Elizabethan-ness”; directed OSF staged readings and has both acted and directed multiple times in OSF’s The Black Swan Lab for new play development. Other directing credits include Southern Oregon University, Oregon Cabaret Theatre, Oregon Repertory Theater, Kern Shakespeare Festival and OSF’s Daedalus Project AIDS Benefit (multiple times); “Sweetly Writ”, at the Hult Center in Eugene, OR—a collaboration between OSF and the University of Oregon to celebrate UofO’s Shakespeare First Folio Exhibition. Devised and directed Romeo and Juliet for Eugene Symphony’s 50-piece orchestra combining Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet and Sergei Prokofiev’s music of the same name.
BEN NEEDHAM (Scenic Design)
ANGELINA HERRIN (Costume Design)
COLLEEN ALBRECHT (Lighting Design)
JEFF POLUNAS (Sound Design)
TYREE FRANKLIN (Stage Manager)
SANTINO GAROFAO (Production Assistant)
LEADERSHIP
DONALD CARRIER (Director of CWRU/CPH MFA Acting Program/Production Liaison) most recently directed Middletown for the MFA Program, Othello at Texas Shakespeare Festival, Ellis Island: The Dream of America for The Cleveland Orchestra, and Doll’s House, Part 2 for the Beck Center. For the CWRU/CPH MFA Acting Program, he has also directed The Liar, Passage, Fifth of July, Clybourne Park, The Misanthrope, Too True to Be Good, and The Violins of Hope. Other directing includes Doubt, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Seminar, and Really Really (Beck Center for the Arts); and Becky Shaw (Dobama Theatre). Other selected directing credits include The Crucible, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Habeas Corpus, The Pirates of Penzance, and Oh! What a Lovely War. He has appeared at Cleveland Play House in Shakespeare in Love; All the Way; Luna Gale; The Crucible; The Little Foxes; Yentl; In the Next Room, or the vibrator play; Ten Chimneys; Noises Off; and Lincolnesque. Regional credits include The National Arts Center, Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival, Great Lakes Theater, The Studio Theatre, The Shakespeare Theatre, The Wilma Theater, The Huntington Theatre, Intiman Theatre, and Chicago Shakespeare Theater. He spent nine seasons at the Stratford Festival, three seasons at the Old Globe, and two seasons at the Shaw Festival. Television/Film: Guns, The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Passion of Ayn Rand, and Dead by Monday. Don is a proud Lunt/Fontanne Fellow.
THE DEPARMENT OF THEATRE at CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY offers education and participation in all aspects of drama, with course offerings in acting, stagecraft, costume design, scene design, directing, and dramatic writing; and history, literature, and criticism. Bachelor of Arts students have the opportunity to perform as well as serve on the design and technical teams in four fully produced mainstage theatrical productions each year. The low student-to-faculty ratio ensures that students are able to work closely with our faculty of highly accomplished artists and scholars. As a discipline that is both performing art and humanity, the department treats all performances as artistic and educational experiences, and welcomes the participation of students regardless of their academic majors and career goals. At the graduate level, the Master of Arts degree prepares students for work in professional theater and education, or for further pursuit of graduate study, while the Master of Fine Arts professional actor training program — a collaborative partnership between the Department of Theater and Cleveland Play House — represents a unique alliance between one of the oldest academic theater programs in the United States and the nation’s first regional theater.
CLEVELAND PLAY HOUSE EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP
MICHAEL BARAKIVA (Artistic Director) is an Armenian-Israeli American director and writer who has staged new plays, revivals, and classics in New York City and around the country. Michael was appointed Artistic Director of Cleveland Play House in December 2023, where he served as director of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as well as co-director of CPH’s world premiere production of Ken Ludwig’s Moriarty: A New Sherlock Holmes Adventure. Barakiva’s work has been seen at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Primary Stages, Syracuse Stage, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, and the Hangar Theatre, where he served as Artistic Director. He founded The Upstart Creatures, a theatre company that creates community through performance and food, as well as the Leadership Initiative Project, which equips historically excluded artists with the tools to succeed in leadership positions. Barakiva has received three Drama League directing fellowships, the Phil Killian Directing Fellowship (OSF), the David Merrick Prize in Drama, and was a Granada Artist-in-Residence at UC Davis. He led a week-long workshop on musical theatre at the International Puppet Theater in Sofia, Bulgaria, and was a presenter at the International University Theatre Festival at UNAM in Mexico City. He served as producer of Summer Camp 6 (Soho Rep) and as the Readings and Workshops Coordinator at New York Stage and Film, as well as a Primary Coach on Season 2 of MTV’s Made. As a writer, Barakiva is the recipient of a Red Bull Commission for his adaptation of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, an EST/Sloan Project Commission, and a co-author of String Theory (Connotation Press). His young adult novels have been named to the Rainbow List, Equality Family Council Reading List, The Barnes and Noble’s Perfect Valentine’s Day YA Novels list, spending over a year as Goodreads #1 LGBTQ YA Novel. Education: Vassar College, The Juilliard School.
RACHEL L. FINK (Managing Director) is honored to return home to Northeast Ohio and lead Cleveland Play House during its 110th anniversary season. A proud graduate of Cleveland Heights High School and Case Western Reserve University, she discovered her passion for arts access, social justice, and inclusive leadership through formative Cleveland arts experiences — and an early internship at Cleveland Play House. She later earned her MFA in Theater Management from the Yale School of Drama (now the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale) and has spent over two decades guiding cultural institutions across the country. Fink spent 16 years at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where she founded and led the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, building it into a nationally recognized hub for education and community engagement. She went on to serve as Managing Director of Theatre Bay Area, supporting over 300 organizations and 2,000 artists across the San Francisco Bay Area. She later led Chicago’s Tony Award-winning Lookingglass Theatre Company through the unprecedented disruptions of the COVID-19 era, guiding key operational and mission-aligned adaptations during a time of field-wide uncertainty. At Cleveland Play House, Fink has championed operational stabilization, community partnerships, and a revitalized internal culture while co-leading strategic and artistic planning alongside Artistic Director Michael Barakiva. She serves on the boards of the League of Resident Theatres (LORT) and CreativeOhio, and is a member of the Leadership Cleveland Class of 2026. A recognized field leader, she has co-led the Professional Association of Chicago Theatres, held fellowships with the Aspen Institute, British Council, and University of Chicago, and was a member of artEquity’s national facilitator cohort — reflecting a career grounded in both local impact and national leadership.
ABOUT CLEVELAND PLAY HOUSE
CLEVELAND PLAY HOUSE, founded in 1915 and recipient of the 2015 Regional Theatre Tony Award, is America's first professional regional theatre. Throughout its rich history, CPH has remained dedicated to its mission to inspire, stimulate, and entertain diverse audiences across Northeast Ohio by producing plays and theatre education programs of the highest professional standards. CPH has produced more than 100 world and/or American premieres, and over its long history more than 12 million people have attended over 1,600 productions. Today, Cleveland Play House celebrates the beginning of its second century of service while performing in three state-of-the art venues at Playhouse Square in downtown Cleveland. Cleveland Play House is made possible in part by state tax dollars allocated by the Ohio Legislature to the Ohio Arts Council (OAC). The OAC is a state agency that funds and supports quality arts experiences to strengthen Ohio communities culturally, educationally, and economically. Cleveland Play House is supported in part by the residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture. To learn more, visit:www.clevelandplayhouse.com.
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