Stage Director Artist Categories

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Fumiko Bielefeldt

Performing Artist: Lighting Designer, Stage Director

Bielefeldt, a native of Japan, has a bachelor’s degree in economics, but came to a career in costume design when she was taking classes at Stanford University, where her husband was teaching. Out of curiosity, she took a costume design course at Stanford that piqued her interest. After Stanford, she did a year’s internship at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre. “Then after that, it just happened my supervisor at Stanford–he was the one who really started my career and gave my name to TheatreWorks,” Bielefeldt says. TheatreWorks’ artistic director Robert Kelley gave her her first job costuming a show. Among the many productions she has designed that she counts as favorites are shows that represent a diverse array of times and places, from the 19th-century Japan of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Pacific Overtures to the 18th-century France of Triumph of Love: the musical; contemporary India (Baby Taj); 1930s New York City (The Learned Ladies of Park Avenue); 19th-century Scandinavia (Miss Julie) and another play based on an Austen novel, Emma: A musical romance.

Barbara Cannon

Performing Artist: Costume Designer, Stage Director

Barbara Cannon served as Artistic Director for Bus Barn Stage Company from 1999 – 2012.

Ron Gasparinetti

Performing Artist: Set Designer, Stage Director

Hailing originally from Newark, New Jersey, Ron Gasparinetti has been a resident of the Bay Area for 19 years. Ron graduated from Montclair State University in New Jersey with a BFA in scenic design. Currently, he is the production manager, technical director, and resident scenic designer at City Lights Theater Company in San Jose. To address the needs of smaller theatre companies in the Bay Area, Ron and business partner Charles McKeithan created THRUST Scenic Design and Construction, providing services to dozens of productions. He has been nominated for three Theatre Bay Area (TBA) Awards for Outstanding Scenic Design and in 2015 received the TBA Award for his set design of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf produced at Los Altos Stage Company. Also in 2015, he became involved with the College of Adaptive Arts in San Jose, an organization that affords differently abled people the opportunity to audition and perform theatrical pieces.

Kevin R. Hauge

Performing Artist: Producer, Set Designer, Sound Designer, Stage Director

Kevin R. Hauge has served as Artistic Director at Children’s Musical Theatre San Jose (CMT) for the past 20 years. Kevin’s artistic vision and commitment to the arts community in Silicon Valley has helped create an organization that is inclusive and strives for excellence in all they produce. Kevin’s innovative approach to productions includes incorporating modern techniques and technology, culminating in recognition of artistic excellence from the National Endowment for the Arts for nine consecutive years. Kevin’s passion, vision and spirit are a dynamic engine that inspires and motivates not only those who work with him but the community he serves. His work creates lasting bonds between people, creates a sense of community, and encourages a strong sense of engagement rooted in the place he lives and works. Over the past two decades, Kevin has worked with more than 10,000 young performers and reached more than 50,000 audience members. Some of Kevin’s most recent and noteworthy productions from CMT include American Idiot, Ragtime, Les Miserables, Rent, Miss Saigon, Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida, Disney’s Mary Poppins and The Little Mermaid, among others, many of which CMT was the first amateur theater company to receive rights to produce. This season, he will direct the regional premiere of Billy Elliot. A recipient of the prestigious Lin Wright Special Recognition Award by the American Alliance for Theater and Education, Kevin has been the guest speaker at the International Association of Theater Educators Conference in Washington D.C., and the Education and Technology conference in New York City. He has collaborated on productions in a variety of venues all over the world.

Daniel Helfgot

Performing Artist: Stage Director

Daniel Helfgot’s credits include well over 200 productions of over 100 operas, operettas and zarzuelas from the Baroque to the contemporary, including several world premieres. His international credits include shows in Argentina (both at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires and the Teatro Argentino, La Plata), Albania (National Opera), Austria, Canada, Costa Rica (Opera Nacional), Finland, Germany, Mexico (Bellas Artes), and Sweden. In the US he has directed for such companies as Baltimore; Billings (Montana), Festival Opera (California), Chattanooga, Eugene, Knoxville, Memphis, Orlando, Shreveport, Pennsylvania Festival, Sacramento, Spring Opera and Western Opera Theater of San Francisco, Utah Opera, Utah Festival Opera, Virginia Opera, etc. From 1982 to 2000 Mr. Helfgot was the Resident Director and Director of Production for Opera San José where he created 60 productions defining the company’s artistic output, established all its production departments and led the design process for the renovation of its performing venues, the Montgomery and the California Theaters of San José. From 2995 to 2005, he produced and directed most of the main repertoire of zarzuelas for the Zarzuela Festival in Napa, CA and since 2006 he has directed for every season of the Utah’s Opera Festival. He was also Producer and Director for the Pennsylvania Opera Theater in Pittsburgh, PA. And in Argentina, he was Production Director and Artistic Coordinator for the Opera, Ballet and Symphony seasons at the Teatro Argentino and directed the Project for the Design and Development of the Center for Performing Arts in La Plata, where he also founded the Teatro Musical de Cámara and the Festival Musical de Noviembre, and was Resident Assistant Director and Rehearsals Coordinator for the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. His directorial work also includes tango and cabaret shows and he has written and perform scripts and narrations for different stage genres. Helfgot produced several opera radio programs and directed opera broadcasts of his own operatic productions for television in Argentina and an award winning production for PBS in the US. As a journalist, also in Argentina, he was the editor of the Sunday’s edition of the daily El Día where he wrote extensively about music and the arts and also founded and directed the by-monthly Ritmo, a magazine dedicated to the performing arts and architecture. Helfgot translates opera libretti from Italian, Spanish, German and French for English and Spanish supertitles and writes operatic dialogue versions for the English, Spanish and German repertoire. He is also the author of the libretto for the opera The Tale of the Nutcracker with music by Craig Bohmler premiered in 1999. He has received the Opera Director of the Year 2009 award from the Classical Singer Magazine, an award from the Arts Council Silicon Valley and has been honored with the Koret Israel Prize. Mr. Helfgot is the author of The Third Line: The Opera Performer as Interpreter, a definitive book on the training of singers, originally published by Schirmer Books followed by a revised edition titled The Third Line: The Singer as Interpreter, a book widely used by individuals, universities and conservatories. His teaching experience includes a guest professorship at the Musikhochschule of the Vienna University, Austria and the leadership of the Vocal and Vocal Accompanying Programs at the Music Academy of the West, Santa Barbara, California. He is constantly in demand throughout US campuses, with guest appearances at the National Academy of the Arts in Taipei, Taiwan; the Instituto Superior de Arte, Teatro Colón, Argentina; the Academy of Music in Åland, Finland, etc. Helfgot maintains a private coaching studio in San José, CA, is an adviser and lecturer for OperaNeo of San Diego, CA. and serves on the advisory boards of OperaWorks, Los Angeles, CA. and the San José Chamber Orchestra.

Robert Kelley

Performing Artist: Stage Director

A Bay Area native and Stanford University graduate, Robert Kelley founded TheatreWorks in 1970 and has been its Artistic Director ever since. He has directed over 150 TheatreWorks productions, including many world or regional premieres. In 2012, he received the Silicon Valley Arts Council’s Legacy Laureate Award for his lifetime of artistic achievement. The Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle (BATCC) also presented him with both their Paine Knickerbocker award for lifetime achievement and for his direction of TheatreWorks’ productions of four different performances. He has also received BATCC Awards for Outstanding Direction for his productions of Into the Woods, Pacific Overtures, Rags, Sweeney Todd, Another Midsummer Night, Sunday in the Park with George, Jane Eyre, and Caroline, or Change; Bay Area Drama-Logue Awards for his direction of Ah, Wilderness! and Once in a Lifetime; Dean Goodman Choice Awards for Violet, Ragtime, Proof, Dolly West’s Kitchen, and Harold & Maude; and Back Stage West Garland Awards for his direction of Side Show and Sunday in the Park with George. He recently directed 33 Variations, Of Mice and Men, The Secret Garden, Sense and Sensibility, and Snow Falling on Cedars, and productions of Emma at TheatreWorks, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, and Repertory Theatre of St. Louis.

Lisa Mallette

Performing Artist: Actor, Stage Director

Now in her thirteenth season at City Lights, and her tenth as Executive Artistic Director, Lisa Mallette is also a member of the Theatre Bay Area Board of Directors, and chairs the TBA Theatre Services Committee. She is a graduate of both the Pacific Conservatory of Performing Arts in Santa Maria, California, and of the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City – where she studied under the late, great Sanford Meisner – and she is a proud member of Actors Equity Association, the Screen Actors’ Guild, and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. For the past twenty years, Lisa has performed and directed for countless theatres in the Bay Area and throughout the Western United States. For City Lights, she has directed acclaimed productions of Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, A…My Name Is Alice, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Full Monty, Hair, First Person Shooter, Rent , Aphrodisiac, Spacebar: A Broadway Play by Kyle Sugarman and Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show. She is also currently directing Amadeus, opening in March. A San Francisco native, Lisa is a graduate of the prestigious Community Leadership San Jose, and she lives on the Peninsula with her husband, actor-director and City Lights Associate Artistic Director Kit Wilder, and their two beautiful daughters, ten year old Sophie and seven year old Olivia. http://cltc.org/

Leslie Martinson

Performing Artist: Actor, Stage Director

Leslie Martinson, previously Casting Director/Associate Artist and director of many hit TheatreWorks Productions, is the company’s Associate Artistic Director. Martinson has served as a director and administrator at TheatreWorks since 1984.

Kimberly Mohne Hill

Literary Arts: Writer; Performing Artist: Producer, Stage Director

Kimberly Mohne Hill received her MFA in Acting from the American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.). Currently an Associate Professor of Acting, Voice & Speech, and Dialects at Santa Clara University (SCU), Hill continues to direct and dialect coach throughout the Bay Area. Recent directing credits include: Assistant Director of A Thousand Splendid Suns at ACT/Theatre Calgary with Carey Perloff, When the Rain Stops Falling at the Dragon Theater, Venus in Fur at San Jose Stage Company, In the Next Room (or, the vibrator play) at CityLights Theater, and The Other Place at Dragon and Arcadia at SCU. Kimberly’s recent dialect coaching credits include: Around the World in 80 Days, Outside Mullingar and Constellations for TheatreWorks, Peter and the Starcatcher and The Elephant Man at Hillbarn, Shirley Valentine at Center Rep of Walnut Creek and Sweeney Todd at San Jose Stage, among others. She has published three books for young actors on the subject of dialects: Monologues in Dialect for Young Actors, Vol. I & II and Scenes in Dialect for Young Actors.

Richard Orlando

Performing Artist: Producer, Set Designer, Stage Director

Richard Orlando founded the Northside Theatre Company in 1978 as a city-run youth theater and took it to independent, non-profit status as an arts education resource in the aftermath of Proposition 13 budget cuts. In 2002, Northside Theatre Company became a fully professional theater. Richard directed and designed over 150 plays, including the world premiere of Nathan Sanders’ The Sugar Witch, which was published by Samuel French Inc. He was a mentor to dozens of young artists and impacted hundreds of lives. From 1990 to 1992, he served as a California Artist in Residence for the San Jose Unified School District. He was a leader in the local arts community and an active San Jose resident. He served as a consultant to the San Jose 2020 Task Force for Mayor Tom McEnery, the San Jose Youth Service Committee for Mayor Susan Hammer, and the Arts Council of Santa Clara County for Germaine Cummings. Orlando was awarded the Certificate of Excellence from State Senator John Vasconcellos in 1990.

Judy Pearson Kobsar

Performing Artist: Stage Director

Judy Pearson Kobsar is a spirited speaker and wellness expert specializing in Nutrition, Longevity and Optimized living. Using her unique backgrounds in Fitness, Theater and Dance, Life Coaching and Health Coaching, she brings a fresh and innovative approach to her classes, workshops and seminars.

Ken Savage

Performing Artist: Stage Director

As a director at Stanford University and in the Bay Area, Ken’s work has been focused on musical theater and on social responsibility. In his role as Artistic Director for the Asian American Theater Project, Ken has worked on a variety of plays at Stanford that address race and representation on stage, including Death of a Salesman and My Fair Lady. In addition to his work on campus, Ken’s recent professional accomplishments include the role of assistant director American Conservatory Theater, and cultural consultant and assistant director at TheatreWorks. His first major project post-graduation will be another production of My Fair Lady this time at Broadway By the Bay. Ken has a B.A. in Drama from Stanford University, and is a M.A. candidate in Communication with a focus on virtual reality and performance at Stanford University.

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