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Sofia Ahmad has taught with Youth Arts since 2010. She has also served as a teaching artist (theater) for Theatreworks, SF Shakespeare Festival & The San Francisco School and is a ballroom dance teacher/choreographer for Bishop O'Dowd HS & St. Leo's Elementary. As an actor, she has appeared with theaters including Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Pacific Repertory Theatre, Magic Theatre, San Jose Stage, Shotgun Players & Golden Thread. Sofia holds a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
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Rami Magron has taught for Youth Arts since 2009. In 2010 she directed excerpts from The House on Mango Street at Aptos Middle School, and in 2011 she directed Schotzie by Jim Knipfel and The Healer by Aimee Bender at Tamalpais High School. As an actor, she appeared in the Word for Word touring productions of How Tom Smith Caused the 1904 Earthquake and Ancester. She is a resident artist with Crowded Fire Theater and has performed with many theater and dance companies in the Bay Area. She has been a teaching artist for over 15 years.
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Carl Holvick-Thomas is an actor and teaching artist in the San Francisco Bay Area. He teaches for Marin Shakespeare Company and is a Resident Teaching Artist for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival. He also taught drama workshops for Dance-for-All in the townships of Cape Town, South Africa. In his acting career, Carl has performed for Shotgun Players, SF Shakes, Marin Shakes, San Jose Stage Co., Pacific Repertory Theater, and Cuttingball Theater. He has a double B.A. in Theater and Political Science from UC Berkeley.
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Sharon Huff Robinson is a professional actress who has been teaching acting to children and adults for almost twenty years. She has taught for California Theatre Center, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Woman’s Will, Kids on Camera as well as teaching drama at Bishop O’Dowd High School for 10 years. She holds an MA in Drama from SFSU and has studied physical theater and Commedia Dell’Arte at the Dell’Arte School in Blue Lake, CA.
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Matt Bernarding is a director, musician, author and artist in multiple disciplines, in addition to being a credentialed teacher. He is an experienced arts educator who has worked with student actors at all age levels, from elementary to high school, in diverse communities throughout the Bay Area, as well as South America. He has been a teaching artist for Word for Word's Youth Arts Program since 2007. His own works include books, photography, visual art, translations, recordings, musical and theatrical performances.
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Jeri Lynn Cohen has taught for Youth Arts since 2002. She is a Charter member of Word for Word Performing Arts Company where she has originated roles in over a dozen of their productions including More Stories by Tobias Wolff and Olive Kitteridge. She has performed all over the Bay Area at ACT, Aurora Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Campo Santo, A Jewish Theatre, Magic Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, San Jose Stage Company, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe. She has been a theatre artist-in-residence for the San Francisco School District for 2 years and she currently teaches at StageBridge in Oakland.
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Carlos Aguirre – actor, musician, beatboxer, educator – has been performing in the Bay Area for over eleven years. He is part of the musical group Felonious and has performed with The Roots, Eryka Badu, Black Eyed Peas, and Mary J. Bligeamong others. Carlos appeared most recently in The Magic Theatre’s 2011 production of Lily’s Revenge, and the 2010 world premiere of Oedipus El Rey. Carlos shares his experience by teaching at various schools and at risk environments throughout the Bay Area, including youth correctional facilities.
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Stephanie Hunt, as a Charter Company Member of Word for Word, has acted in over a dozen stories; she played the Python Rock Snake in Word for Word's school tour production of The Elephant's Child. She has taught and directed several school residencies with Word for Word, including Tamalpais High School (Louis Sachar's The Wayside School Stories, and Wendi Kaufman's Helen on Eighty-sixth Street), Mill Valley Middle School (poetry), and Far Arts West in Oakland (April Sinclair's Coffee will Make you Black).
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Tessa Koning-Martinez has over 20 years experience as a teaching artist in public schools throughout the Bay Area, working with theater organizations including Youth Arts, Brava! for Women in the Arts, Center for Elders and Youth in the Arts, Berkeley Repertory Theater, East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, and the California and Marin Shakespeare Festivals. She also mentors incarcerated juveniles for The Each One Reach One playwriting program, and teaches and directs for the Palo Alto Childrens Theater.
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Delia MacDougall is a Charter member of Word for Word and has been developing and teaching school workshops for over 15 years. Delia has lead workshops and residency programs with all age groups from elementary school to college. Delia has served as director for some of the most well received shows in the Word for Word’s history including: Amy Tan's Immortal Heart, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio and Upton Sinclair's Oil! The Ride, in addition to many School and Library Tour shows.
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Laura Marlin has taught for Youth Arts since 2009. Laura currently teaches with California Shakespeare Theater, and Creative Education Institute. Laura wrote the book for Bravado, a middle school musical produced in 2008 and 2010 by Berkeley Playhouse, she coaches writers through the Writer-Coach Connection, and she dances for fun. Laura holds a Master of Education from the Bank Street College in New York, and over the past fifteen years has taught subjects from middle school English to kindergarten movement.
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Erin Moro has twelve years of full time public school teaching experience with elementary through high school students. She has taught Social Studies, Language Arts and Theatre, and has directed more than twenty full scale plays and musicals. She is currently teaching for Youth Arts and New Conservatory Theatre. As an actor and singer in the Bay Area, Erin has performed with companies such as Willows Theatre, Hapgood Theatre, 42nd Street Moon, 6th Street Playhouse and Cutting Ball Theatre.
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Erin Maxon started out with Word for Word as a Youth Arts Intern in 2008, and is happy to now be a Word for Word teaching artist at schools all over the Bay Area. Erin is a performer, community arts practitioner, and drama facilitator with a passion for creating space for dialogue and real learning through theatrical fun! She has a masters degree in Applied Drama: Theatre in Educational, Community Settings from the University of London, and her bachelors in Anthropology, with a minor in Theater and Performance Studies from UC Berkeley.
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Tanya Orellana has worked with Word for Word Educational Program for the last two years, set designing House on Mango Street and All American Slurp. She has run theatre workshops with students at Aptos Middle School as well as Seven Teepees afterschool program. For the past two years she has worked as scenic painter and technical coordinator for Intersection for the Arts. Some of her collaborations have included, Habibi by Sharif Abu-Hamdeh, Cherrie Moraga’s Semilla Caminante, Junot Diaz’ Fuku Americanus, and as set designer for their latest production Nobody Move.
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Carla Pantoja is a professional Bay Area actor. Carla also works as a teaching artist through companies that include Word for Word, Cal Shakes, Berkeley Rep, Western Stage, SF Shakes, and Each One Reach One. She has taught in schools and juvenile halls throughout the Bay Area teaching acting, playwriting, directing student productions, and stage combat. Carla is a certified Stage Combat instructor through Dueling Arts International and a founding member of the local chapter, Dueling Arts San Francisco. She also does fight direction for many companies in the Bay Area such as San Francisco Mime Troupe, SF Shakes, Livermore Shakes, Crowded Fire, and Teatro Vision to name a few.
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Valerie Weak has taught for Youth Arts since 2007, and directed two stories from Gary Soto’s Petty Crimes at Hayward’s East Bay Arts High School. As an actor, she appeared in the Word for Word touring productions of The Wonderful Story of Zaal and The Killing Blanket. She has also performed with companies including CenterREP and the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival. She has been a teaching artist for over 15 years for companies including California Shakespeare Theater and Contra Costa Civic Theater. She has a BA in Theater Arts from UCLA.
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