Wendell Beavers joined the Naropa faculty in 2003. He was a founding faculty member and early director of New York University’s Experimental Theater Wing (ETW) where he taught from 1978 to 2003. He was named a Master Teacher at Tisch School of the Arts in 1996. He is one of three major teachers and developers of The Viewpoints, along with originator Mary Overlie, with whom he danced from 1977 to 1985, and the director Anne Bogart. He began choreographing his own work in the early ‘90s and his solo and group works have been produced in New York by Dance Theater Workshop, The Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church and a number of smaller venues. He was also co-founder and director of Movement Research, Inc. He has trained casts or collaborated with many directors at ETW and elsewhere including Robert Wilson, Anne Bogart, Richard Foremen, Moises Kaufman,Tan Dun, Kevin Kuhlke and Steve Wangh. His students have gone on to work in many experimental companies including The Wooster Group, Mabou Mines, Tectonic Theater, Stomp and have been featured in film, television and many commercial venues.
Erika is a certified practitioner of Body-Mind Centering, holds a massage therapy license from New York State and is a nationally registered movement therapist. For the past fifteen years, she has maintained a private practice in NYC specializing in both massage and movement therapy. She has an extensive background as a dance teacher and performer and has taught workshops in experiential anatomy and dance applications of Body-Mind Centering(tm) in numerous studios and schools in the US and Europe. Erika is also a certified meditation instructor in mindfulness-based meditation and has been a student and teacher of shambhala buddhism for more than twenty-five years. She currently maintains a private practice in New York City and Boulder, Colorado, and is adjunct faculty in the MFA Theater: Contemporary Performance program at Naropa University.
Barbara Dilley BA, Mount Holyoke College
Barbara Dilley studied and performed dance in New York City from 1960–1975 with the Merce Cunningham Co. (1963–1968) and the Grand Union, a dance/theater collaboration that was to extend the definitions of the art of improvisation (1969–1976). Beginning in 1974 she has taught at Naropa University in Boulder, Colo., first designing the Dance/Movement Studies Program, then serving as President (1985–1993). Her teaching emphasizes "embodied awareness" through dance/movement studies, creative process and the disciplines of meditation. Throughout these years she has created dance and performance art; most recently with the Mariposa Collective which she co-founded in 1994. She has been married twice and has two children, Ben Lloyd and Owen Bondurant. She has two grandchildren, Griffen and Ella Marie Lloyd.
Ethelyn Friend
Core faculty, Roy Hart Voice Work
BA, Naropa University
MFA, Brandeis University
Ethelyn is an actor, singer, writer and teacher; has been on the faculty of Naropa University since 1994 and currently teaches voice for both MFA & BFA Performance programs. She began her training as an actor at Circle-in-the-Square Studio in New York City and later earned an MFA in acting from Brandeis University. She received her BA in Writing from Naropa University's acclaimed Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Since 1991, Friend has been deeply involved in an artistic and personal association with the Roy Hart Theatre of France. Friend has acted in professional theatres in San Francisco, Boston and Denver including Merrimack Repertory Theatre, New Repertory Theatre and numerous roles with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. She has appeared with Denver's Curious Theatre Company for two seasons for which she was twice awarded Denver Post's "Ovation Award" for Best Actress in a Comedy (2001 and 2003). She has received numerous grants for her solo musical theatre works.
Leigh Fondakowski
Leigh Fondadowski was the head writer of The Laramie Project and has been a member of Tectonic Theatre Project since 1995. She is an Emmy nominated co-screenwriter for the adaptation of The Laramie Project for HBO. Her latest work, The People’s Temple, has been performed under her direction at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Perseverance Theater, and The Guthrie Theater. Another original play, I Think I Like Girls, played to sold-out audiences in San Francisco and at La Jolla Playhouse and was voted one of the top 10 plays of 2002 by The Advocate. Other directing credits include: I Think I Like Girls (La Jolla Playhouse and Encore Theatre), The Laramie Project (Berkeley Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Perseverance Theatre), La Voix Humaine by Jean Cocteau (Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh), Agatha by Marguerite Duras (French Alliance, New York City), Gwen John adapted from the novel by Jane Warrick (HERE, New York City) and readings and workshops of new plays by Jeff Baron, Stephen Belber, Colman Domingo and Lisa Ramirez.
Daniel Banks PhD, New York University
Directing credits include: Anna in the Tropics (Belarussian National Drama Theatre, Minsk); Beautiful Warrior (produced by the Vineyard Theatre, NY); Jitney (National Theatre of Uganda, Kampala); U.K. premiere of John Guare’s play Bosoms and Neglect (Teatro Technis, London); Countee Cullen’s Medea (Williams College); off-Broadway workshops of Richard Rogers award-winning musicals, The Princess and the Black-Eyed Pea and Bobos (John Houseman Theatre); Avenue X and The Cradle Will Rock (Undergraduate Drama, NYU). He also adapted and directed Detained, the prison memoirs of Kenyan writer and dissident, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, as the inaugural production of NYU’s Department of Art and Public Policy. Movement/choreography includes: Hamlet (Singapore Rep); Troilus and Cressida, All's Well that Ends Well (N.Y. Shakespeare Festival); Henry VI, Measure for Measure (Theatre for a New Audience); Really Rosie with Maurice Sendak (SUNY Purchase); The Magic Flute (La Monnaie, Brussels; Landestheater, Salzburg). Daniel has directed workshops and readings, curated and hosted numerous panels, and served as education director for the NYC Hip Hop Theatre Festival. He has led Theatre of Testimony workshops in the United States and abroad, which have been the basis for performance pieces and community dialogue about oppression and identity. He is on the steering committee of Theatre Without Borders, for which he was co-planner with Roberta Levitow of the 2005 Symposium, “The Future of International Theatre Exchange.” He is a past chair of the Black Theatre Association Focus Group (ATHE) and recipient of both the Drama League’s Special Interest Residency grant for his work in Paris with Monika Pagneux, Peter Brook's movement specialist, and of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors. Most recently, he spent three months teaching at University of Ghana and six weeks on a U.S. State Department–sponsored program in South Africa in residence at the Market Theatre, leading Hip Hop Theatre workshops and creating youth leadership through the arts. He has taught for ten years in undergraduate drama, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.
Moisés Kaufman
Moisés Kaufman is an award-winning writer and director. His plays Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde and The Laramie Project have been among the most honored and most widely performed plays in America over the last decade.
Mr. Kaufman most recently directed The Public Theater’s production of Macbeth in Central Park starring Liev Schreiber and Jennifer Ehle. He previously directed the Pulitzer and Tony award winning play I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright. Mr. Kaufman also directed the film adaptation of The Laramie Project, which aired on HBO and was the opening night selection at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.
Mr. Kaufman is the founder and Artistic Director of Tectonic Theater Project, a laboratory for new works in theater and film based in New York. Tectonic is currently in development of 33 Variations, an original work exploring Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations.
Mr. Kaufman is the recipient of the Joe A. Callaway Award for Directing and a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting.
Wendell Beavers
Erika Berland 
Barbara Dilley 
Ethelyn Friend 
Leigh Fondakowski 
Moisés Kaufman