Joan Bruemmer, Interim Co-Director, BFA Performance
BFA, New York University
MFA, Naropa University

Joan Bruemmer has taught Movement and Acting at Naropa University, Working Classrooms in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Dance Theater of Cologne, Festival D'Avignon, School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, The Moscow Art Theater, CounterPULSE and San Francisco Dancer's Group. She is Artistic Director of San Francisco’s Marijoh DanzTheatre, a movement theater company known for integrating multidisciplinary techniques and original text for the stage. In San Francisco, her work has been performed at ODC Theater, the San Francisco Edge Festival, San Francisco Fringe Festival, Women on the Edge Festival, Theater Artaud, Dance Mission and The Marsh. In New York she performed at The Kitchen, P.S. 122, St. Mark's Church, Theater Regenesis, ABCnoRio and St. John the Divine. She was invited to perform twice at the Festival D’Avignon in France and her work has been performed internationally as part of works-in-residence in Germany, France, the Netherlands and at the International Theater Festival in Arezzo. She was selected Pick of the Fringe for 2005 and 2006 for original works produced at the Boulder International Fringe Festival. She has performed with Meredith Monk, and been directed by The Siti Company and Leigh Fondakowski of the Tectonic Theater. Recent acting credits include Mrs. Freeman in square product theatre’s GOOD COUNTRY PEOPLE; Carol in Theatre13’s THE DEER AND THE ANTELOPE PLAY; and the Nurse in Boulder Ensemble Theatre’s ANTIGONE.

Cara Reeser, Interim Co-Director, BFA Performance
BA, Sarah Lawrence College
MFA, New York University

Cara relocated to Colorado from New York City in 1994. She has performed and choreographed for her Denver based Dance Company, Still Moving Dances since its inception in 1994. Cara’s works have been commissioned by The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, where she has been collaborating with local artists on site-specific performance works for the past several years. Cara was a member of the Mariposa Artists Collective from 1997 to 2001 and has enjoyed dancing and collaborating with many local and nationally based artists on performance projects throughout the US. She has served on the faculty of Naropa since 1997 and has taught at the Colorado Dance Festival, as well as locally in Boulder, Denver, and Fort Collins, since 1994. Cara is a second generation Pilates instructor who had the honor to mentor under Master Teacher Kathleen Stanford Grant, and owns Denver Pilates studio Pilates Aligned Inc. Currently, Cara teaches workshops in movement education, dance and Pilates around the nation.

Robert Sussuma
BM, State University of New York, Fredonia
MM,The Longy School of Music

Robert Sussuma, counter-tenor, holds a Bachelor's degree in vocal performance from SUNY, Fredonia, in New York, a Master's degree in Early Music Vocal Performance from the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is a Certified Course Instructorof the Estill Voice Training System and Executive Director of the Estill Voice Institute in Boulder, CO. Although he specializes in the performance of Early Vocal Music (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque), his performance experience and interests include musical theater, jazz, Barbershop, rock, pop, choral, world, classical/opera and folk music. Currently, Robert is a soloist with and vocal coach for Boulder's nationally acclaimed choral ensemble The Ars Nova Singers. Additionally he performs regularly in Europe with Ensemble al Verso, and is in training to become a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner.

Robert's teaching philosophy is one that is rooted in self-awareness. He believes in the innate wisdom and potential of each individual and seeks to create a safe and expansive learning environment in which each student becomes like a scientist in the laboratory of his/her own experience--at once the experimenter, the observer as well as the experiment itself!

The Estill Voice Training System is a state-of-the-art approach to singing that allows one to know what one is actually doing while singing and speaking in different ways. This provides a foundational knowledge of how the human voice works which, in combination with awareness and new vocabulary of sensation helps create a more and more accurate image for singing. Since we "act in accordance with our self-image" (M. Feldenkrais), learning by exploring our experience is such a way that fills-in or 'vocal self-image' naturally brings more and more confidence, ease and potency to our singing.

Lee Worley
BA, Mount Holyoke College
MA, The Naropa Institute

Lee Worley founded the Theatre Studies program at Naropa in 1974. She has developed contemplative exercises for arts in education and contemplative education programs throughout her career at Naropa. She also taught theatre at a Buddhist-inspired middle school in Boulder for many years. She is one of a very few holders of the Mudra Space Awareness lineage—a performance training derived from Tibetan Yoga. She was a founding member, actress and teacher in Joseph Chaikin's Open Theater and is a senior student of Tibetan Buddhism. Her recent book, Coming from Nothing: The Sacred Art of Acting, outlines her contemplative acting method.

Article by Lee Worley:
"Bodhi: The Voice of Vajrayana Buddhism, Volume 7, no. 4 "

Master Artists In Residence and Guest Artist Faculty

Peggy Pettitt
Master Teacher

Peggy Pettitt received a BA with distinction from Antioch College. Since 1974, Ms. Pettitt has facilitated scores of community-based, university and public school groups working in partnership with arts organizations to present their original stories in performance. As Performance Director of Elders Share the Arts, she founded and presented a group of New York City's finest older adult storytellers, the Pearls of Wisdom. Recipient of a National Endowment For The Arts Fellowship and New York City's Arts-In-Education Roundtable Award for Sustained Achievement, she continues to create theater and storytelling work with diverse groups of all ages for numerous organizations, including Age Exchange of London, New York University, Touchstone Theatre, Performance Space 122 and Central Park East Public School. A 2000–01 Fulbright Fellowship to Senegal culminated in an original play entitled The Spirit Factor based on living history in West Africa and the art of storytelling.

Rémy Tissier
Guest Artist

Rémy Tissier, painter, director and writer, has worked in collaboration with Peggy Pettitt to create more than 10 original plays, including The Spirit Factor and Caught Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Since 1985 he has lent his artistic vision to the performance work of numerous theatre ensembles, including Touchstone Theatre and New York Street Theatre Caravan, and to the solo works of Louise Smith and Greg Shamie. Tissier, 2001 Haiku laureate of the Embassy of Japan in Senegal, is author of Le Dédales de Disciples, a novel published in 2004 by L'Harmattan Press in Paris. Recipent of New York's Art Matters award for design, he is also an accomplished painter. Tissier received his classical and fine arts education in France.