Adult Classes & Workshops

Brian Bose (he/him) is a professional AEA actor/singer/dancer, rapper, choreographer, director, emcee and international teaching artist named one of the Faces to Watch in Arts by the San Diego Union-Tribune. He received a double B.A. in Theatre and Dance from the University of California, San Diego, and he trained at the British American Drama Academy, Steppenwolf West and CSULA Academy of the Dramatic Arts. He has acted in and choreographed productions at the Ordway, Children’s Theatre Company, Ten Thousand Things, Mixed Blood Theatre and Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, and he taught dance internationally with the Patricia Rincon Dance Collective in Germany from 2014 to 2017. In Minneapolis, he is a teaching artist for Upstream Arts and the Guthrie Theater. Learn more at www.brianbose.com.

Andrea Mislan (she/her) has been performing professionally for more than 25 years. A graduate from Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet Professional Division, she has continued to evolve in contemporary and musical theater styles in Celine Dion: A New Day, Cirque du Soleil’s Viva Elvis and the Chicago international tour. Since relocating to Minneapolis four years ago, she has most recently performed at the Guthrie Theater (West Side Story, Guys and Dolls, Cyrano de Bergerac), Chanhassen Dinner Theatres (Holiday Inn, The Music Man), the Ordway (Smokey Joe’s Cafe) and several original jazz dance musicals with Collide Theatrical Dance Company. Mislan has choreographed for regional theaters and studios across North America and taught master classes internationally in ballet, contemporary, musical theater and Fosse technique (Broadway Across America). As a certified Clinical Somatic Movement Instructor and personal movement coach, her focus is to guide a more efficient way of moving and a deeper understanding of technique and how the body moves in space in every style, for every mover.

Mira Kehoe (she/her) is a musician and theater artist who performs and mentors others in self-expression. She has taught voice, speech, dialects and acting at the University of Minnesota, The University of Utah, Hamline University and the Guthrie Theater as well as done consulting work with individuals, theaters, schools and corporations. She has coached several films and more than 300 theater productions, including 80 at the Guthrie. Kehoe has a strong foundation in the somatic arts, including Alexander and Feldenkrais work. She also teaches singing and performs jazz and Brazilian music with Tom Kehoe and Xibaba. In the corporate environment, she consults with individuals and teams in the areas of effective communication, presentation skills, improvisation and creativity, and accent reduction for clients such as Balogh Becker, Ltd, Shop NBC, MPR and Allina Health. Kehoe believes creativity is our life force and that we are called to discover and develop our talents and use them in service of the greater good. Her passion is to support students of all experience levels in finding and developing their voices.

Josh Tobiessen (he/him) is a playwright whose plays have been performed nationally by theaters including the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, the Jungle Theater and Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis, and Second Stage Theater and Crowded Outlet in New York City. Some of his plays are published by Samuel French and Dramatic Publishing. He has taught playwriting classes at universities and schools across the country and currently teaches at the Guthrie Theater. Learn more at www.joshtobiessen.com.

Michelle Hutchison (she/her) is a professional actor of stage, screen and television. She has appeared at local theaters including the Guthrie Theater, History Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, Theater Latté Da, Playwrights’ Center, Thirst Theater, Park Square Theatre, Actors Theater of Minnesota, CSz and Brave New Workshop. In Los Angeles, she appeared in the LA Weekly-nominated comedy The Bad Seed and Cabin Pressure at Hudson Theatres. She can be seen in films such as Fargo, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Into Temptation, Factotum, Thin Ice, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Nobody, Herman, The Midnight Swim and The Public Domain, and she played the recurring character of Candy Coombs in the Netflix series “Lady Dynamite.” Hutchison is the owner of Skilled Expressions, which operates a successful on-camera training school for actors, media talent and corporate training. Additionally, she served as an Adjunct Professor for The Art of Film Acting at Augsburg and Concordia Universities. She was an assistant casting director for several films, including Disney’s Ice Princess and Sky High, Superbad, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, It’s Complicated, TheBad News Bears and more. As a writer and producer, Hutchison created 12 episodes for the nationally syndicated “Passport to Design” show on the Travel Channel while writing and appearing in corporate live theater productions for companies such as General Mills, Pillsbury, Mrs. Meyers, American Express, Wells Fargo, Ameriprise and Schwan’s. She holds a B.A. in Theatre from the University of Minnesota and believes that acting is about revealing, not concealing.

Gretchen Grunzke (she/her) is a graduate of Upright Citizens Brigade — a long-form improv comedy program in New York City and only accredited comedy school in the U.S. — and now she’s hilarious. Select credits include Upright Citizens Brigade, Magnet Theater and The PIT in New York City; The Second City and The iO Theater in Chicago; and Brave New Workshop, CSz, HUGE Improv Theater, Strike Theater and Stevie Ray’s Improv Company in Minneapolis. Improv has changed her life as an actor and a human being. Her personal motto: “Do it! Embrace it! Love it!”

David Melendez (he/him)is a U.S. Navy veteran and Ph.D. candidate in Theatre Historiography at the University of Minnesota where he has taught classes in the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies. Currently, he consults with writers at the University of Minnesota's Center for Writing and is the assistant to Professor Karen Mary Davalos on Rhizomes of Mexican American Art Since 1848, a project connecting art institutions across the U.S. to a digital portal of Mexican American art. He serves on Mixed Blood Theatre’s Latino Advisory Council and the advisory board for the Alliance of Latinx Minnesota Artists. He also plays son jarocho music with the MN Jaraneros in partnership with El Colegio High School. Recent projects include the devised play, Denim,a co-production with the University of Minnesota and Theatre Novi Most (dramaturg, 2018); Ploys for Ensemble Glitz and Crisis Actors by Toot (performer, 2018–2019); Little Boy: A Nuclear Telenovela by The Brecht Circle (producer, 2019); and the short film Men Among Men (actor, 2019).

Michelle Hutchison (she/her) is a professional actor of stage, screen and television. She has appeared at local theaters including the Guthrie Theater, History Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, Theater Latté Da, Playwrights’ Center, Thirst Theater, Park Square Theatre, Actors Theater of Minnesota, CSz and Brave New Workshop. In Los Angeles, she appeared in the LA Weekly-nominated comedy The Bad Seed and Cabin Pressure at Hudson Theatres. She can be seen in films such as Fargo, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Into Temptation, Factotum, Thin Ice, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Nobody, Herman, The Midnight Swim and The Public Domain, and she played the recurring character of Candy Coombs in the Netflix series “Lady Dynamite.” Hutchison is the owner of Skilled Expressions, which operates a successful on-camera training school for actors, media talent and corporate training. Additionally, she served as an Adjunct Professor for The Art of Film Acting at Augsburg and Concordia Universities. She was an assistant casting director for several films, including Disney’s Ice Princess and Sky High, Superbad, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, It’s Complicated, TheBad News Bears and more. As a writer and producer, Hutchison created 12 episodes for the nationally syndicated “Passport to Design” show on the Travel Channel while writing and appearing in corporate live theater productions for companies such as General Mills, Pillsbury, Mrs. Meyers, American Express, Wells Fargo, Ameriprise and Schwan’s. She holds a B.A. in Theatre from the University of Minnesota and believes that acting is about revealing, not concealing.

Jim Robinson (he/him) hails from Riverside, California, and is an alum of Brave New Workshop, The Theater of Public Policy and the Off-Beat comedy club aboard the Disney Magic. As a psychology professor, he has worked at St. Catherine University and University of St. Thomas. Most recently, Robinson taught improvisation as a Fulbright Specialist in Pakistan and at Asian University for Women in Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Jim Cada (he/him) is an actor and voiceover artist who has recorded local, regional and national commercials for radio, TV and the web since 1976. He has performed in more than 20 feature films, recorded audiobooks, done narration work and voiced cartoons for Nickelodeon and Disney.

Eli Sibley (she/her) is an actor and theater professional who has spent more than 20 years doing production, playwriting, choreography and movement coaching. She has performed Shakespeare in California, taught devising in Central Europe, puppeteered in Shanghai and trained fight choreography in London. Sibley has also performed as a singer, dancer, extra and Blue Dinosaur. Along with her M.F.A. in Acting and certification from the American Society for the Alexander Technique (AmSAT), she is also a certified Laban Movement Analyst. Sibley continues to work across the country and around the globe to help bring the Alexander Technique to performance curriculum, acting studios and theater companies from Up&Back, her home studio in the Twin Cities. Learn more at www.elisibley.com.

Jennifer Liestman (she/her) has been a theater professional for more than 21 years. She worked at York Theatre Company in New York City and has spent the majority of her career serving as the Artistic Associate/Resident Casting Director at the Guthrie where she has led casting for more than 55 productions. She also teaches audition master classes for the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater B.F.A. Actor Training Program and at other universities in Minnesota and around the country.

LJ Johnson (she/her) is the Associate Casting Director at Lynn Blumenthal Casting in Minneapolis. She has worked on numerous feature films and television shows as well as hundreds of commercials. Her favorite part about being a casting director is working one on one with talent to help them achieve their best audition.

Mira Kehoe (she/her) is a musician and theater artist who performs and mentors others in self-expression. She has taught voice, speech, dialects and acting at the University of Minnesota, The University of Utah, Hamline University and the Guthrie Theater as well as done consulting work with individuals, theaters, schools and corporations. She has coached several films and more than 300 theater productions, including 80 at the Guthrie. Kehoe has a strong foundation in the somatic arts, including Alexander and Feldenkrais work. She also teaches singing and performs jazz and Brazilian music with Tom Kehoe and Xibaba. In the corporate environment, she consults with individuals and teams in the areas of effective communication, presentation skills, improvisation and creativity, and accent reduction for clients such as Balogh Becker, Ltd, Shop NBC, MPR and Allina Health. Kehoe believes creativity is our life force and that we are called to discover and develop our talents and use them in service of the greater good. Her passion is to support students of all experience levels in finding and developing their voices.

Laura Esping (she/her) is passionate about passing on skills she has learned and practiced to not only help students experience their talents in acting but to enhance their general well-being. She believes it’s good to jump around and play together, even if it’s on Zoom! Her personal mottos are “Bit by bit,” “Breathe” and “What can I offer?”

Jim Cada (he/him) is an actor and voiceover artist who has recorded local, regional and national commercials for radio, TV and the web since 1976. He has performed in more than 20 feature films, recorded audiobooks, done narration work and voiced cartoons for Nickelodeon and Disney.

Josh Tobiessen (he/him) is a playwright whose plays have been performed nationally by theaters including the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, the Jungle Theater and Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis, and Second Stage Theater and Crowded Outlet in New York City. Some of his plays are published by Samuel French and Dramatic Publishing. He has taught playwriting classes at universities and schools across the country and currently teaches at the Guthrie Theater. Learn more at www.joshtobiessen.com.

GUTHRIE Twelfth Night, Steel Magnolias, The Glass Menagerie, Floyd’s, As You Like It, Noises Off, Frankenstein – Playing With Fire, An Enemy of the People, Blithe Spirit, Indecent, Romeo and Juliet, Sunday in the Park With George, The Bluest Eye, King Lear, The Lion in Winter, The Parchman Hour. THEATER Milwaukee Repertory Theater (more than 30 productions); American Contemporary Theater (more than 25 productions); The Marriott Theatre (more than 20 productions); Chicago Shakespeare Theater; Steppenwolf Theatre; Utah Shakespeare Festival; Arizona Theatre Company; Cardinal Stage; Drury Lane Theatre; Lyric Opera of Chicago. TEACHING Senior lecturer, University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater B.F.A. Actor Training Program; M.F.A. Actor Training Program, American Contemporary Theater; M.F.A. and B.F.A. Actor Training Programs, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. TRAINING Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (London); Northwestern University

H. Adam Harris (he/him) is an actor, director, teaching artist and cultural equity consultant who works at the intersection of theater, education, social justice and community engagement. He recently directed the regional premiere of Redwood by Brittany K. Allen at the Jungle Theater. Harris is the Education Coordinator at the Playwrights’ Center, a resident teaching artist with the Guthrie Theater and Children’s Theatre Company, a board member at Ten Thousand Things, and a freelance equity, diversity and inclusion consultant for various organizations.

Marisa Carr (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) is a playwright who recently transplanted to Chicago after a decade in the Twin Cities. Her work has been presented or produced at Milwaukee Rep, Guthrie Theater, Pillsbury House Theatre, Playwrights’ Center, Intermedia Arts, The University of Iowa’s M.F.A. program and Pangea World Theater. Selected recent awards and honors include the Scratchpad Series at the Playwrights’ Realm (2019–2020), Page 73 Finalist (2019–2020), American Blues Theater’s Blue Ink Award Finalist (2020), Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist (2019), McKnight Fellowship in Playwriting Finalist (2019), Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship Finalist (2019), Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting Fellowship Semi-Finalist (2019), Berkeley Rep Ground Floor Residency (2018) and Forward Flux Productions’ Three New American Plays Commission (2018). Carr is also co-founder and former Artistic Director of Turtle Theater Collective, a Twin Cities-based theater company committed to producing high-quality, contemporary work that explores Native experiences and subverts expectations about how and when Native artists can create theater. She is Turtle Mountain Ojibwe from the Turtle clan.

Sam Aros Mitchell (enrolled member of the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians; he/him) earned his M.F.A. in Dance Theatre from the University of California, San Diego (Kumeyaay land) and a B.F.A. in Dance from the University of California, Santa Barbara (Chumash land). He has performed and taught professionally for over 25 years and is currently earning his Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego, as a Presidential Dissertation Fellow. Mitchell’s work asserts that the Indigenous body is a place of knowledge and the repatriation of memory, articulating this relationship to his culture as “scholarship through the body.” As a company member of Rosy Simas Danse for 20+ years, his work has brought performance opportunities and workshops to the Minneapolis Native community, which comprises many nations, including the Dakhóta (Dakota) and Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe). He relocated to the Twin Cities in April 2020 and was among the first cohort of Native artist fellows at the Guthrie Theater, serving as Native Directing Fellow on Dickens’ Holiday Classic and working alongside Joseph Haj and E.G. Bailey.