Artistic Staff Bios
Artistic Staff for Annie:
PAUL MASON BARNES (Director) returns to PTC after directing last season’s White Christmas. Additional PTC credits: A Christmas Story, Romeo & Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, You Can’t Take It With You, the 2004 and 2005 productions of Disney’s Beauty and The Beast,Brighton Beach Memoirs, Camelot and As You Like It. Utah audiences may also be familiar with Barnes’ work in Cedar City, where he has directed at the Utah Shakespeare Festival since 1993. Barnes is a founding and producing director of the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, Minnesota, where he will direct The Two Gentlemen of Verona in 2012. Recent assignments:The Comedy of Errors (GRSF), Circle Mirror Transformation (Actors Theatre of Phoenix), The Miracle Worker (Syracuse Stage), Macbeth (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis). Additional credits include productions at The Denver Center Theatre Company, Alley Theatre, Folger Theatre, American Players Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Indiana Repertory Theatre, The Fulton Theatre, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, Missouri Repertorty Theatre, PCPA Theaterfest, and the Oregon, California, Alabama, Idaho and Orlando (Florida) Shakespeare Festivals. Barnes makes his home in Ashland, Oregon.
PATTI D’BECK (Choreographer) is very happy to return to PTC for her fourteenth production, most recently choreographing and directing A Chorus Line, and choreographing The Producers,Paint Your Wagon and Chicago for PTC. Her Broadway credits include Annie Get Your Gun, starring Bernadette Peters, and later Reba McEntire, Bells Are Ringing, Grease! and The Will Rogers Follies, working with people such as Jeff Calhoun, Graciela Daniele, Tommy Tune and Michael Bennett. She has appeared on Broadway in 13 shows including A Chorus Line, Evitaand My One and Only. She is currently a faculty member in the Theatre Department at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, teaching Musical Theatre and Movement.
MICHAEL RICE (Musical Director) is happy to return to Pioneer Theatre Company after conducting Sunset Boulevard, 42nd Street and The Light in the Piazza. He has conducted at Sacramento Music Circus, The Muny, Ford’s Theatre, the Alley, Signature Theatre and Trinity Repertory Company, where he is Resident Musical Director. Productions include Jekyll & Hyde,Gypsy, Annie, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, Paper Moon, Godspell, Cabaret, The Sound of Music, 1776, Crazy For You, and Paris By Night. Broadway and tour credits include the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, Peter Pan, Cats, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,Camelot, and Grand Hotel. Anne Bogart Premieres: American Vaudeville and Marathon Dancing. He was the original arranger/conductor for the off-Broadway hit Nunsense. He is music director for vocalist Klea Blackhurst. As a composer/lyricist he adapted (with Eric Bentley) Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan, and penned his valentine to beauty pageants, American Beauty.
GEORGE MAXWELL (Set Designer) is the resident scenic designer for PTC. He recently designed Next to Normal, Rent, Sunset Boulevard and White Christmas. Favorite PTC designs include A Chorus Line, A Christmas Story, Chicago, Les Misérables, Metamorphoses,Enchanted April, The Importance of Being Earnest, West Side Story, Proof, Peter Pan, Noises Off, Man of La Mancha, Ain’t Misbehavin’, The Foreigner and Miss Saigon. He has designed the sets for Utah Opera Company’s The Coronation of Poppea and The Ballad of Baby Doe, and productions for the Utah Shakespeare Festival and Alabama Shakespeare Festival. George is a member of United Scenic Artists. To see more of his work visit www.xmission.com/~gmaxwell.
K.L. ALBERTS (Costumer Designer) Previous designs at PTC include: the world premieres ofDumas’ Camille and Laughing Stock, as well as White Christmas, 42nd Street, Miss Saigon, The Producers, Les Misérables, Metamorphoses, West Side Story, Ragtime, Proof, Phantom,Communicating Doors, A Raisin in the Sun, Death of a Salesman, The Dining Room, RoomService, Inherit the Wind, Little Shop of Horrors, Private Lives, Uncle Vanya, Scapino!, Born Yesterday, Rough Crossing and The Cripple of Inishmaan. Designs for the University of Utah’s Babcock Theatre include: On the Verge, Summer and Smoke, The Cherry Orchard, School for Scandal, I Do! I Do!, The Seagull, Table Manners and Edward II. For Salt Lake Acting Company, K.L. has designed boom, Angels in America, Go, Dog. Go!, Dark Play, I Am My Own Wife,Rabbit Hole, Sexsting, Bad Dates, Gross Indecency, The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Beard of Avon among others. K.L. recently designed Infantry Monologues and Shadows of the Bakemono for Meat & Potato Theatre Company, and has designed Ah! Wilderness, Hay Fever,The Matchmaker, Fiddler on the Roof and Great Expectations: A New Musical for the Utah Shakespeare Festival.
PHIL MONAT (Lighting Designer) designed previous PTC productions of White Christmas,Hamlet, Touch(ed), My Fair Lady, Paint Your Wagon, Five Guys Named Moe, Chicago,Copenhagen, Ragtime, Anything Goes, Steel Magnolias, and Alexandre Dumas and the Lady of the Camelias. He has designed over 450 productions in regional theatres throughout the country, including productions at The Old Globe in San Diego, The Seattle Repertory Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Milwaukee Rep, The Alliance Theatre, The Arizona Theatre Co., The Mark Taper Forum, La Jolla Playhouse, The Huntington Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Cleveland Playhouse, Studio Arena Theatre, Syracuse Stage, Pittsburgh Public Theatre,Geva Theatre, Great Lakes Theatre Festival, McCarter Theatre, The Alley Theatre of Houston, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Paper Mill Playhouse and The Goodspeed Opera, among others. Broadway designs include Legends starring Joan Collins and Linda Evans, Sly Fox starring Richard Dreyfuss, Finian’s Rainbow, Sally Marr & Her Escorts and Three From Brooklyn. Recent off-Broadway designs include Woman Before A Glass (Obie Award),Adult Entertainment, American Rhapsody, and Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill.
MATTHEW TIBBS (Sound Designer) is Pioneer Theatre Company’s Resident Sound Designer. He has previously worked as a sound designer or engineer at Portland Center Stage, Artists Repertory Theatre, Salem Repertory Theatre and Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati. Some of his favorite past sound designs include Fat Pig, Proof and The Full Monty. He received his M.F.A. in Sound Design from University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) and his B.A. from George Fox University. Matthew has also been the sound designer on several award-winning films and video projects. Matthew is adjunct faculty at University of Utah teaching Sound Design and lives with his wife Beth and son Lucas in Salt Lake City.
AMANDA FRENCH (Hair and Makeup Designer) has been a Makeup and Hair Designer for over 20 years. She has worked for The Utah Shakespeare Festival, The Utah Opera, Egyptian Theatre Company and the University of Texas at Austin. She is a contributing writer in the tenth edition of Stage Makeup by Corson, Glavan and Norcross, and her work can also be seen inThe Costume Technician’s Handbook by Ingham and Covey, and Wig Making and Styling: A Complete Guide for Theatre and Film by Ruskai and Lowery. She attended the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati where she studied with Hair and Makeup Designer Lenna Kaleva. She is a member of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) and a current University of Utah instructor of wigs and makeup.
GREG HATCH (Dramaturg) majored in Theatre at Saint John’s University, MN, before working as a stage manager at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, A Contemporary Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre and Intiman Theatre. He earned a Master’s in Library and Information Science from the University of Washington in 2002, and is currently Head of Fine Arts and Architecture for Marriott Library at the University of Utah. Past PTC productions include Lost in Yonkers, The Vertical Hour, The Yellow Leaf, A Christmas Story, and Sunset Boulevard.