Alyson Germinder

Resident Dramaturg

Alyson Germinder will graduate with a B.A. in Theatre Performance from the University of Missouri in May 2013. Her dramaturgy credits include MU Theatre’s Medea, which won her the National LMDA/KCACTF Dramaturgy Award this past January. She’ll travel to the Kennedy Center in April for the national festival, and to Kansas City in the fall for the start of her M.A. in Theatre program at UMKC. Additional past dramaturgy credits with Independent Actors Theatre include tempOdyssey, short Women’s Play Festival 5, and the upcoming spring 2013 production of Distant Music. She credits her dramaturgy success to her performance background, most notably her roles as Dao Ming in The Lost Slipper and Gertrude in Hamlet at MU. Upon graduation, she has her sights set on bright lights, Midwest cities, and a large golden retriever named Charlie.

Matt Saltzberg

Chair, Board of Trustees

Dr. Matt Saltzberg is a teacher, scholar, director, actor and ethnographer originally from New York. He currently works in the University of Missouri-Columbia’s Department of Theatre as the Mizzou Advantage Postdoctoral Fellow in Disruptive and Transformational Technologies and is an Affiliate member of the Graduate Faculty. In this role, Matt is developing and teaching interdisciplinary courses and engaging in research that explore the role of live experience in the current digital moment. He is teaching an advanced acting course on the Suzuki Method of Actor Training and Viewpoints, a cross-level performance ethnography course that explores the notion of empathy via the capacities and capabilities of the human body, a graduate seminar on non-western theatre history, and a cross-level course concerning the relationship of digital media in performance that will culminate in an original, devised, multi-media performance piece for the public. Matt’s work exhibits a synergistic approach in which practice, teaching, and research are cast in a joint endeavor; his work focuses on physical methods of performer training, revisionist stagings of canonical texts, and performance ethnography foregrounded in the belief that performance is both a way of knowing and a method of inquiry itself, and can be a catalyst for social change. Matt graduated with a BA in Theatre Performance from Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania and an MA in Theatre Arts from the C.W. Campus of Long Island University. He earned is doctorate in Theatre from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2011. At MU, Matt performed such roles as Major Petkoff in Arms and the Man and Thurston Wheelis, et al. in Greater Tuna, and directed Agnes of God. Other local directing credits include The Glass Menagerie (Shaw Performing Arts Festival, St. Louis, Missouri), Love Kills: The New Rock Musical (Assistant Director, New Line Theatre, St. Louis, Missouri), and Sleuth (Thespian Hall, Boonville, Missouri). For IAT, Matt performed as Doc in Tennessee Williams’s Confessional, The Elf in Joe Mantello’s adaptation of David Sedaris’s Santaland Diaries, directed Edward Albee’s The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?, and served as co-host for 2008’s Harmonies for a Home, a musical theatre cabaret fundraiser for Columbia’s Second Chance Animal Shelter.

Emily A. Rollie

Artistic Director

A freelance theatre director, instructor, and actor, Emily Rollie has acted in and directed productions in Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, New York, California, and Missouri.  Emily completed her Master’s degree in theatre, with an emphasis on directing, at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington, where she received a certificate of merit in directing from the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival for her work on Boneheads, an original student-written work, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a touring children’s production.

While living in the Seattle-Tacoma area, she worked with theatres such as Tacoma Actors Guild, the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts, Tacoma Musical Playhouse, Tacoma Little Theatre, Paradise Theatre, and others.

Currently, Emily is a doctoral student and graduate teaching assistant/instructor in theatre at the University of Missouri, where she teaches performance courses such as Acting for Non-Majors, Introduction to Performance Studies, Theatre History, Directing, and Solo Performance.  At MU, she also serves as the associate director of the Troubling Violence Performance Project, a group dedicated to opening lines of communication about issues of relationship violence through the performance of personal narratives, and from 2009-2012 she served as the assistant director/actor/facilitator for the MU Interactive Theatre Troupe.  She also served as the managing director for the 2009 University of Missouri Department of Theatre’s Life and Literature in Performance Series and has directed multiple new plays as part of the Mizzou New Play Series and summer Comedies in Concert.  In March 2010, she directed David Auburn’s Proof and Milbre Burch’s solo piece Sometimes I Sing as part of the University season.

In September 2010, Emily took over the role of artistic director for IAT from Shawna Kelty.  Although Shawna left big shoes to fill (figuratively, not literally!), Emily is pleased to be at the artistic helm of IAT.  She directs an IAT production each season – most recently Lanford Wilson’s Talley’s Folly and James McLindon’s Distant Music.  Prior to becoming artistic director, Emily acted in IAT’s production of Doubt: A Parable and directed several short plays for IAT’s annual short Women’s Play Festivals I & II, Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Grammy-nominated storyteller Milbre Burch’s solo performance Changing Skins, and Deborah Zoe Laufer’s End Days.

Charles E. Willis, 3rd

Executive Director

Charles Willis received his undergraduate degree in theatre from Mizzou in 2005. Currently he is pursuing his Master’s degree in theatre. He has worked on countless productions in technical and performing capacities for numerous professional theatre companies, including Performing Arts in Children’s Education and Mizzou’s Summer Rep Theatre. His more memorable roles on stage include Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing, Jacques in As You Like It, and Freddy in Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile.

After helping to found Independent Actors Theatre, he directed the inaugural production of David Hare’s The Blue Room.