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Faculty Biographies
Madeline Puzo
Dean
 Creative producer Madeline Puzo is a 23-year veteran of some of the country's leading regional theatres, including the Ahmanson Theatre and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. Dean Puzo has commissioned and/or produced work by such noted theatre artists as Bill T. Jones, JoAnne Akalaitis, Spalding Gray, Joe Chaikin, Phillip Glass, Femi Osofisan, Girish Karnad, and Robert Woodruff. She has produced such diverse plays as House Arrest: An Introgression, Acts I & II by Anna Deavere Smith; Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Sir Peter Hall; and David Henry Hwang's new version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song. Her adaptation of Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" was presented by the Mark Taper Forum for ten consecutive years and toured Eastern Europe. While director of Taper, Too, the Mark Taper Forum's second theatre, she won nine Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards. Dean Puzo served as co-director for the theatre portion of the 1984 Olympic International Arts Festival and has been a consultant for the National Endowment of the Arts, the Pew Charitable Trust, Theatre Communications Group, the Rockefeller and Lila Wallace Readers Digest Foundations, and has written for American Theatre magazine.
Andrew J. Robinson
Director of M.F.A. Acting
 After graduating from the New School for Social Research, Andrew Robinson received a Fulbright scholarship to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Since then, his career has encompassed theatre, television and film. Selected directing credits include: the Matrix Theatre Company (founding member and artistic director):The Birthday Party (Backstage West award), Waiting for Godot, Yield of the Long Bond (Ovation award), Dangerous Corner, The Homecoming (L. A. Drama Critics Circle award), and Endgame (LADCC award). Pasadena Playhouse: Side Man, The Glass Menagerie and Visiting Mr. Green. South Coast Repertory Theatre: The Beauty Queen of Leenane. The Falcon Theatre: Death of a Salesman. Selected acting credits include: New York, Off-Broadway: MacBird, Futz, The Cannibals, Woyzeck and Subject to Fits. Broadway: Any Given Day, Operation Sidewinder, Narrow Road to the Deep North and Mary Stuart. Los Angeles: the Matrix Company: The Tavern, Habeas Corpus, and the one-man play Memoirs of Jesus. Mark Taper Forum: Aristocrats, Richard II, In the Belly of the Beast (LADCC award, directed by Robert Woodruff). Films: DIrty Harry, Charley Varrick and Hellraiser. Television: Incident at Vichy, The Atlanta Child Murders, The Trial of Bernhard Goetz and the title role in Liberace. Robinson played "Garak," the tailor/spy on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and also directed episodes of that series, as well as episodes of Voyager and Judging Amy. He and Joel Zwick were founding members of the LaMama Plexus Troupe, which toured internationally with two plays written by Robinson himself, Last Chance Saloon and Spring Voices. Simon and Schuster published his first novel, A Stitch in Time. Andrew Robinson is currently writing Masks, a book about acting.
Charlotte Cornwell
Lecturer
Charlotte Cornwell's distinguished 30-year career began when she trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London. She made her professional debut with three seasons at the Bristol Old Vic Company, playing a broad range of roles from Kate Hotspur in Shakespeare's Henry IV to Becky in Sam Shepherd's Tooth of Crime. Her first major TV series, the influential Rock Follies, in which she starred, won the BAFTA award for Best Drama Series. She spent three years as a leading member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and has worked as a leading actress with the Royal National Theatre since 1984. She has worked extensively both in the West End and on the Fringe, and has appeared in the US in several productions, including Richard III and An Enemy of the People opposite Sir Ian McKellen, Athol Fugard's The Road To Mecca and most recently Terence McNally's Master Class. She has starred opposite an extensive list of respected actors, including: Anthony Hopkins, Tim Curry, Bob Hoskins, Val Kilmer, Kate Nelligan, Pete Postlethwaite, Joanna Lumley, Joseph Fiennes, John Hurt, Charles Dance, Daniel Day Lewis and Helen Mirren. She has worked with noted stage and film directors, including: John Carpenter, Trevor Nunn, Phillip Noyce, Clint Eastwood and Harold Pinter.
David Bridel
 David Bridel's work utilizes
the principles of movement, mask, and clown to develop
the creative life of the actor. David has taught and directed at conservatories and training programs
across America, Israel and Europe, including The
Actors Center, UCLA, Cal Arts, Cal State Long Beach,
Rutgers University, the Atlantic Theater Company
Acting School, the University of Missouri (Kansas
City), Beit Zvi (Tel Aviv), the Central School of
Speech and Drama, Middlesex University, Mountview
Theatre School (London), at the National Student Drama
Festival in England, and the Nitra International
Theatre Festival in Slovakia. For SUNY Purchase he
created a three-year training progression based on the
pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq. His numerous productions in
drama schools include the works of Shakespeare, Ibsen,
Mamet, Feydeau, Beckett, Brecht, Marivaux, and others.
David also works with fellow master teachers Per Brahe
and Felix Ivanov at Studio 5 in Brooklyn, researching
and applying new methods of mask and movement training
for the actor.
David choreographed William Friedkin's production of
Ariadne Auf Naxos at Los Angeles Opera, and will join
Friedkin again for Salome in Munich in 2006. His own directing includes: Medea (Cal Rep), Ivanov, No-One Knows How (Off-Broadway), The Misanthrope, The Mill on the
Floss, The Tower, As You Like It (Tel Aviv), Electra,
Rhinoceros (London). For the Franklin Stage Company,
which he co-founded in 1997, he has directed and
designed The Tempest, Uncle Vanya, Twelfth Night, The
Lesson and The Chairs, The Taming of the Shrew, Dog in
the Manger, Eurydice, and Hedda Gabler; and he has
written, directed and designed The Legend of the Dead
Soldier and The Heretic Mysteries. His other plays
include Shreds & Fancies, The Last Girl (London New
Play Festival), 100 Years of Enchantment (Union Chapel
and Oval House, London), Death of an Actress
(Southwark Playhouse, London), and the clown shows Our
Worser Genius and Clown Crazy.
David trained with Philippe Gaulier, Monika Pagneux,
and Anatoly Vasiliev.
Jack Rowe
Senior Lecturer, Associate Dean and Artistic Director
B.A. University of Southern California
Jack Rowe is a founding member of the Company Theatre, a Los Angeles-based theatre company begun by USC graduates in 1967. During its 12-year existence, the Company received awards and acclaim from Los Angeles drama critics and the national press, including such publications as Time, Newsweek and The New Yorker. Mr. Rowe worked with the Company as an actor, director, stage manager, composer and musician. He began his professional affiliation with the School of Theatre in 1979. Jack Rowe teaches acting classes in both the B.A. and B.F.A. programs and directs School of Theatre productions as often as possible.
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