Faculty & Students of the Conservatory

About Our Faculty

Marcus D. Johnson

Marcus Denard Johnson serves as the Director of the FSU/Asolo Conservatory. He is a 2008 graduate of the Conservatory and has since worked consistently in Theatre as a theatre administrator, theatre administrator, actor and director. For 10 years Marcus served as a Resident Artist for Titan Theatre Company in New York City, later becoming Artistic Associate and Director of Titan’s Future Classics Festival. During his time in New York, Marcus also served as the Director of Programs for Opening Act, Inc., an arts education non-profit dedicated to providing free theatre programs to New York City’s most underserved schools. 

He currently serves as an Executive Board member of Our Bar, Inc., a site-specific theatre company in New York City founded in part by Conservatory graduates. After leaving New York, he became a part of the artistic leadership team of Hope Repertory Theatre in Holland, Michigan, spending his final year with Hope Rep as the Artistic Director. Marcus holds an MFA from the FSU/Asolo Conservatory and an MS in Adolescent Special Education from Hunter College. 

Andrei Malaev-Babel

Andrei Malaev-Babel is the Head of Acting at the FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training. He is widely recognized as the foremost authority on the Demidov School of Acting and serves as the Head and Certifying Master Teacher of the International Demidov Association, which he established. In this role, he leads internationally recognized Demidov Teacher Certification and Acting Certificate programs.

Professor Malaev-Babel is also a founding faculty member of MICHA, the Michael Chekhov Association in New York City. He serves on the advisory board of the Stanislavsky Research Centre (UK) and the International Scientific Committee of Arti dello Spettacolo – Performing Arts (Italy). In recognition of his contribution to theatre education, he was awarded a Fulbright Specialist Award by the U.S. Department of State.

His directing work has been presented at The Kennedy Center and The National Theater in Washington, D.C., where he also served on the faculty of The Catholic University of America. As Producing Artistic Director of the Stanislavsky Theatre Studio (STS), an award-winning company and school in Washington, D.C., he was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award as Outstanding Director.

He is the author of numerous publications on Russian theatre and actor training, including The Vakhtangov Sourcebookand Yevgeny Vakhtangov: A Critical Portrait. In 2016, he co-edited and translated (with Margarita Laskina) the first English-language collection of Nikolai Demidov’s writings, Becoming an Actor-Creator (Routledge).

In demand internationally, Professor Malaev-Babel has presented, taught, and performed at institutions including Stanford University; the Smithsonian Institution; the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts (St. Petersburg); the Odessa Philharmonic; Rose Bruford College; the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; the Young Vic Theatre (UK); the University of Rome; Teatro Escola Macunaíma (Brazil); the Polish National Institute of Film, Television and Theater; and the Shanghai Theatre Academy.

He co-wrote and starred in the internationally acclaimed documentary Finding Babel, dedicated to the life and work of Russian-Jewish author Isaac Babel. The film premiered at festivals across the U.S., Europe, and Israel, and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Moscow International Jewish Film Festival. His one-man show, Babel: How It Was Done in Odessa, has been presented internationally, including at a United Nations event in Moscow.

A graduate of the Vakhtangov Theater Institute in Moscow, he studied under Alexandra Remizova—co-founder of the Vakhtangov Theater and protégé of both Stanislavsky and Vakhtangov. In 1985, he co-founded the Moscow Chamber Forms Theater, one of the first private professional companies to emerge in Russia during Perestroika.

Jonathan Epstein

Jonathan Epstein has performed on and Off-Broadway, in London’s West End and at dozens of regional theatres across the country. However, he is best known for his 25-year association as an actor, director and teacher with Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts. His roles with that company have included everything from kings to clowns – Lear, Macbeth, Richard III, Feste, Touchstone, Dogberry, Puck, Benedick, Bottom and scores of others. He was a text and sonnet teacher in more than 30 of the company’s month-long workshops for professional actors. Directing credits there include Henry V, Coriolanus, Women of Will, The Hollow Crown, The Pretext and The Verdict, among others. He has served as visiting professor in Theatre at MIT and in Rhetoric at Boston University School of Law and has led master classes in Shakespeare performance at such companies as Berkshire Theater Festival, Orlando Shakespeare Festival, The Intiman, Seattle Shakespeare Theatre, Boston Theaterworks as well as at colleges and universities including Harvard, Cornell, Amherst, Dartmouth, Smith, Western Michigan and Wake Forest. 

His other performance credits include: Broadway/National Tour: (A Meeting by the River, Man of la Mancha, Dirty Dancing) American Repertory Theatre (Merchant of Venice, Paradise Lost, Phaedra, Picasso at the Lapin Agile), Berkshire Theatre Festival (Amadeus, Cuckoo’s Nest, Caretaker, Via Dolorosa, Rat in the Skull), The Shakespeare Theatre (Taming of the Shrew), Intiman (Cymbeline), Theatre for a New Audience (Merchant of Venice), Orlando Shakespeare Theater (King Lear, Titus Andronicus), The Young Vic (Faust), He is a two-time recipient of Boston’s Elliot Norton award. He holds an AB from Harvard University, where he studied Elizabethan and Jacobean drama under Gwynn Blakemore Evans, William Alfred and Harry Levin.

Patricia Delorey

Patricia Delorey is a Certified Associate Fitzmaurice Voicework Teacher with an M.F.A. in Voice and Speech from the Moscow Art Theatre/American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University. Patricia teaches voice & dialects at the FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training. She is also the resident voice & dialect coach at the Asolo Repertory Theatre where some of her favorite productions include: Knoxville, Silent Sky, Sweat, Sweeney Todd, The Cake, The Crucible, Gloria, Ragtime, Rhinoceros, Roe, The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, The Great Society, Josephine, All The Way, Living on Love, West Side Story, Sotto Voce, Other Desert Cities, South Pacific, The Grapes of Wrath, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Clybourne Park, The Innocents, Twelve Angry Men, Bonnie & Clyde, Doubt, A Few Good Men, A Tale of Two Cities, Equus. 

Other credits include: The Smuggler (Urbanite Theatre), Pitmen Painters (American Stage Theatre), Studio Six’s production of Plasticine (The Baryshnikov Arts Center), Saturday Night Fever (Royal Caribbean International Cruises), Stone Cold Dead Serious (American Repertory Theatre) and the world premiere of Nocturne (American Repertory Theatre).

Mark Wheatley

Mark Wheatley is an English writer who was brought up in and around London. He took his first degree and M.A. from Cambridge University and began his professional career making documentaries for the BBC. There followed a two-year spell writing for series and serials at the BBC (EastEnders) and some short plays for BBC Education before he began writing for the theatre. From 1990 to 1997, he was the principal writer/adaptor for Complicité and their Literary Manager. He has divided his time between playwriting and screenwriting ever since. He is also a teacher and has taught for many universities in both the UK and the U.S. He is currently working on a drama for BBC Films and a new play for the theatre.

Jason Paul Tate

Jason Paul Tate is a director, choreographer, performer and special effects designer originally from Kentucky and now based bi-coastally in New York City and San Diego. He is known for creating abstract and deconstructed depictions of violence and is passionate about consent-forward, radically inclusive theatre-making.

Tate’s work has appeared onstage at the Metropolitan Opera, the Public’s Delacorte and other notable NYC venues, including Ars Nova, BAM, Classic Stage and Rattlestick Playwright’s Theatre. He was the fight choreographer for the world premiere of Watch Night, the inaugural production at PAC-NYC.

Tate has also worked internationally at the Edinburgh Fringe and in 24 states, including regional credits at A.R.T., Bucks County Playhouse, Cleveland Playhouse, Florida Repertory Theatre, Great Lakes Theatre, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival, the Old Globe, On Site Opera, the Ordway, Pensacola Opera, River & Rail, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Theatre Lab, Tuacahn and Virginia Stage Company. He is the resident fight director and SFX designer for The Lost Colony — a Tony Award-winning outdoor drama.

As a guest instructor and professor, Tate has taught and choreographed productions for The New School, New York Film Academy, Hofstra University, Florida State University, the Asolo Conservatory, Coastal Carolina University, Ole Miss, Austin Peay State University, University of Kentucky, University of Central Florida, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, Berea College, Transylvania University, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and the University of North Carolina School for the Arts.

Tate is the co-founder of Neutral Chaos, LLC, a movement solutions company offering classes in New York City and the producing entity for several annual stage combat & stunt workshops across the country. He is on the advisory board of the Connecticut Theatre Exchange and is a proud member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC) and Actors’ Equity Association (AEA). He currently serves as the Vice President of the Society of American Fight Directors (SAFD), with whom he is also a Certified Teacher and Fight Director.

Summer Dawn Wallace

Summer Dawn Wallace is a professional actor, director, intimacy coordinator, and arts leader. She currently serves as the Producing Artistic Director of Urbanite Theatre in Sarasota, Florida, where her directing credits include Scorch, Athena, Dry Land, Birds of North America, Northside Hollow, Spaceman, No One is Forgotten, Monsters of the American Cinema, The Apiary, and the world premiere of Westminster.

As an intimacy coordinator, Wallace has worked with companies including Asolo Repertory Theatre (Intimate Apparel, Dial M for Murder, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Anna in the Tropics), FSU/Asolo Conservatory (Miss Julie, Clyde’s), and The Players Centre for Performing Arts (The Graduate). Her regional performance and directing credits span companies such as 1st Stage, Vashon Repertory Theatre, Cumberland County Playhouse, Dog Days Theatre, New College of Florida, among others. Wallace is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA and currently serves as Vice President of the Board for the Florida Professional Theatre Association. She is known for her advocacy of new work, women in theatre, and for mentoring the next generation of theatre professionals.

Meet Our Current Students

The FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training recruits highly talented graduate students to enter our competitive professional graduate degree program. Students who graduate from the program will obtain an MFA degree and enter the ranks of this country’s top professional artists. Allow us to introduce our current classes: