Our People

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. She has taught voice at the Moscow Art Theatre School in Russia, the University of Bologna in Italy, Texas State University, and was an instructor of Voice and Teaching Skills at Harvard's Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. Recently, Patricia published in VASTA’s Voice and Speech Review, with co-author Dr. Debra Charlton: “Negotiating the Corpus Callosum: A Whole-Brain Approach to Teaching Shakespeare”. Patricia has worked extensively as a voice and dialect coach including Bonnie & Clyde directed by Jeff Calhoun, 12 Angry Men directed by Frank Galati, Phaedra 4.48 directed by Robert Woodruff, Studio Six’s production of Plasticine directed by Dmitry Troyanovsky at the Baryshnikov Center, Saturday Night Fever for Royal Caribbean International Cruises, and the world premieres of Steven Drukman’s The Innocents, and Adam Rapp’s Nocturne directed by Marcus Stern.

Has performed on and Off-Broadway, in London’s West End, and at dozens of regional theatres across the country, but is best known for his 25-year association as 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 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.

Karina Aviva Benjamin is a director of theatre and opera, and a movement specialist, currently based in London. Karina began training in classical ballet at the age of two and carried on serious ballet education and performance into her twenties. Alongside dance she became interested in theatre at a young age leading her to attend the University of the Arts in Philadelphia for her BFA education in Theatre Directing, Playwriting, and Production. It was at UARTS (2007-2011) that she met and trained with the Artistic Director of NYC’s Actors’ Movement Studio Janice Orlandi. With Janice she trained in all levels of the Williamson movement technique and went on to assist her at NYU Atlantic as well as co-teaching in other institutions, specifically in Williamson’s Period Style movement and first level of the work (created as a three-year program to accompany the Meisner Technique). For a number of years, Karina was also fortunate enough to train directly with Lloyd Williamson himself, delving deeper into the technique and going through the teacher training process with him on the intensive retreats.

After her time at UARTS, she went on to study in Russia at the Moscow Art Theatre through the Eugene O’Neil Theatre Center where she had previously held an assistant director position in the prestigious Theatremakers program. Upon returning to the States she worked as a freelance artist and teacher for almost ten years before returning to Europe where she co-ran an experimental theatre company in Berlin and subsequently moved to London where she earned her MFA in Directing (with Distinction) from the University of Essex’s East 15 Acting School. Her Distinction was awarded for academic performance as well as thesis adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece.

Throughout Karina’s time in Europe she began to train with Mary Overlie who was the creator of the Six Viewpoints. Karina was among the group of most trusted students mentored by Mary during the final years of her life.

Since earning her MFA, Karina has been able to work with several esteemed companies such as Frantic Assembly, Gecko, Tara Theatre and more. This summer alone, she directed The House of Bernarda Alba at her alma matter East 15 Acting School with their MFA Acting students, and The Tempest at the Cambridge Shakespeare festival where she has been made an Associate Director of the company. Recently she also directed the opera Der Kaiser Von Atlantis at Carnegie Mellon and have been invited back to direct as part of their 2024-2025 season.

Andrei Malaev-Babelis the Head of Acting at the FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training. He is on the board of the Michael Chekhov Association in NYC, and on the advisory board of Stanislavski Centre (UK). He is also a Member of the International Scientific Committee for Arti Dello Spettacolo-Performing Arts (Italy). From 1997 to 2005, Mr. Malaev-Babel served as the Producing Artistic Director for the Stanislavsky Theater Studio (STS), an award-winning company and conservatory in Washington, DC. In 2000 he was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award as an Outstanding Director for the STS production of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. His productions were presented at The Kennedy Center and The National Theater in Washington, DC, where he also appeared as a performer. He has also served on the faculty of The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
 
Mr. Malaev-Babel’s reputation as one of the leading experts on Russian theater and acting techniques, have brought him special engagements and commissions from institutions such as The World Bank, The Smithsonian Institution, The Keenan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Russian Embassy in the US. He is working nationally and internationally, conducting workshops, presenting and performing for conferences, festivals and theater programs, including Russian State Institute of Performing Arts (St. Petersburg), Stanford University, The University of Windsor (Canada), International Volkov Theater Festival (Russia), the Latin American Film Festival (Brazil), The Study Centre for Documentary Research into European Theatre and Opera (Italy), The Odessa Philharmonic (Ukraine), Young Vic Theatre, and The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (UK) and The Arena Stage Theater (Washington, DC). Professor Malaev-Babel’s film documentary Finding Babel (David Novack, dir.), on the life and works of Russian-Jewish author and playwright Isaac Babel, has premiered at international festivals in the US, Russia, Estonia, Ukraine and Israel, and it 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 by key national and international organizations, including the UN’s presentation in Moscow.
 
Professor Malaev-Babel is the author of the Guide to the Psychological Gesture Technique published in the 2003 Routledge edition of Michael Chekhov’s seminal book, To The Actor. Mr. Malaev-Babel’s groundbreaking volumes on Yevgeny Vakhtangov’s heritage, The Vakhtangov Sourcebook and Yevgeny Vakhtangov: A Critical Portrait, came out from Routledge in 2011 and 2012. He has co-edited and co-translated an English-Russian simultaneous release of Nikolai Demidov’s theatrical heritage, titled Becoming an Actor-Creator (Routledge, London and New York/Russian University of Theatre Arts Press (GITIS), Moscow, 2016).
 
Andrei Malaev-Babel is a graduate of the renowned Vakhtangov Theater Institute in Moscow, Russia. He trained and worked under Alexandra Remizova, co-founder of the Vakhtangov Theater, Stanislavsky’s student and Vakhtangov’s protégé. In 1985, he co-founded the Moscow Chamber Forms Theater, one of the first private professional theater companies in Russia.

Mr. 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 US. He is currently working on a drama for BBC Films and a new play for the theatre.