My guest today is Theresa Tova

linkedin.com/in/theresa-tova-33139a20

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0869797/

Theresa or as her friends know her, Tova, is an award-winning Canadian actress, singer, and playwright. With several nominations to boot. Including a Gemini Award nomination for Best Performance in a Supporting Role for her role as Marge Atherton in TV series E.N.G., a Canadian Screen Award nomination for her work in For the Record, and two Dora award nominations for her portrayal of Mrs. Van Daan in the Diary of Anne Frank.

Her play Still the Night, based on her mothers experiences surviving the holocaust, and which she also starred in, won several Dora Mavor Moore Awards and was a shortlisted finalist for the Governor General's Award for English-language drama.

Tova tours internationally headlining major festivals in Amsterdam, Argentina, Germany, Poland, and New York. And Her three CD’s of Yiddish Jazz have won rave reviews.

As an arts activist Tova served as President of ACTRA Toronto, and continues to serve as Treasurer of ACTRA National. She co-chairs the Association of Acting Coaches and Educators, and The Entertainment Industry Coalition. Tova is a recipient of the Cliff Pilkey Labour Activist Award, the 2025 King Charles lll Coronation Medal and is the 2025 Cayle Chernin Woman of the year.

Tova shared some of her experiences growing up in the shadow of a holocaust survivor, and how that played out in her acting. Her passion for advocating for women and children’s rights in the entertainment industry is palpable and honorable.

Our Guest today is Tyee Tilghman & Shaina Fawn

Co-founders of Wellbeing in Entertainment and Creative Arts (WECA)

https://www.wellbeinginentertainment.org/

WECA is a non-profit based in Los Angeles whose mission is to bring wellbeing standards to the entertainment industry in the USA. WECA is guided by trauma-informed principles, by which the health, safety, and wellbeing of artists and entertainment workers are prioritized throughout the entire creative process, from pre- to post-production.

Tyee is an actor, filmmaker and educator. He’s a lover of the human experience, and the variations of interpretation based on the eyes and ears of the beholder. He holds an MFA in Acting from the American Conservatory Theatre, and is a student of life and human behavior. His deep interest in the care of his fellow artists keeps him passionate and driven to ensure care is provided for all involved in the process of sharing stories of the human experience.

Shaina is a licensed clinical social worker. She has been in the mental health field for nearly 20 years and has experience in child welfare, hospice, medical social work, and integrated care. She is currently working on a P.H.D. exploring mental health and wellbeing for workers in the entertainment industry.

Our conversation centered on the reasons why they started WECA, the challenges they face, The simplicity of integrating trauma-informed practices in production, and how they practice in their own lives what they preach.

Our guest today is Vivien Parry

http://vivienparry.com/home/

Vivien is a seasoned actress with a robust career spanning stage, screen, and radio. Her theatrical resume features performances in renowned productions like Les Miserables, Cabaret, Mamma Mia!, and Top Hat. She has collaborated with esteemed directors such as Trevor Nunn, John Caird, Rachel Kavanaugh, Christopher Luscombe, Terry Hands and Rebecca Frecknall. She’s tread the boards at the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Playhouse, and Aldwych Theatre among others and has toured extensively. Her work encompasses genres, ranging from classic musicals to contemporary dramas. She’s also appeared in television shows like Holby City, Crash, and Beauty and the Beast.

Vivien is 18 years sober. Our conversation covered her relationship to her Higher Power as she understands it and the power of human connection - in life and in theatre. In 2025 she’s reprising her role in Cabaret. A role that had intense parallels to her own life when she first portrayed it. In our discussion she shares how, her unhealthy marriage informed her characters emotional life. Now that her marriage has ended, Vivien is seizing the opportunity to revisit the same role— to heal her tumultuous experience during her first run of the play and to heal her relationship to the character she portrayed.

Our Guest today is Thalia Goldstein

https://www.thaliagoldstein.com/

Thalia is a former professional actress, dancer, and lifelong theatre nerd. She is currently an associate professor and director of the Applied Developmental Psychology program in the Department of Psychology at George Mason University, where she directs the Play, Learning, Arts and Youth Lab (PLAYlab), and codirects the National Endowment for the Arts Lab, the Mason Arts Research Center (MasonARC). With her students and colleagues, she has published more than 70 papers on the effects of pretend play, imagination, theatre, and other art forms on child and adolescent development. She earned her BA at Cornell University, her MA and PhD at Boston College, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University. Since 2017 she has been the coeditor of Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, the Division 10 journal for the American Psychological Association, where she has also won several awards and was recently named fellow.

Our discussion mainly centered on the 8 acting habits of mind which she writes about in her book, Why Theatre Education Matters: The book is the first-of-its-kind, a nationally representative study of actual acting classes showing how the activities of acting are directly connected to critical 21st Century Skills such as collaboration , communication, creativity and emotional intelligence.

Her passion for research is contagious. We started off with her personal reason for becoming a scientist in the arts - a reason I think we all can resonate with. I know I certainly did.

The 8 Acting Habits of Mind

Our guest today is Bella Merlin

http://www.bellamerlin.com/

Bella has been working for over twenty-five years in theatre, film, television and radio. She is Professor of Acting and Directing at the University of California, Riverside and is the author of several books on acting. Including

The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit, Facing the Fear: An Actor's Guide to Overcoming Stage Fright and Shakespeare & Company: When Action is Eloquence... co-authored with Tina Packer.

Bella is known on the international circuit for her workshops on Stanislavsky and his rehearsal process, Active Analysis. She has held posts in the UK at the university of Exeter. And university of Birmingham (where she received her PhD). She has also taught workshops and directed at a number of drama schools and universities both in the UK and USA.

Her stage acting appearances are numerous and include productions with Shakespeare & Co. in Massachusetts and the Royal National Theatre in London. Her one woman show Tilly Nobody explored identity and domestic violence. Her recent touring production, Lucy Gough’s The Wild Tenant, is currently touring the UK and is what we focused on. With the the continuing theme of domestic violence and her personal connection to her Character, I started the conversation by asking how she took care of her wellbeing when doing such an emotionally demanding play. Bella’s honesty is honorable and her insights into the acting process invaluable.

Our Guest today is Dr. Suzie J. Jarmain

https://www.linkedin.com/in/suziejjarmain/

Ph.D. (Theatre Performance), MA Applied Theatre Studies, Pg. Dip (Theatre Directing), BCA (Acting).

Dr. Suzie J. Jarmain is an actor, theatre artist, director, educator, coach, mentor and practice-based scholar with over thirty years of expertise. Specialising in psychological realism-based character transformation, Suzie holds a Bachelor of Creative Arts in acting from the University of Wollongong (AUS), a Postgraduate Diploma in Performance Creation from Victorian College of the Arts (VIC), and a Master of Applied Theatre Studies from the University of New England (NSW). She completed her Ph.D. at Monash University supported by a scholarship.

Suzie has worked with worldwide companies such as the National Theatre of Scotland, BBC Scotland, Traverse Theatre (UK), The Arches (UK), North Edinburgh Arts Centre, The Performance Space (AUS), Melbourne Theatre Company, La Mama Theatre (AUS), NIDA, Victorian College of the Arts (AUS), and Union House Theatre (AUS), to name a few. She has undergone professional development training with the Michael Chekhov Association (US), the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (UK), and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (UK). She has previously certified as a teacher with Stagecoach Theatrearts (UK) funded by a grant from the British Actors’ Equity Association (UK).

In 2016, she was awarded the Phillip Parsons Prize by the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama, and Performance Studies (ADSA) for her project ‘Faking it For Real,’ which explored the autobiographical ‘self’ in character creation. Suzie has presented her research at conferences such as AusAct (AUS) and Performance Studies International (CAD) and contributed to the PAMA Actors Wellbeing webinar series on ‘Interventions in the Acting Process’ (2024).

Her solo works include ‘Elizabeth Taylor is My Mother’ (2016), ‘The Disappearing Trilogy’ (2019), and ‘Celebrity’ (2023). As a published scholar and researcher, Suzie continues to explore and innovate in transformative acting practices. Her recent article, "Remember My Name: The Critical Role of Selves in Transformative Acting," contributes to the ongoing discourse on sustainable acting methodologies, highlighting broader artistic concerns related to transformative processes and the identity of the actor.

In 2023, Suzie founded the Michael Chekhov Studios in Melbourne, Australia, focusing on the Michael Chekhov technique, transformative acting processes, and actor wellbeing. She is a member of the Association of Acting Coaches and Educators (AACE), a community member of the Actors Wellbeing Facilitators Collective, the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama, and Performance Studies (ADSA) and Theatre Network Australia (TNA). Suzie also regularly collaborates with the Melbourne Actors Guild, coaching actors and ensembles at various stages of professional development.

Our discussion covered Chekov’s philosophy of higher and lower ego states in the creation of character, performance & identity, how we create characters for ourselves - not just in acting but in life —and mental health challenges that arise during the actors process of character development.

Welcome to part 2 of our two part podcast where we continue our discussion with Dr. Jessica Hartley on Neurodivergence in acting training and educating the educators. If you missed part one in episode 4 I strongly suggest you listen to it first before diving into this one.

Just to recap: Jessica is the Course Leader for the MA/MFA in Actor Training and Coaching at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

Let’s jump right in and pick up where we left off…

Our Guest today is Dr. Jessica Hartley PART 1 of 2
https://www.cssd.ac.uk/staff-profiles/jessica-hartley
Rupturing the cycles of Shame in Education, TEDx Royal Central

Jessica was a successful drama teacher and Head of Drama in comprehensive schools across London and the South East of England and has worked as a freelance director and educator specialising in circus training and contemporary performance.

She trained as a director at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London England under the mentorship of Catherine Alexander, and was subsequently short-listed for the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award on four separate occasions.

Jessica has worked for Portsmouth University, The University of Greenwich, Brunel University, Tara Arts, Surrey County Arts, The Why Not Institute - and ran a few bars in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. In 2013 Jessica found a permanent home at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama working with pedagogy and risk-taking. Currently she is Course Leader for the MA/MFA in Actor Training and Coaching.

She also delivered the Keynote address ‘Vulnerabilityin a Crisis: Pedagogy, critical reflection and positionality in Actor Training‘ at AusAct 2019 at Queensland University of Technology.

Jessica’s areas of expertise are;

• Freedom and coercion in Pedagogy

• Consent and boundaries in Actor Training

• Dignity and compassion in teaching

• Risk, vulnerability, and wellbeing

• Oracy

• Phenomenology

• Clown

• Failure

• Neuroinclusivity

I’m still getting my head around what we talked about, but I can tell you it covered her areas of expertise, and it rocked my world. For Bill and I, it was an inspiring and very engaging conversation – so much so that I couldn’t edit anything out – so this episode is part one of two… and if you have time after the podcast check out her TEDx talk

Catch part two of Dr. Jessica Hartley in Episode 5 of Artists in Depth.