16th Annual Mock Audition And Interview With Parent/Student Info Session January 2025 Via Zoom
Rachel Hoffman, CSA, has worked in casting since 1999. She is currently a Casting Director at Telsey + Company, where she has been involved in the casting of Come From Away, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Escape From Margaritaville, Frozen, American in Paris, Spider Man, Memphis, First Date, The Addams Family, Wicked, Rent, In The Heights, Million Dollar Quartet, Hairspray, You’re Welcome America, Nine To Five, Next To Normal, Blithe Spirit, Legally Blonde, Equus, South Pacific, Catch Me if You Can, Rock Of Ages, Reasons To Be Pretty, The Color Purple, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Next To Normal, Speed-The-Plow, Company, Tarzan, Boys’ Life, Grey Gardens, The Fantasticks, Bette Midler: The Showgirl Must Go On, Cinderella, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Sweeney Todd, The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown, Nerds (at Philadelphia Theatre Company), Sex An The City (films), Rachel Getting Married (film), Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera’s 2009 & 2010 summer seasons, Peep Show (Las Vegas) and upcoming companies of Bring It On, Spiderman, Love Never Dies, My Man Godfrey, Minsky’s, Elf as well as numerous readings and commercials. Some of the other shows she has worked on include The Boy from Oz, Brooklyn, Bat Boy: the Musical, Altar Boyz, Children of Eden (at The Ford’s Theatre), The Full Monty (at North Shore Music Theatre) and Godspell (2000 Off-Broadway Revival at the York Theatre). She lectures and teaches audition workshops on musical theatre performing/auditioning at many colleges and universities around the US and produces senior showcases in NYC for graduating classes of some of the top musical theatre departments. Prior to casting, she worked as a performer in NYC, and received her BFA in Musical Theatre from the University of Michigan.
Bob Bailey - Faculty USC's School of Drama - earned a degree in Theatre Arts and Dramatic Literature from Brown University and traveled on a Samuel Arnold Fellowship to work with renowned theatrical innovator Jerzy Grotowski at the Polish Laboratory Theatre. He became a founding member of the Washington Theatre Laboratory, an experimental troupe in the nation's capital, before moving to New York, where he was associated with several leading theatres, including Circle Repertory Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre, American Place Theatre, the Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Actors Studio. His productions of Borderlines by John Bishop (Circle Rep) and Lilith by Allan Havis (Home for Contemporary Theatre and Art) won praise in the New York Times, New York Magazine and the Village Voice. In Los Angeles, Robert has earned critical kudos for his direction of Bishop's Borderline, Jeffrey Hatcher's adaptation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, and Kenneth Lonergan's Lobby Hero, and for his performances as an actor in Wedekind's Lulu, David Rabe's A Question of Mercy, and Charles L. Mee's Big Love. He has also directed for the Young Audience Program at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His short dramatic film Last Call won three awards at the Breckenridge Festival of Film in Colorado; was an official selection at film festivals in Avignon, Sedona, Long Island, Queens, Los Angeles and New York City; and was released on a compilation DVD produced by the Cinequest Film Festival. He has taught acting and directing on the graduate and undergraduate levels at UC San Diego, UCLA and Brown University. He teaches acting and directing at USC and has staged ten School of Dramatic Arts productions since 2007, including three new plays written by students in the MFA Playwriting program.
Jonathan Bernstein - Faculty NYU - Tisch and Artistic Director of The Performing Arts Project. Jonathan's plays and musicals have been produced all over the country, and he is currently at work developing a dance play with choreographer Susan Misner for the Vineyard Theater, as well as completing a new musical with collaborators Gavin Creel and Robbie Roth. Directing credits include work at the Atlantic Theater Company, Naked Angels, Williamstown Theater Festival, New York Stage & Film, Signature Theater, Ensemble Studio Theater and many others. He has worked in various capacities at New York’s City Center, Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage Theater, Roundabout Theatre, Public Theater, and 52nd Street Project, where he writes, directs and teaches. He recently participated in NYC’s 24 Hour Musicals Benefit, writing an original musical with composer Jeanine Tesori between the hours of 11:00pm and 5:45am. This was his second time writing a musical for the charity; the first time he was paired with composer David Yazbek. Additionally, Broadway/London supervising director credits include Private Lives starring Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan, The Iceman Cometh starring Kevin Spacey and Paul Giamatti; Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? starring Dame Diana Rigg and David Suchet; The King And I; and the musical Chicago, in charge of overseeing both the (still running) 1996 Broadway revival, and the many national/international companies it spawned. He is an adjunct professor of Playwriting and Script Analysis in the MFA Musical Theater Writing Program at NYU. And he is a New York Mets fan which -- like anything difficult -- is fundamentally worthwhile.
