Meet MMC’s New Full-Time Faculty

Not pictured: Bethany Elkin, Sydney Maresca

Catherine Cabeen, M.F.A., Assistant Professor of  Dance
Professor Cabeen spent the bulk of her professional dancing career with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. She also performed with Pearl Lang Dance Theatre and the Martha Graham Company. Her own creative work dances between the grand theatricality of early modern dance and the transparency of post-modernism. She received an M.F.A. degree from the University of  Washington in Seattle after having completed her B.F.A. from Cornish College Professional Dancers Program. Her research focuses on gender representation in 20th-century dance history. By articulating both historic and contemporary cultural contexts for movement experiences, Professor Cabeen’s classes empower students to make their own aesthetic choices out of the unique equation of cultural factors that they embody in their own life. Her teaching experience includes courses in contemporary technique, movement and gender workshops, composition, anatomy/kinesiology, late dance history, Graham technique, Vinyasa Yoga and ballet. She is also the Artistic Director of her own interdisciplinary performance company, Hyphen, which in the past five years performed extensively in Seattle and toured nationally as well as internationally to Tanzania, Ireland, and Lebanon.
 
Bethany Elkin, M.F.A., Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts
Professor Elkin completed M.F.A. in Musical Theatre at San Diego State University and B.A. in Theatre Performance at Marymount Manhattan College. Her professional training includes Ann Reinking’s Broadway Theatre Project and Phil Oesterman’s Musical Theatre Program. She is a long time Adjunct Professor at Marymount Manhattan College where her teaching areas of specialization include acting for Musical Theatre, Musical Theatre Scene Study, Musical Theatre Dance Audition Techniques, Musical Theatre History and Dance Technique: Jazz, Tap, Ballet. Additionally Professor Elkin thought theatre courses at San Diego State University and musical theatre dance master class with students in Rosie O’Donnell’s non-profit arts education organization at Rosie’s Theatre Kids.
 
Erin Greenwell, M.F.A., Assistant Professor of Communication Arts
Professor Greenwell comes to the College as a working professional in the film and television industry with 15 years of teaching experience in the field of Film and Media Studies and Digital Arts and Design. Her  educational background includes an M.F.A. in Writing and Directing from City College of New York and B.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Erin Greenwell is a director and writer of her own feature films and shorts, as well as an editor for long form documentaries, narratives and television. Her most recent feature, “My Best Day” premiered at the Sundance 2012 Film Festival. Other projects she worked on varied from underrepresented political and cultural events through community television to independent projects that featured non-traditional casting and lesbian narratives.
 
Timothy Johnson, M.F.A., Assistant Professor of  Theatre Arts
Professor Johnson received an M.F.A in Acting from the University of Washington School of Drama. He was an Assistant Professor of Movement/Acting at Ohio University School of Theater. He has worked in A CHORUS LINE, both the Broadway run and the national tour. His other performing credits include the original cast of LEGENDS! (starring Mary Martin and Carol Channing) and REGINA with the Scottish Opera (playing the role of JAZZ), which he also recorded for DECCA under the baton of John Mauceri. His Off-Broadway appearances include ZORA NEALE HURSTON at the American Place Theatre, LYRICS AND LYRICISTS at the 92nd St. Y, and PORGY AND BESS at the Metropolitan Opera House. He has acted at numerous regional theatres including Actors Theatre of Louisville, Syracuse Stage, Goodspeed Opera House, 5th Avenue Theatre and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. He is also a flutist. He received his bachelor’s degree in Music Education at Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory of Music. During his senior year, he won first place in the Conservatory’s annual Concerto Competition.

Sydney Maresca, M.F.A., Assistant Professor of  Theatre Arts
Professor Maresca is a professional costume designer with a strong background in costume construction and fashion history. Her designs have ben seen all over New York City and the country. She is a resident designer with OBIE Award (Off-Broadway Theater Award) winning company The Debate Society (TDS) and her work was nominated for a Henry Hewes Design Award for TDS’s Buddy Cop 2. She has an M.F.A. degree from New York University’s Tisch Department of Design for Stage and Film and a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. Professor Maresca has worked with students both as an educator and as a designer at a number of universities including Pace, Princeton, Sarah Lawrence, Western Connecticut State University, Juilliard and the Curtis Institute.

Erica Stein,  Ph.D., Assistant Professor of  Communication Arts
Professor Stein completed her Ph.D. in film studies at the University of Iowa; she taught most recently at the University of Arizona.  She teaches film and television studies, and her classes cover topics such as film and television aesthetics, theory, industry, history, and criticism in both American and global contexts. Her research focuses on the intersections of narrative and urban space and her work has appeared in such venues as Journal of Film and Video, Mediascape, and Journal of Urban Cultural Studies. She is currently the co-chair of the Urban Studies Group at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Her interests include both avant-garde film and classical genres. Currently she is working on a project that traces the connections between real estate and crime in fiction film and television.
 
Antonio Suarez, M.F.A., Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts
Professor Suarez earned his M.F.A. in Acting from American Repertory Theater/Moscow Art Theater at Harvard University  and his B.F.A. in Acting at Marymount Manhattan College.  He has taught and directed at the college level at MMC, CCNY, Hunter College for over twelve years. His courses include Acting I: Process and Technique, Acting II:  Rehearsal and Scene Study, Acting for the Major, and Acting for the Non-Major.  He is also a professional actor who has acted with a variety of theater groups including Hispanic companies like INTAR and Afrocentric companies such as The National Black Theatre.  Recent roles  on television shows such as “House of Cards” and theatrical productions in New York allow his students to see his classroom philosophy in action.  He has worked closely with Emmy-winning producer Eileen Bluestone Sherman and currently serves as a Lucid Body Teacher Apprentice to Fay Simpson.

Published: September 24, 2014