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Rachel Briley Artistic Director; Full Professor Rachel Briley is a Full Professor at the University of North Carolina Greensboro (UNC Greensboro). She is head of the M.F.A. program in Theatre for Youth and Artistic Director of the North Carolina Theatre for Young People (NCTYP). She came to North Carolina from Michigan where she served as the Director of Theatre Education at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Rachel also taught and directed at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC. She was a teaching artist at Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts where she conducted professional development workshops for in-service teachers and residencies for pre-school children in Washington, DC, Baltimore, MD, Arizona, and Michigan since 1992. She served on the board of the American Alliance for Theatre and Education (AATE) for four years. In 2004, Rachel was awarded an Ann Shaw Fellowship from TYA/USA to work on Visual Theatre techniques with Tyst Teater in Stockholm, Sweden. She was a member of the 2014 Women’s Executive Leadership program through the Impact Center in Washington, DC. Rachel was invited by the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) to represent the U.S. as a delegate in Santiago, Chile at the 2017 Santiago a Mil festival. She received the prestigious Outstanding Faculty Mentor award from the Graduate School at UNCG in 2018. Rachel was awarded a Research Leave to collaborate with Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago, Chile in Fall of 2019. Rachel graduated Phi Beta Kappa from The Catholic University of America in music (piano) and received her M.F.A. in Theatre for Young Audiences from Arizona State University. She is fluent in American Sign Language and is proficient in Spanish. |
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Hayley Greenstreet
Hayley Greenstreet is from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She earned her BA in Theatre with Honors from Wake Forest University in 2015. After graduating, she worked as a year-long Education Resident Professional Intern at Lexington Children’s Theater in Kentucky. Since August 2016, Hayley has worked in Omaha, Nebraska at The Rose Theater as a full time Teaching Artist! In this role, Hayley wears many hats; she serves the children and families of Omaha as a teacher, performer, director, and mentor. Most recently, Hayley had the pleasure of directing The Rose’s First Stage Production of A Bucket of Blessings where she was able to collaborate with OPS preschool classrooms and local traditional Indian choreographer Mallika Jayanti to create a colorful, engaging, and culturally diverse piece of theater for very young audiences. When she is not at The Rose, she works as an artist in other spaces! In summer and fall of 2018, she had the thrilling opportunity to work as the Assistant Director to Kerfuffle’s Nested – a devised theater experience for the very young at The Union for Contemporary Art. For this production, she and director Ashley Laverty hosted a series of role drama workshops exploring The Union’s community garden with young people, eventually evolving these experiences into the final production. Throughout all of her endeavors, Hayley strives to work with young people as collaborators, using their voices and ideas to fuel the work that will ultimately be shared with other young minds. Beyond theatre, Hayley loves playing board games, hacky sacking, and hanging with Ernie (her hedgehog). |
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Derya Agaoglu
Derya Agaoglu was born in Ankara, Turkey, in 1996. As a child, Derya loved playing volleyball and taking theatre classes. She graduated from high school in 2014, where she also earned her International Baccalaureate diploma. For Derya’s undergraduate studies, she was enrolled in TED University’s Education Faculty (as a Guidance and Psychological Counseling major), where she also completed her minor program in English Language Education. While attending various night-time performing schools, Derya had the opportunity to learn acting. Meanwhile, she began teaching drama to both Turkish and Syrian (refugee) young learners. In her senior year, Derya began publishing research studies that focused on the interdisciplinary connection between theatre, psychology and education. In 2018, she enrolled in the Fine Arts Education masters program at Ankara University. Currently, Derya is writing her thesis on the storytelling practices with Syrian refugee adults. She is extremely excited to continue her academic career in UNCG’s Theatre for Youth MFA program. Derya’s current interests include: social and emotional development through drama education, storytelling with marginalized learners, teaching culture through drama and applied theatre practices. In her spare time she loves doing yoga and reading traditional stories of different cultures. |
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John Perine
John Perine is your average red-headed middle child from Franklin, Tennessee. John graduated with his BFA in Theatre for Youth from Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, where he trained as a director, performer, and educator. In his culminating directing project, John explored ensemble devising and physical theatre techniques to stage a production of Peter and the Starcatcher by Rick Elice in Samford’s main stage season, which earned nominations for Best Director of a Musical of the Decade, Best Musical of the Decade, and Best Ensemble of a Musical of the Decade from BroadwayWorld Birmingham. This project ignited his passion for prioritizing collaboration in the rehearsal hall and the classroom. John has worked as a teaching artist at The Rose Theater (Omaha, NE), The Virginia Samford Theatre (Birmingham, AL), and Lexington Children’s Theatre (Lexington, KY), where he taught creative drama and skills-development workshops, directed youth productions, and had the opportunity to assistant direct main stage productions. In the rare moments when John is not engaging in some theatre-related project, he can usually be found searching for the world’s best ice cream parlor, crying over a coming of age film, or listening to a podcast on Survivor. www.johnperine.com |
