Jessica Alldredge
Teaching Artist
Jessica Alldredge (she/her) moved to Chicago in 2012 from Birmingham, AL where she graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and ran the drama program at a local Montessori school. In her time in Chicago , she has worked as a teaching artist, actor, director, and collaborator. Her teaching and arts administration work includes work for Northlight, American Theater Company, Mudlark Theater, Dream Big, and The Viola Project. She is a member of the 2015 cohort of the former Teaching Artist Development Studio through Columbia College. This is Jessica’s 11th year at Northlight where she has taught Build a Play, community workshops, and served as a camp director for Northlights former summer camps. She lives on the northside of Chicago with her two arts loving kids and her husband.
Dinah Berkeley
Teaching Artist
Dinah Berkeley (they/them/theirs) is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator who's theatrical career has focused primarily on developing new plays using devising, clown, mime, experimental and other physical theatre practices. They have taught students ages 6 to 96 from San Francisco California to New York City. They love empowering their students to find creative ways to express themselves, to tell their own stories, and to honor the creative beings in us all.
Tyra Bullock
Teaching Artist
Tyra Bullock (she/her) is a Chicagoland artist, educator, and arts administrator. Currently, she serves as the Associate Director of Education at Goodman Theatre. Over the years, Tyra's held various roles in arts leadership, most notably Associate Director of Education at Writer's Theatre and Community and Education Programs Associate at Victory Gardens Theatre. As a Teaching Artist, she's had the pleasure of working with companies such as Northlight Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Lifeline Theatre, Oklahoma Children's Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, and Victory Gardens Theatre. Through her work Tyra strives to provide quality arts programming that promotes empathy, diversity, and empowers those who feel unseen by society.
Janyce Caraballo
Teaching Artist
Janyce Caraballo (she/her) is an Actor, Director, and Teaching Artist from Chicago’s Humboldt Park. She takes pride in her Latiné culture, Queer communities, and strives to uplift their vibrant stories. She is passionate about creating fun inclusive educational spaces, being an ally for underrepresented folx in the arts, and making storytelling accessible to and for all. Select teaching experience includes work with: Urban Theatre Company, The National Theater Institute at the O'Neill, Chicago High School for the Arts, and Silk Road Rising. Select Chicago credits: Northlight Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Drury Lane, Teatro Vista, Raven Theatre, Chicago Children’s Theatre, Theo Ubique Regional: Peninsula Players, TheatreSquared, Marriott Theatre, Indiana Repertory Theatre, First Folio Theatre, and American Players Theatre. She is a member of Actors’ Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA, has her Master of Fine Arts from The Theatre School at DePaul University and is represented by Paonessa Talent Agency.
Liam Collier
Teaching Artist
Liam Collier (he/him) is an organizer and theatre maker, specializing in ensemble-based modes of creation. Born and raised in New York, Liam moved to Chicago in 2017 to pursue his passion for immersive theatre and arts education. From 2018 through 2023, Liam worked at the Goodman Theatre, serving as the Community Programs and Special Projects manager and a lead teaching artist of the Goodman’s multigeneration InterGens ensemble. He continues to teach storytelling through the Goodman’s GeNarrations program at Willye B. White park. These days, you’ll also find him leading K-12 experiences at the Art Institute of Chicago and devising exciting new adaptations with Lifeline Theatre’s in-school residencies. Recent theatre credits include QuaranStream Theatre Festival (Producer), iBuddy (Stage Manager, Totally Human), and Three West: An Immersive Staged Reading (Playwright, self-produced).
Jeff Donnan
Teaching Artist
Jeff Donnan (he/him) is a teaching artist, playwright, and novelist based in Chicago. As a teaching artist, Jeff has worked with Auditorium Theatre, Northlight Theatre, The Chicago Music and Acting Academy, Mudlark Theatre, and more. Jeff holds a BA in Theatre Performance from the University of Illinois at Chicago and has written two complete plays: IRIS and Fishing at the End, and is currently working on an untitled fantasy novel.
Fay Florence-Steddum
Teaching Artist
Fay Florence-Steddum (they/them) is a multidisciplinary community-based artist and performer, skilled in acting, directing, playwriting, poetic-voice, movement, dance, costumes, technical design/operation and ensemble-based devised theatre. Having performed and taught across the US and internationally in China, India, Mexico, Fay received their Masters of Fine Arts from Dell’ Arte International in Blue Lake, California before calling Chicago home in 2018. Fay has since collaborated with over 40 different community partners, facilitating short and long-term performance programs for thousands of students and young people across Chicago, as well as in neighboring suburbs, and states. As an independent playmaker and ensemble member of Chicago’s Theater Unspeakable, Fay’s passion for new and experimental art is reinforced by the flourishing storefront theatre scene unique to Chicago. When Fay is not actively immersed in art making, you can find them feeding their storytellers soul: listening to music, touring museums, gardening, and spending quality time with friends and family in nature.
Kenny Hamilton
Teaching Artist
Kenneth Hamilton (he/him) is an actor and educator that’s lived in Chicago for 5 years. He loves poetry, writing, physical theatre, football and his 2 cats. When’s he’s not on stage or in a classroom he can probably be found reading a book.
Faith Hart
Education Apprentice
Faith Hart (she/her) is a director, writer, teaching artist, and arts leader immensely excited to be one of the 2024-2025 Education Apprentices at Northlight Theatre. Recently, she co-directed a site-specific production of EURYDICE on the Chicago River and KRAPP'S LAST TAPE, as part of Haven Chicago's Director's Haven Cohort 7. Additional Chicago directing credits include MAINTENANCE—a self-written site-specific narrative experience centering sanitation workers—at Pivot Arts and self-produced works such as Map of Virtue, a one-woman adaptation of ELEKTRA, and a dance variation entitled ELEKTRA, AT SOLSTICE staged immersively at Leone Beach. Assistant directing credits include ‘ART’ at the Guthrie Theater alongside Kimberly Senior, THE BAND'S VISIT directed by Zi Alikhan at Writers Theatre, where she will assist Senior again in the fall on EVERY BRILLIANT THING. Faith currently teaches with Idea Box Integrated Arts and is an alumna of The Theatre School at DePaul University, the Kennedy Center Directing Intensive, Theatrical Intimacy Education, The Neo-Futurists, and Remy Bumppo training programs.
Mady McCabe
Education Apprentice
Mady McCabe (she/her) is a Chicago-based actor, director, and educator. Originally from Toledo, Ohio, she graduated Summa Cum Laude from Wright State University earning a degree in Acting. Mady is a Resident Artist at Two Chairs Theatre Company where she has performed in multiple theaters around Chicago including Second City, Annoyance Theatre & Bar, and Theater Wit. In July of 2023, she directed the US premiere of Zoo by Lily Bevan at the Edge Off-Broadway. Mady has a passion for shaping the minds of young thespians, working as a Teaching Artist with Mudlark Theater Company since September of 2022.
Edmund O'Brien
Teaching Artist
Edmund O'Brien (he/him) began improvising and writing sketch comedy in 1989 with Off-Off Campus at the University of Chicago. Since 2009 he has taught youth and adults at The Second City in Acting, Comedy Writing, Improv, Music, Storytelling, TV and Film Writing, and Wellness. He and his wife Dana perform as Sheila’s Sister, and co-founded KidProv Chicago where they run improv classes for children ages 5-13 at Chase Park. Edmund has also been a Teaching Artist with A.B.L.E., Changing Worlds, Lookingglass Theatre, Mudlark Theater, Pegasus Theatre Chicago, Special Gifts Theatre, and Storycatchers Theatre where he was the recipient of the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice 2016 Volunteer of the Year Award for helping incarcerated youth write and perform musicals inspired by personal stories.His writing credits range from You Don’t Know Jack to MTV’s Undressed. Somewhere in repeats you can still hear Edmund as the announcer for Street Smarts.
Abby Thompson
Teaching Artist
Abby Thompson (she/her) is an Emmy Award Winning voiceover artist, actor, educator, and arts advocate. In 2022, she received an Emmy Award for her narration of a Program Promotion Campaign for a PBS documentary series about Muhammad Ali. She is the current 2024 recipient of the League of Chicago Theatre’s Samuel G. Roberson Jr. Resident Fellowship for Artivism in partnership with Filament Theatre, where she is developing an original devised play based on true stories of youth in the foster care system. Abby has taught and facilitated theater with Steppenwolf Theatre, Filament Theatre, Chicago Children’s Theatre, Northlight Theatre, Storycatchers Theatre, and Collaboraction. Abby has performed professionally with First Stage Children’s Theater, Filament Theatre, Northlight Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, and African American Children’s Theatre. Abby is currently part of the immersive theater ensemble, Albany Park Theater Project in their production of Port of Entry. For voiceover work, she is represented by NV Talent. Abby holds a BA in Acting with a minor in Voiceover from Columbia College Chicago. She has spoken on several arts advocacy panels, including the Education Pre-Conference for the Theatre Communications Conference 2019. In her spare time, she is found salsa, bachata, or cumbia dancing and traveling the world! For more of her work, visit: abbythompson.org.
Erika Wilson
Teaching Artist
Hi, I'm Erika Wilson (she/her)! I am an actor, teaching artist, and overall theater professional here in Chicago. I graduated from Stephens College with a BFA in Theatre Arts - Acting degree in 2018. I also graduated from the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in NYC in 2019. I've worked all over the country from St. Louis, MO (my hometown), to Peoria, AZ, to NYC, to Okoboji, IA, and now Chicago, IL. Through teaching artistry, my purpose is to help students build confidence and self esteem, embrace vulnerability, and always remember to play.
