Butler Theatre Day

Diane Timmerman, Chair, Professor of Theatre

Diane is a professional actor, voiceover artist, director, and producer with longstanding memberships in Equity (Actors’ Equity Association), SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild + American Federation of Television & Radio Artists), and VASTA (Voice and Speech Trainers Association.)

Diane is a Designated Linklater Voice Teacher, one of about 250 worldwide, and enjoys teaching a variety of voice, acting, audition, and theatre courses at Butler. She is the proud recipient of the 2014 Butler University Distinguished Faculty Award in Teaching. Diane received her M.F.A.in Acting from Indiana University and her B.A. in Theatre and German from Southern Illinois University. She studied for one year at the University of Hamburg on a German Academic Exchange Service Fellowship (DAAD) and for one year at the University of Vienna.

Diane served as Executive Artistic Director of the Equity theatre, Indianapolis Shakespeare Company (Indy Shakes), from 2013-2022.  During her decade at the helm, Diane oversaw the rebranding and relocating of the company from Heartland Actors’ Repertory Theatre, which produced in White River State Park, to Indy Shakes producing in Riverside Park. To achieve the move, Indy Shakes teamed up with the Indianapolis Parks Foundation (now called the Indianapolis Parks Alliance), Indy Parks, and Indiana Landmarks to create a plan to restore the Taggart Memorial into the Taggart Memorial Mainstage Amphitheatre in Riverside Park. This initiative was funded by a generous 9.24 million dollar Strengthening Indianapolis Through Arts & Culture Innovation Grant from Lilly Endowment, and the facility opened in the summer of 2021 with Indy Shakes’ acclaimed A Midsummer Night’s Dream followed the following summer by the innovative Ricky 3: A Hip Hop Shakespeare Richard III.  With education close to her heart, Diane founded the Indy Shakes Traveling Troupe, the educational touring wing of Indy Shakes. Of note is that Butler Theatre students, alumni, faculty, and staff have always been involved in Indy Shakes productions, and that tradition continues to this day.

As part of Indy Shakes’ move to Riverside Park, Diane has been engaged in the vibrant Near Northwestside community in numerous ways. She served as Co-Chair of the Arts, Parks, & Public Spaces (APPS) Committee of the Near Northwest, along with the Governance Committee. She was also a member of the Riverside Business Association, the Riverside Parade Committee, the Northwest Landing Neighborhood Association, and was Co-Chair of the Executive Committee for the Friends of Frank Young Park. She loves the Near Northwest community and continues to attend events in support of the neighborhoods.

Diane’s professional acting roles include include Emilia in Othello, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing and Nerissa in Merchant of Venice –all with Indy Shakes. Favorite contemporary work at the Phoenix Theatre includes roles in Rancho Mirage, August: Osage County, Next Fall, November, Bug, Beautiful Thing and others. Diane has appeared with the Human Race Theatre Company in Ohio in Spinning Into Butter and Beautiful Thing. Other credits include Angel Street at the IRT and numerous credits on Chicago stages where she worked as a freelance actor prior to coming to Butler. Diane has many commercial, voiceover, and film credits, including Amanda for Adrenaline Motion Pictures and The Package with Gene Hackman.

Diane’s books include: Spare Scenes: 60 Skeletal Scenes for Acting and Directing; 90-Minute Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream; 90-Minute Shakespeare: Romeo & Juliet.

Diane is also a successful freelance voice coach who has worked with business people, TV news anchors, preachers, teachers, attorneys, and many others who want to make a shift in their voice. Diane works with clients on a wide variety of voice issues including: wanting more volume, less vocal fry, more power, less nasality, more expressivity, more ease in speaking, more command, and many other topics. Voices are like fingerprints: each one is unique, and Diane enjoys working with a wide range of people to achieve their voice goals.

Diane is a two-time recipient of the Creative Renewal Fellowship from the Arts Council of Indianapolis. She loves all kinds of international theatre practices and taught on the Spring 2010 voyage for the Semester at Sea program. Diane enjoys facilitating Butler Theatre’s unique Christel DeHaan Visiting International Theatre Artist (VITA) program, which brings internationally-recognized theatre artists to Butler to teach and direct or design. Diane is thrilled to teach at Butler Theatre where the students, faculty, and staff are bright, talented, open, curious artists who seek to better our art form each day.

Why I love Theatre 

Because to me it is an extension of life and is a means of emphasizing the joys of interpersonal communication.

Why I love Butler

It is a great team, a family of people passionate about art who allow themselves to fearlessly strive for new ways of theatrical expression.

Why I love teaching 

I believe that the rejuvenation of Theatre begins in college. I love the energy and inspiration that students bring to the classroom and feel that it is a mutually beneficial learning experience.

Current Projects

• Developed Summer Study Abroad program in France, 2024 – 2026
• Adapted for the stage and directed “Cat Who Walked by Himself”, Fall 2025
• Adapted two A. Chekhov novels for the stage and directed main stage production “About Love”, Spring 2025
  

Bio

Professor Artemiev graduated from the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS) with an MFA in Directing.

Later she completed her Ph.D. at the same institution. She is one of the disciples of Maria Knable who was a distinguished Russian Theatre director and the student of Stanislavsky and Michael Chekhov.

Elaina was a founding member of the Tabakov Studio Theatre in Moscow, where she had worked for many years before starting a teaching career at the Moscow Art Theatre School (MATS). Many of her students have achieved national and international acclaim in the Theatre, Television and Film industries. She moved to the United States and joined the Butler University Faculty in 2005.

Her directing credits at Butler include “Crime and Punishment” by F. Dostoevsky, “The Blizzard” by A. Pushkin, “The Marriage” by N. Gogol, “Balzaminov’s Wedding” by N. Ostrovsky, “The Cherry Orchard” by A. Chekhov, “The Twelfth Night” by W. Shakespeare, “The Love of Don Perlimplin and Belissa in the Garden” by F.G.Lorca and others.

Elaina founded the Butler International Theatre Exchange Program and has developed a system for training that incorporates Michael Chekhov’s Method, Vakhtangov Research and the Stanislavsky System. This unique course is aimed at developing an awakening of the actor’s imagination, stage awareness and creativity.

She took a year of sabbatical (Fall 2012 and Spring of 2013) during which she organized the nonprofit company – International Foundation for Theatre Educationand Research (IFTER). She also developed a brand new program for postgraduate students in Acting and Directing at GITIS with training in acting, directing, voice, movement, dance and the Russian language. She arranged for one of her former students to successfully teach classes at Butler during her absence in Fall 2012.

William Fisher is a professor of theatre at Butler University where he directs productions and teaches Directing, devised theatre, physical theatre, and acting. He joined Butler Theatre after years at Ohio University as head of the undergraduate performance program and Director of the School of Theater. He served on the faculty of CalArts, UCIrvine, and UNC Chapel Hill, as well as teaching at the Ecole de la Ville de Paris – Marcel Marceau, in his own studio, and at the Étienne Decroux School in Paris.

William was trained by Etienne Decroux and served as his assistant.  After leaving Paris he founded Zeta Collective, a company and venue in downtown Los Angeles that focused on new performance work and training.  His research and practice have been supported through the US Information Service guest artist program, the Soros Foundation through the CDU Zagreb, The PuffinFoundation, the National/State partnership (CAC/NEA), Los Angeles CulturalAffairs Department, and the US Department of Education (Title IV).  In1998, William began training with Anne Bogart and SITI Company and maintains a relationship to that work and company alumni. Prior to coming to Indianapolis, his professional work as a director has been presented at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), The Dubrovnik Festival, The Vienna Theatre Festival, and Kampnagel (Hamburg).

Other international credits have included serving as a Master Teacher and Festival Coordinator at the MKFM – the International Festival of Youth Theatre in Pula, Croatia, and directing the Ohio University College of Fine Arts Global Theatre Institute study programs (Croatia and London 1997 – 2007, New York City 2008-2010). William served as a site reporter for the NEA Theater Program, served on the National Movement Theatre Association board of directors, and edited its publication MovementTheatre Quarterly. His essay Struggle and Irony / Ashes and Flames appears in the book Words on Decroux,(Thomas Leabhart, editor, 1994). In 2004 along with his with his late colleague and friend, Nigerian playwright and poet Dr. Esiaba Irobi, William organized Performing Peace, an international symposium under the aegis of the Baker Peace Conference at Ohio University. 

William was a Fulbright Teaching and Research Fellow at the Icelandic Academy of the Arts (Reykjavik) Theatre Department in the Theory and Practice Program, with additional research in Oslo, Norway.  Since coming to Butler, he directed and/or devised at least one production annually including Small Lives / Big Dreams, The Exonerated, SEVEN, Tartuffe, Terminal, MadForest, Our Town, Lunar Revolution 2.0 (devised), Love and Information, The Man Who…, The Mineola Twins, Fleeting Full,  – an evening of Beckett plays performed live during the pandemic which he directed via ZOOM, a (re)Making Project, Waiting for Godot, Everybody, and  and most recently She Kills Monsters. Local professional productions include Freud’s Last Session, An Act of God, and The Lyons at the Phoenix Theatre.

Web site under construction: http://www.williamfisher.ne

Why I love theatre.

 “When the actor stands up, it is humanity standing up.”  ÉtienneDecroux

Theatre explores how to fill space and time and requires us to have deep reasons for being onstage, for standing, speaking and listening.  While thrilling and delighting us, it can be a means to discover, reveal and challenge who and what we are as human beings, and to try to figure out how to be in the world.

Why I love Butler and Butler Theatre:

The Butler Theatre is housed in the Jordan College of the Arts at Butler where our production season is integral to the BFA in Acting and BA in Theatre degrees. These flexible curricula balance artistic rigor and breadth of learning while fostering community and reinforcing autonomy and agency of young artists. It attracts serious, motivated, generous, and hardworking students who are as serious about theatre as they are engaged in  transforming themselves, the work, and the world. I love that we are able to invite important international guests to inteact with our students, as well as offer experiences abroad and the felxibility in the curriculum to engage in these experiences.   

My background in Physical Theatre, and as a director of devised new work animates the studio and the Mainstage production season where I direct annually.  From devised pieces such as Lunar Revolution 2.0, a new production of Terminal by Susan Yankowitz, Joseph Chaikin and The Open Theatre, and a (re)making project, to productions of scripted plays  Fleeting Full – an evening of 5 Beckett plays. and to direct works of great playwrights including Paula Vogel, Caryl Churchill, Samuel Beckett, Moliere, Brecht, Thornton Wilder, Charles Mee,  Brendan Jacobs-Jenkins, and Qui Nguyen.   Photos past seasons productions can be seen at   https://www.butler.edu/jordan-arts/undergraduate-programs/theatre/mainstage-season/past-productions/ .  

Butler encouraged me to develop off-campus immersion opportunities in London, New York, while pursuing my own practice as a director internationally, and to invite and share diverse voices with our students that so far has included Ralph Lemon, Susan Yankowitz, Marco Luly, Ann Bogart, Tim Miller, Brendan Jacobs-Jenkins, Ellen Lauren, Will Bond, and Darron L. West. 

Why I love teaching:

The pursuit of knowledge and experience, based in practice is built on hope is a value in and of itself. Through teaching/learning we face our common past, engage the present moment and the profound changes in our culture and our work, to seek to affect the future,  to as artists praticipate in healing our world by extension ourselves and each other. 

Current Projects:

My creative project  over the last several years has taken me abroad to direct Small Lives / Big Dreams, a 5-person play created by SITI Company. Over the next several years productions are planned for the UK, Iceland, and Croatia.  I have completed my French translation of the text after a workshop reading in the summer of 2023 in Paris with French-speaking actors. 

The summer London Theatre and Arts immersion program is running annually and I have will curate a one week Alumni and Friends version  in London starting in the SUmmer of 2026.

Rob is a Professor at Butler University and teaches Set and Lighting Design in the Department of Theatre. Rob also works as a freelance designer. He has designed for many theatre companies including: Indiana Repertory Theatre (Indianapolis, IN), The Lilly Theatre at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum, The Phoenix Theatre (Indianapolis, IN), The Guthrie Theatre (Minneapolis, MN), Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park (Cincinnati, OH), Walnut Street Theatre (Philadelphia, PA), The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis (St. Louis, MO), The Cleveland Playhouse (Cleveland, OH), The Gulfshore Playhouse (Naples FL), The Weston Playhouse of Vermont (Weston,VT), Geva Theatre Center (Rochester, NY), the Contemporary American Theatre of Columbus Ohio (Columbus, OH), and the American Players Theatre (Spring Green,WI).  Rob is a two-time recipient of the Creative Renewal Fellowship from the Arts Council of Indianapolis and the Indy Professional Theatre MVP award from the Indianapolis Foundation.

 Andrés received his Ph.D. from Indiana University, where he examined the transformation of stage combat in nineteenth century England. Specifically, he investigated societal factors as well as changes within theatrical practice that contributed to fights on stage transitioning from standard combats to arranged, or choreographed, combats. He has taught across multiple areas of theatre, including: theatre history, script analysis, introduction to theatre, acting, and stage combat. He has also developed and taught special topics courses, such as collaborative and devised theatre as well as Latine theatre. 

Select directing credits include: The Small World of Millie McIvor, Fame, Grease, The Sandbox, The Importance of Being Earnes, Romeo and Juliet, and The Pajama Game.  

Andrés is also an advanced actor/combatant with the Society of American Fight Directors, holding certifications in all eight weapon disciplines. For over ten years, he has taught stage combat to people of all ages at workshops and in classrooms both in the United States and internationally. He has been the fight choreographer for several productions, including Vinegar Tom, Water by the Spoonful, Streamers, Cyrano de Bergerac, Don Giovanni, The Three Musketeers, She Kills Monsters, and Carmen. In addition, Andrés has lectured nationally and internationally at universities, organizations, and theatres on the historical and contemporary practice of stage combat.   

Wendy Meaden – Professor of Theatre

Jordan College of the Arts

Wendy is a professional costume designer and draper (pattern maker).  She currently mentors students and teaches courses in Costume Design, Rendering, Fashion History, Textiles, Mask Work, and Stage Makeup.

Wendy particularly enjoys fantastic collaborations with students, colleagues, professionals, and guests from around the world.  Together they explore new ideas about what theatre is, and what it might become.

“I love designing; it’s an immediate, visceral way to reach the heart, mind, and soul. Theatre engages us on many levels, and is the ultimate collaborative communication between writers, directors, designers, performers,  characters, technicians, and audience.”

She delights in facilitating the growth of thoughtful, inventive students into professional theatre artists, and is inspired by seeing our students apply their theatre training to areas that are meaningful to them and the world we live in now.

She earned her M.F.A. in Costume Design and Construction at Indiana University – Bloomington, and a B.A. in Theatre from Bates College.  She joined the Butler faculty following 10 seasons with Indiana RepertoryTheatre (IRT), where she was the lead draper/tailor. In addition to her patterning work with IRT, she has constructed costumes for the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Louisville Ballet, the Huntington Theater, and the film The Best of the Best. She managed costume shops for The Theatre at Monmouth (Maine), the Nickerson Theatre, and Bates College. Wendy’s design career includes works for Indiana Repertory Theatre (IRT), Cardinal Stage Company, ShadowApe, and The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, among others. Several of her designs were included in the exhibit Costume at the Turn of the Century in Moscow (2015) and in the World Stage Design Festival in Toronto (2005).  She has published several scholarly articles and  recently published Theatre Masks Out Side In; Perspectives on Mask History, Design Construction and Performance (Routledge/Focal Press, 2023) with her colleague Michael Brown.

In addition to teaching and designing at Butler, Wendy is an active member of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT), the Costume Society of America, Association for. Theatre in Higher Education, and Phi Beta Kappa.  As a recipient of several faculty fellowships, she has traveled throughout Europe, and to Ghana, where she studied Kente and Adinkra textiles.  Wendy continues to freelance as a costume designer and maker.

Glen holds a B.F.A. in Design and Technical Theatre from the University of Minnesota, Duluth and has done graduate work in lighting design at Indiana University, Bloomington. Glen’s most recent design for Butler Theatre was the Lighting Design for “The Nameless Star”, and will be working on the Scenic Design for “Enemy of the People”, this season.  In May 2009, Glen was endowed by the Indianapolis Arts Council with a Creative Renewal Fellowship.  Before coming to Butler, Glen was the Technical Director and Designer at Kent State University, Starke County Campus, in Canton, Ohio. In three and a half years at KSU-SC he designed and built 15 theatrical productions, four dance productions, over 50 music concerts of various types, and built for the Canton Players Guild. In the same time period Glen served as Technical Director/Instructor for Culver Military Academy’s Summer Camps program, completing two productions each summer.

Specializing in the Design and construction of Scenery, Lighting, Audio, and Video he teaches Production Fundamentals, Stagecraft, and Theatre  Graphics.

Glen’s professional credits include Dartmouth Summer Repertory Theatre, Marshall Performing Arts Center, Brown County Playhouse, Indianapolis Opera, Minnesota Repertory Theatre and The Duluth Ballet. He is associated with the United States Institute for Theatre Technology.

Megan Wiegand, Costume Shop Manager

 Megan is a working professional in the Theatre and Opera Costume Industry and has worked in and for various shops across the country, including Williamstown Theatre Festival (MA), Tuacahn Center for the Arts (UT), The Glimmerglass Festival (NY), and Indianapolis Repertory Theatre (IN). Megan earned her M.F.A. in Costume Technology and Management from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, having previously received her B.F.A. in Theatre Production and Design from the University of Evansville. Megan has been teaching and working with students here at Butler since 2016. She loves teaching and watching our students develop into amazing artist and professionals. Megan teaches students both formally and informally the ins and outs of the costume industry. She specializes in costume construction and management, while also designing for Butler University when called upon. She is available to answer any questions one may have and can usually be found in the costume shop or can be reached by email.