Staff & Board
Our Staff
Hilary Buffum
Membership & Communications Specialist
she/her/hers & they/them/theirs
Hilary@TheatreBayArea.org
Hilary Buffum
Hilary Buffum is an actor and arts educator who has been a part of Bay Area Theatre for most of her life. She is an artist in residence at the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. She has taught, performed, and done administrative work with many different theatre companies. Including Aurora Theatre Company, SF Shakes, Bay Area Children’s Theatre, and the Shelton Theatre. Hilary holds a BA in Theatre Performance and Communication Studies from San Francisco State.
Sean Fenton
Sean Fenton (he/him/his), executive director of Theatre Bay Area, has been active in the professional Bay Area theatre community for more than two decades as an actor, musician, director, and administrator. He has performed at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, San Francisco Playhouse, 42nd Street Moon, Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company, and Community Asian Theatre of the Sierra, among others. Backstage, he has been a leader at Bay Area Children’s Theatre, Kaiser Permanente Educational Theatre, and WolfBrown’s Intrinsic Impact program. Sean is a member of Actors' Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA and holds a BA in Cultural and Social Anthropology from Stanford University.
Melissa Hillman
East Bay-born Melissa Hillman has been part of the Bay Area theatre community for most of her life. She was the Artistic Director of Impact Theatre and served for a decade on TBA's Theatre Services Committee. She holds a PhD in Dramatic Art from UC Berkeley, and has taught all over the Bay Area, including Cal, CSU East Bay, and the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre. She writes the blog Bitter Gertrude, and has been published by Methuen, HuffPo, TCG, and many others. As a dramaturg, she's worked for a number of companies and playwrights, most recently as PlayCafe's resident dramaturg. As a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion consultant, she specializes in white allyship, cis allyship, and disability. In her free time, she's a Dungeons & Dragons DM and loves to bake. She and her husband, Jon Nagel, have two college-aged children, Jacob and Marian.
Meghan Crosby-Jolliffe
Meghan Crosby-Jolliffe is a mezzo-soprano, educator, and administrator who is passionate about fostering a vibrant and inclusive environment for all performing artists. They recently graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with a Master of Music in Voice and hold a BM in Voice from the New England Conservatory. As a performer, Meghan crosses over genres and has been seen in the Bay Area in Opera, Musical Theater, Early Music, and Choral settings. Most recently, Meghan performed Die Schöne Müllerin by Schubert and participated in the SFCM Musical Theater Ensemble’s virtual production of Sondheim on Sondheim. Meghan also serves on the board of a Boston area theater troupe, The Lilac Players, and loves producing, directing, and theatremaking with that community from across the country.
Ann Marie Lonsdale
Ann Marie Lonsdale is an arts worker with a background as a producer and administrator working with innovative and experimental live performance. She began her career as a performer, stage manager, and producer in theater and dance in Chicago and New York, with such companies as The Hypocrites, the Vittum Theater (now Adventure Stage Chicago), the side project, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Sitelines festival. As an administrator, she has worked at Creative Capital, Center for Performance Research, and Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York, among others. She is also one of the co-creators of the Freelance Artist Resource Project, an iterative rapid response made up of a website, webcasts, and online tools for learning and community building created in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ann Marie has also worked in the performing arts community as an educator, facilitator, grant panelist, speaker, and is the founder of Partake Arts, a consulting practice focused on individual artists and artist-led projects. She has done training with artEquity, and is actively engaged in a national community of practice around anti-racism in the theatre and arts. Ann Marie is a proud graduate of the University of Chicago and holds a master’s degree in Arts Administration from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Toni Press-Coffman
Grantwriter | she/her/hers
Toni Press-Coffman
In addition to being a professional grant writer for 30 years, Toni Press-Coffman is a playwright. Her plays have been produced throughout the United States. Her book, Trucker Rhapsody and Other Plays, was published in October 2021 by Wising Up Press.
Art Quiñones
Art Quiñones is a visual artist and designer from Massachusetts. They hold a BFA in Graphic Design from Maine College of Art, where they developed a passion for equitable community building and disability justice. Their current practice focuses on integrating hand-drawn typography and illustration to express queer identity. Their work in design informs and calls audiences to action for social change with experimentation across digital and analog technologies, including 3D printing and printmaking.
Jericha Senyak
Senior Bookkeeper | she/her/hers
Jericha Senyak
Jericha Senyak is an artist who stumbled accidentally into the world of accounting and somehow never left. She now provides financial consulting to a wide range of arts and mission-based projects and organizations, with services including coaching, training, accounting management, and oversight. She supports arts- and mission-based practitioners in growing their capacity to work with every aspect of managing money, from budgeting and bookkeeping to financial literacy and empowerment. Her consulting approach treats ongoing inequity and lack of resources as the major causes of financial anxiety for mission-based projects, and primarily focuses on finance as a form of storytelling. When she's not juggling numbers, she's working on her off-grid cabin in the Northern California woods, where she spends her free time scheming up weird art projects, foraging for wild mushrooms, and writing too many long letters. You can learn more about her consulting practice at www.jerichasenyak.com.
Our Board
Anne W. Smith
President | she/her/hers
Anne W. Smith
Dr. Anne W. Smith has been a long-time leader in arts administration in a variety of roles: advocate, arts professional, planning and organizational development consultant, professor, and arts educator connected to interests nationally and internationally. She was Arts Administration department Chair and arts professor at Golden Gate University and earlier in her career, a tenured secondary education teacher of English, Humanities, Drama and Speech.
She holds a DPA (with a focus on public policy) from Golden Gate University, an MA in Humanities & Curriculum from Teacher’s College, Columbia University and a BA in English and Theatre from State University of New York (University at Albany).
She has held leadership positions for California Arts Council, San Francisco Arts Commission, ODC Dance, Dance Spectrum Ballet, Book Club of California, San Francisco Center for the Book and San Francisco Circus Center.
A nonprofit governance expert, Anne is also a Board member for the Medical Clown Project, Fountain Project Foundation, and CO-Chair of Arts Forum for the Commonwealth Club of California.
S. Shafer Mazow
Treasurer | he/him/his
S. Shafer Mazow
Stephen Shafer Mazow, Managing Director at Z Space, is a writer, theater artist, fundraiser, and activist living in San Francisco and working in program development and strategic initiatives at the intersection of art, science, and social justice. Prior to joining Z Space, Shafer was Senior Grants Manager at the Exploratorium and Director of Institutional Giving and Strategy at American Conservatory Theater. He serves on the Board of the National Queer Theater; leads the trans and gender-non-conforming advocacy and empathy project I.P.Freely; and has helped to establish space-sharing initiatives, community-based theater programs, and research and action initiatives to address gender equity in the non-profit theater field. Shafer holds a B.A. in English from Wellesley College and a M.F.A. in English and Creative Writing from Mills College.
Janice E. Sager
Vice President | she/her/hers
Janice E. Sager
Originally from Montreal, Canada, Janice moved to the United States in order to earn a Masters degree in Arts Administration at Columbia University. From there, she went on to spend over 25 years working in nonprofit organizations in the creative and cultural sector. She has worked in the fields of theatre, dance, public television and radio, film, and nonprofit journalism. She has held senior financial management positions at Equity Library Theatre (NYC), FRONTLINE, WGBH Public Radio (Boston), KQED Public Radio, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and the Mill Valley Film Festival.
She currently works with a range of nonprofit organizations in the Bay Area as a financial and business management consultant. She is the proud parent of a daughter who is pursuing an acting career.
Anne Younan
Secretary | she/her/hers
Anne Younan
Anne Younan currently serves as City Lights Theater Company of San Jose's General Manager, but her history
with the company goes back over three decades when she first appeared in Cynthia Heimel's A Girl's Guide to
Chaos in 1988. Previously, Anne served as CLTC's Development Director (2015-2018), Box Office & Development Manager (2012-2015), Box Office & Business Manager (2001-2012), Company Manager (1997-2001), and Special Events Coordinator (1996-1997). Previous professional experience includes work with San Jose Repertory Theatre and 10 years in the high-tech industry. Artistically, Anne has been seen in several CLTC productions, most recently as Chris in their world premiere commission of Coded by Kirsten Brandt (which closed one night shy of opening due to COVID-19) and as another Chris in Calendar Girls in 2016. Anne also appeared as the original Jetta in San Jose Stage Company's smash hit Angry Housewives and received an Irene Ryan Award nomination for her portrayal of Kate in West Valley College's production of Uncommon Women and Others. She is a member of TBA's Theatres Advancing Social Change cohort and the newly formed Bay Area Theater Accountability Workgroup.
Gina Baleria
she/her/hers
Gina Baleria
Gina Baleria is an Assistant Professor of Journalism, Media Writing, & Digital Media in the Department of Communication & Media Studies at SSU. She is also the host of the News in Context podcast( @NewsInContextSF), which airs every Friday at 8:30am and 6:30pm on KSFP 102.5 in San Francisco. She earned her Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from San Francisco State University; her Master's in Communication: Media Studies from Stanford University; and her Bachelor's in English with emphases in Film & History from UCLA. Prior to becoming a professor, Gina was a broadcast & digital journalist at stations including KCBS Radio, KGO TV, &KGO Radio in San Francisco; and KXTV&KFBK in Sacramento. She also co-founded two theatre companies, Actor’s Anonymous and AtmosTheatre / Theatre in the Woods and has acted in and directed several plays in the Bay Area.
Sunshine Deffner
she/her/hers
Sunshine Deffner
Sunshine’s passion lands between the intersection of successful arts business structures and the concept of arts-for-all. Currently, she is serving as the Associate Managing Director with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, spearheading a new programmatic initiative to address deep community relationships through art making using the vast arsenal of tools and talents of the theatre.
Ms. Deffner has engaged her 25+ year career in many of the arts disciplines, including Theater, Musicals, Museum, Dance, Opera, and Symphony. She has previously worked with California Symphony where she served as an organizational leader for concert operations, artistic administration, program development, strategic partnerships, education programming, and general operations and has worked with the Asian Art Museum, John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, and Opera San Jose.
A real enthusiast for the arts as not only personally relevant to every individual but essential to the success of the community, Ms. Deffner has cultivated enrichment programs which have increased the deliverable impact of youth programming through expanded community partnerships, has increased community engagement, and spearheaded adult educational programming generating new audience streams.
Ms. Deffner serves on the board of Theatre Bay Area, the Walnut Creek Community Service Day Committee, is a Theatre alum of California State University at Fullerton, and a former fellow of the DeVos Institute for Arts Management at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts.
Sean Fenton
he/him/his
Sean Fenton
Sean Fenton (he/him/his), executive director of Theatre Bay Area, has been active in the professional Bay Area theatre community for more than two decades as an actor, musician, director, and administrator. He has performed at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, San Francisco Playhouse, 42nd Street Moon, Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company, and Community Asian Theatre of the Sierra, among others. Backstage, he has been a leader at Bay Area Children’s Theatre, Kaiser Permanente Educational Theatre, and WolfBrown’s Intrinsic Impact program. Sean is a member of Actors' Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA and holds a BA in Cultural and Social Anthropology from Stanford University.
Karina Gutiérrez
she/her/hers
Karina Gutiérrez
Karina Gutiérrez (She/Her) is a Bay Area-based director, dramaturg, and scholar. She is passionate about supporting new play development, fostering local artists, and creating welcoming, equitable, and accessible theatre spaces and classrooms. She considers theatre a powerful space for social change and the mending, healing, and restoring of communities. She is thrilled to join the fearless team of artistic collaborators at Crowded Fire.
As a director and dramaturg, Karina has had the pleasure of working with Bay Area Children’s Theatre, BRAVA, Magic Theatre, Crowded Fire, Huntington Theatre, Magic Theatre, PlayGround, Playwright’s Foundation, Shotgun Players, Stanford University, TheatreFirst, Townhall Theatre, UC Berkeley, West Edge Opera, and Word for Word. She is additionally a member of the Latinx Theatre Commons Steering Committee, Theatre Bay Area, and a founding member of the Bay Area Latinx Theatre Alliance Network (BALTAN).
Karina received her Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies from Stanford University, where she was awarded the Carl Weber Prize for integration of Creative Practice and Scholarly Research. Her scholarship concentrates on the intersection of politics and performance, specifically how digital interventions, institutionalization efforts, and historical narrative affect the development and sustainability of social and politically engaged performance companies and collectives in the Americas. She is currently a professor of Theatre History and Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre and Dance and Santa Clara University.
Margo Hall
she/her/hers
Margo Hall
Margo Hall is actor, director, playwright, and educator, and has been a leading performer and director in the Bay Area for over 30 years. In 2018 she was awarded Jerry Friedman Lifetime Achievement Award by the San Francisco Theatre Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. She was recently appointed the new Artistic Director of the Lorraine Hansberry Theater of San Francisco. Hall’s film credits include BLINDSPOTTING with Daveed Diggs and the Netflix film All Day and A Night. She is a founding member of Campo Santo, a multi-cultural theater company in San Francisco, where she has directed, performed, and collaborated on new plays with artists such as Naomi Iizuka, Jessica Hagedorn, Phillip Kan Gotanda, Ntozake Shange, and Octavio Solis. Writing credits include The People’s Temple, a verbatim text piece with Leigh Fondakowski of the Tetonic Theatre Project, and her autobiographical musical BeBop Baby, A Musical Memoir, with original music by Marcus Shelby. Margo is a lecturer at UC Berkeley and Chabot College in the Theater Department.
Calvin Kai Ku
he/him/his
Calvin Kai Ku
Calvin Kai Ku is an entertainer, filmmaker, and joy practitioner. He is also a founding member and current Director of the Medical Clown Project. As a variety performer, Calvin has performed in the prestigious WuQiao Circus Festival in China, Fortune 500 company events in the U.S. and Internationally, and for circus companies including Teatro Zinzanni and Circus Bella. Through the culmination of his many talents, Calvin Kai Ku combines his versatility with magic, music, circus, and theater with empathy and vulnerability to connect with his audiences, and to improve the quality of patient-centered care in hospitals.
Kevin Kosik, CFRE
he/him/his
Kevin Kosik, CFRE
Originally from New York, Kevin earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from State University of New York College at Buffalo and a Masters degree in Theatre Arts from the University of Illinois in Chicago. He has more than 25 years of experience working in the nonprofit sector and is a Certified Fundraising Executive (CFRE). He has held senior leadership and resource development positions with the Chicago Youth Symphony, American Lung Association in California (Greater Bay Area and Sacramento), Pets Are Wonderful Support (PAWS), YMCA of the Central Bay Area, Peralta Colleges Foundation, and Sierra Club. He is currently the Executive Director for the Book Club of California and the President of the Board of Directors for Killing My Lobster.
Juan Manzo
he/him/él
Juan Manzo
Juan Manzo is an Arts Education professional & advocate with almost two decades of experience in the field. He has led arts education programs and professional development workshops in Arts Integration for teachers and young people in New York and California. Juan has worked as a Teaching Artist and Arts Education Consultant for multiple organizations including StageWrite, The Old Globe, San Francisco Opera, Young Audiences of the Bay Area, La Jolla Playhouse and Center Theater Group, among others. As a member of the Board of Directors for the Arts Education Alliance of the Bay Area, he has worked for a stronger and more equitable arts education community in the Bay Area. A strong believer in using the arts for creative engagement and problem solving, he is deeply committed to ensuring access to the arts to all students regardless of socioeconomic status or race. He is currently the Director of Education & Community Programs at American Conservatory Theater.
Dawn Monique Williams
she/her/hers
Dawn Monique Williams
Dawn Monique Williams has been Aurora's Associate Artistic Director since August 2019. An Oakland-native, she was Artistic Associate and a resident artist at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for six seasons. She's worked in theatre across the US including: HERE Arts Center, Profile Theatre (Portland), A.C.T., Chautauqua Theatre Company, African American Shakespeare Company. Williams holds an MA in Dramatic Literature and an MFA in Directing. She directed Bull In A China Shop at Aurora in Fall 2019.