Our Team
Meet our Teaching Artists!
Beyond the Page’s Teaching Artist team is comprised of professional actors, writers, directors, and educators from across the country.
Leadership
Craig Maravich
Program Director
Lead Teaching Artist
Craig Maravich is the Program Director of the Beyond the Page program and a member of the faculty at The Bread Loaf School of English. He has been a company member of the Bread Loaf Acting Ensemble since 2010 and has served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre at Middlebury College. He has held teaching positions with The University of Vermont, St. Michael’s College, Hofstra University, and The Academy for Visual and Performing Arts. His work as a teaching artist in Vermont includes the development of several classes and community initiatives with The Flynn Center for the Arts, The Town Hall Theater, and The Community Engagement Lab. Maravich is the Co-Founder of Courageous Stage – a program that uses theatre arts to activate creativity in schools and communities across Vermont. As a practitioner, Craig’s work as an actor spans a professional career of 20 years and includes credits with leading theatres across the country. Craig is a recipient of a Vermont Thriving Communities Grant and the 2021 A. Bartlett Giamatti Award for Professional Development: bringing creative practices into Bread Loaf and Middlebury classrooms and, through that work, cultivating inclusive learning and teaching environments. He received his MFA in Classical Acting from The Shakespeare Theatre’s Academy for Classical Acting/George Washington University.
Haley Schwartz
Lead Teaching Artist
Haley Schwartz is an actor, writer, filmmaker, and teaching artist based in New York City. She is a lover of both classical and contemporary texts, and is especially drawn toward work in film, TV, and stage that celebrates queerness, grapples with environmental apocalypse, and/or investigates grief and loss in all its absurd and unpredictable forms. Haley received her MFA in Acting from Brown/Trinity Rep (’20) where she was awarded the Antonio Cirino Memorial Scholarship, a Shubert Foundation Award, and the David Wickham Prize in Playwriting. Her full-length play Moonbox and her solo show Bindings both received workshop performances from Brown/Trinity Rep. Haley also worked as a graduate teaching associate, and taught introductory Acting and Directing to undergraduate students at Brown University. She is a proud member of BtP, and has been working as an actor and teaching artist with Middlebury College and Bread Loaf School of English since the summer of 2019. She holds a B.A. in Political Theory from Brown University (’17).
Madison Middleton
Program Associate
Teaching Artist
Madison “Mads” Middleton (they/them) is a non-binary theatre and music artist currently based in New York City. Their work includes acting, directing, singing, writing, sound design, education, and visual arts and design. Originally from the DC area, Madison attended Middlebury College, receiving a BA in Theatre and Music. Since graduating valedictorian in their class, they have worked for both the Middlebury theatre and music departments as a staff and faculty member. In 2024, they developed and taught a new Middlebury College winter term course entitled “Investigating Musical Theatre.” Madison has also been a member of the Bread Loaf School of English Acting Ensemble in the summers of 2022 and 2023. They served as the Bread Loaf Theatre Manager in 2023. Most recently Madison sound and music designed the Dogteam Theatre Project’s 2024 summer season. At the core of Madison’s work is a profound interest in queerness, generational healing, and the cyclical nature of time. They are particularly curious about stories that bridge history with the contemporary moment in playful, transcendent ways. Music and sound is a fundamental component of their artistry. Broadly, Madison is interested in how art can intertwine with justice, community building, and envisioning utopian presents and futures.
Shelley Fort
Teaching Artist
Special Projects
Shelley is an actor, writer, and producer. She was born in Wilmington, North Carolina and was raised in Connecticut and Nebraska. Her work has been seen in New York and regionally at theaters including: La MaMa Experimental Theater, The Bushwick Starr, The National Black Theater; Quick Silver Theater Co; The Fire This Time Festival, The Classical Theatre of Harlem, The Langston Hughes Playwright Showcase, Trinity Rep, Chester Theater, and more. She’s trained in St. Petersburg, Russia (Theater Arts Academy), Oxford (British American Drama Academy), and Connecticut (National Theater Institute). She has a BA from Kenyon College and an MFA from Brown University. Shelley’s dad- Charles Fort- attended the Bread Loaf Writers Conference years ago. She’s thrilled to bring it full circle as a member of the Bread Loaf Acting Ensemble and as a teaching artist with Beyond the Page!
Louis Reyes McWilliams
Teaching Artist
Special Projects
Louis Reyes McWilliams is an actor, writer, and teaching artist based in Los Angeles. Born in New Jersey, Louis grew up in California and Massachusetts before attending Stanford University, where he attained a BA in Theater & Performance Studies and Political Science. He is a recent graduate of the Brown/Trinity Rep MFA Program in Acting & Directing. Louis’ theater credits include Off-Broadway, Shakespeare in the Park with The Public Theater, and regional productions with Berkeley Rep, Bread Loaf Acting Ensemble, Dallas Theater Center, the Huntington, The Old Globe, Pasadena Playhouse, Studio Theatre, Trinity Rep, Woolly Mammoth, and the Williamstown Theatre Festival. As a writer, his plays and screenplays have placed highly in various competitions, including the ScreenCraft Stage Play Competition and the Garry Marshall New Works Festival. He has been produced at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Brown/Trinity Rep, and Stanford University.
Teaching Artist Fellows
Zeph Santiago
Zeph studies English and theatre at Middlebury College. When he’s not busy with classes, he spends his time participating in shows on campus. You may have seen him in Orlando, Hamlet, or Polaroid Stories! Zeph also loves spending time with friends and listening to musicals. He is ~beyond~ excited to be part of the BtP team and cannot wait to continue engaging with teaching artists to further develop his own sense of artistry!
Affiliate Artists
Anita Castillo-Halvorssen
Anita Castillo-Halvorssen (she/her) is a queer Venezuelan-Norwegian actor, singer, and educator in New York City. Originally from Colorado, she recently graduated from Brown University’s MFA acting program at Trinity Rep. At Middlebury, she’s been a member of the acting ensemble for the Bread Loaf School of English since 2018, and a Faculty Artist for Beyond the Page since 2021. She serves as an Artist Advisor for Notch Theatre Company and as a Rhode Island Latino Arts Teaching Artist, and is a producer and ensemble member of the womxn’s creative collective The Hive. On television, you can catch her in Harlem (Amazon Prime), Law & Order (NBC), and The Good Fight (CBS). Anita has appeared regularly in Red Bull Theater’s Off-Broadway readings of Spanish Golden Age plays. She has worked as a teaching artist for Brown University, Swarthmore College, the City University of New York, Kimball Union Academy, and the Young Actors’ Summer Institute among others. Additional Training: British American Drama Academy, BA in Film & Theater from Swarthmore College.
Jonathan Fried
Jonathan’s association with Bread Loaf began in 1987; over the years he has been a member of the Acting Ensemble, the director of the Santa Fe Bread Loaf Acting Ensemble, and a member of the Bread Loaf faculty, most recently at Bread Loaf’s newest campus in Monterey, CA. As an actor, Jonathan has worked extensively in theatre, film, and TV for 25 years. In the New York theatre, Jonathan has appeared in many productions with the Public Theater, Signature Theater, The New York Theater Workshop, etc. Nationally, he has been a member of the resident companies of Trinity Rep and the American Repertory Theater, and has often worked at Williamstown Theater Festival, Arena Stage, La Jolla Playhouse, Yale Rep, Mark Taper Forum, San Fransisco’s A.C.T., among others. In 2010, Jonathan was a member of the Bridge Project, directed by Sam Mendes, appearing in The Tempest and As You Like It at BAM and the Old Vic In London, followed by a world tour. Jonathan’s on-camera credits include countless episodes of Law and Order, and one unusual mainstream film credit playing the villain in the Halle Berry vehicle BAPS, a 1996 critical and commercial fiasco, now widely considered a cult classic. Jonathan is the co-author, with the late Alvin Epstein, of Dressing Room Stories, (2016), a history of Alvin’s early years in the theatre, including his now-legendary creation of Lucky in the first English-language production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot on Broadway in 1955. When Jonathan is not teaching graduate students at Bread Loaf, he is one himself, at the Middlebury Language School Summer Program in the School of French.
Ralph Johnson
Ralph Johnson is from Montgomery, Alabama. He attended Oberlin College undergrad, and holds an MFA from Brown University in Acting. Most notably he’s been acting and teaching at Bread Loaf School of English since 2012, and is in love with the great state of Vermont.
Jessica Ko
Jessica is excited to join Beyond The Page as a Faculty artist, after having been a member of the Bread Loaf Acting Ensemble. She has spent several seasons at the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival, playing lead roles such as Rosalind in As You Like It, Dou Yi in Snow In Midsummer, and originating the role of the Shapeshifter in the world premiere of Jiehae Park’s Hannah and the Dread Gazebo. Other credits include Cleveland Play House, Chautauqua Theatre Company, Trinity Repertory Company, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, and the Flea Theater in New York. As a multi-hyphenate artist and educator, she co-founded her own company, Random Access Theatre, which partnered with Brooklyn Bridge Park to bring free Shakespeare to its outdoor programming. More recently, she helped launch a BIPOC-focused actor training & educational arts program called The Blueprint. She earned her MFA in Acting from Brown University/Trinity Rep, where she was also a voice and speech teaching assistant to Thom Jones. She is currently based in Los Angeles.
Lindsay Pontius
Lindsay Pontius has been a professional actor, director, and teacher working both regionally and internationally for over 25 years. Pontius is Co-Founder and Director of Education of Courageous Stage, and also serves as Education Director of Town Hall Theater (THT) in Middlebury, Vermont. Over the last seven years, Pontius developed the THT Education Program, which annually serves more than 20 schools and a thousand children in Vermont. Pontius is an actor with Shakespeare & Company and a founding director of the Fall Festival. She has a doctorate in Leadership and Policy Studies from the University of Vermont.
Ben Steinfeld
Ben Steinfeld is an actor, director, writer, teacher, and musician. He is also co-artistic director of the acclaimed Fiasco Theater. As an actor, Ben has been seen on Broadway (Cyrano de Bergerac; Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson), Off-Broadway (Roundabout, Public, CSC, TFANA, Barrow St.), Regionally (McCarter, Old Globe, Long Wharf, Folger, Trinity Rep); and in London (Menier Chocolate Factory). He has co-directed Fiasco’s celebrated and award-winning productions of Cymbeline, Into the Woods, Measure for Measure, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. His TV and film acting work includes: HBO’s Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight, “Power Book III: Raising Kanan”, “The Deuce”, “The Good Wife”, and “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”. Ben has written two musicals, and co-authored an essay for “Living With Shakespeare.” He is an adjunct professor and artistic associate at NYU-Gallatin, where he has received the Excellence in Teaching Award. BA: Brown; MFA: Brown/Trinity.
Jude Sandy
Jude Sandy is a Trinidad & Tobago-born, Philadelphia-based theater artist and teacher. In New York City, he was in the original broadway company of War Horse at Lincoln Center, and has performed at theaters off-broadway and around North America. As a resident artist with Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI, he has appeared in eight seasons, playing Othello in Othello, Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors, and Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, directing Marcus Gardley’s black odyssey and August Wilson’s Radio Golf, and choreographing for seven productions. A graduate of Brown University, Jude is an adjunct assistant professor in theater at Connecticut College, and has guest-taught at The National Theater Institute and numerous universities. He is a co-creator since 2016 for DenizenArts, a multi-disciplinary, African diaspora- and queer-inspired performance collaboration alongside his life partner, dance and performance artist yonTande Whitney V. Hunter.
Stephen Thorne
Stephen Thorne is an actor, director, teacher and writer. He lives in Lincoln, RI and has been a member of the Resident Acting Company at Trinity Rep in Providence, RI since 2000. At Trinity, Stephen has played a variety of roles, including Morgan/Walter in The Inheritance, Jimbo in Fairview, Iago in Othello, Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, and The Dentist in Little Shop of Horrors. He has also appeared at the Alley Theatre, The Long Wharf Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville and Riverside Theater in Iowa City. He has written two plays: The Completely Fictional, Utterly True, Final Strange Tale of Edgar Allan Poe and Veronica Meadows. He has also been a member of the Bread Loaf Acting Ensemble since 1999. Film/TV credits include Invitation to a Bonfire, The Holdovers, Boston Strangler and Don’t Look Up. Stephen holds a BA in Theater Arts from Loyola Marymount University and an MFA in Acting from the University of Iowa. He is also an adjunct professor at Clark University in Worcester, MA.
