We are thrilled to introduce our newest initiative: the GoGET team! Â We are proud to present our new group of wonderful and enthusiastic teaching artists. Â Join us in welcoming Micaela Blei, Tessa Bry, Ashley Hamilton, Doug Harmsen, and Faith Lawson to the GETheatre team.
Micaela Blei has been teaching drama in classrooms, summer programs and after-school programs for 12 years. She has been a teaching artist with the Story Pirates, Teaching Matters and the Moth. She served as the curriculum director for the Story Pirates and helped create their original educational programming, currently being taught in schools across the country. Micaela founded and is the artistic director of Calhoun Summer Theater, a small arts-based summer camp in New York City. She was also a third grade classroom teacher for 6 years. Â Micaela has travelled as a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity and built homes with partner families in Anchorage, Alaska and Bali, Indonesia. She is also a passionate storyteller: she is a two-time Moth StorySlam winner and has appeared in storytelling shows throughout New York City, including Told, The Story Collider and the BTK Band. Her degrees include a B.A. from Yale University and an M.A. from New York University in Educational Theatre. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Educational Theatre at NYU.
Tessa K. Bry is a theatre artist and educator currently splitting her time between Ithaca, NY and the outer reaches of Cape Cod, MA. She currently works most frequently on the creation of devised works with elementary and secondary students through the Hangar Theatre (Ithaca), the Tompkins County History Museum, and the Performing Arts for Social Change initiative at Cornell University. While on the Cape, she serves as the Education Director for the Payomet Performing Arts Center, specializing in Shakespearean productions for young people. Tessa also has her hands dipped in many pots around the Northeast as a production manager, director and teaching artist, and in her spare time, plays much music and teaches piano lessons. She is beyond thrilled and grateful to be joining the GoGET team and looks forward to the growth, challenges and adventures it may bring! Tessa holds a MA in Educational Theatre from NYU, and is currently exploring options for the pursuit of her PhD.
Ashley Lauren Hamilton graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a BFA in Acting. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Educational Theatre in Colleges and Communities at New York University. Ashley works as a teaching artist devising theatre and writing in prisons, homeless shelters, drug rehab facilities and New York City public schools. When Ashley isn’t teaching, she is acting. She has performed in off-Broadway productions in New York City as well as with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Ashley is incredibly passionate about bringing theatre and empowerment to under served and oppressed communities all around the world.
Douglas Harmsen was born in Kenya, raised in Kenya, Canada, Papua New Guinea, and Holland, Doug grew up in a family of scientists and farmers. After traveling through some 60 countries in an effort to decide what to do with his life, he became an actor so that he could pretend to do everything! After finishing at The Juilliard School, Doug worked as a full-time, New York based actor for over twenty years. He has worked from Florida to Seattle, from Denver to Broadway. Then, in a quixotic fit of idealism, he went back to school to get a Masters in Special Education at St. John’s University. He taught for two years in a Bronx public school and now divides his time between acting and teaching.
Faith Lawson is a native New Yorker who has been involved in the field of Educational Theatre for the past seven years. Faith has worked in the United States, Europe and Asia as a theater practitioner serving numerous communities as a theater teaching artist, facilitator, writer, director and actor.  Faith graduated from New York University where she earned a Master of Arts degree in Educational Theatre, with certification, grades k-12 (concentration in community theater). Throughout the course of her graduate career she taught drama to primary and secondary school students both in New York and abroad in London (storytelling, process drama, script writing, character study and physical theatre). She has also worked with prison inmates in Dublin, using theater as a means of rehabilitation. Faith has recently returned from Hong Kong, China where she worked for two years as a theatre teaching artist and community theater practitioner. She directed a theater production promoting awareness for The Hong Kong Society for The Protection of Homeless Children, wrote and directed original plays advocating against oppression, devised spoken word performances with underserved communities in addition to starting a devised theater forum called ODD (Outrageously Devised Drama) where people from all walks of life are encouraged to explore day to day social issues using theater as a creative outlet and platform. Faith is a firm believer in giving back to her community and has dedicated her life to using community theatre as a means to advocate social consciousness and change. Faith is so excited to be back in the city of her birth and can hardly wait to make change, “Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.†-Margaret Mead-