Victoria “Tori” Rhoades

Teacher, Executive Director, All Programs.

Victoria Rhoades, PhD is founder and Executive Director of The SAGE Center, an organization providing workshops, classes, creative projects and consulting services for artists, teachers, adolescents, and others in the community so they may explore the possibilities that arise out of human connection, creativity and a curiosity of the world, and resist current cultural norms of disconnection and dissociation.

PHILOSOPHY
Tori specializes in the ways in which culture, gender and human development intersect and impact our bodies, voices, minds and relationships. She is passionate about supporting those who identify across the gender spectrum; and has extensive experience in helping girls and women trust in their lived knowledge and uncover an authentic connection to themselves as artists, or in whatever work or play they choose to do. Tori connects with those identifying as boys or men to stay connected to their hearts, to hold the wisdom of their vulnerabilities, and the strength of their relationships. With her non-binary and trans students, Tori strives to create a learning space where all feel safe to be their full selves, where the thoughts they may have had to silence in some environments can have space to be heard and known. Overall, she strives to support healthy connections throughout the learning experience and across culturally-defined gender roles so that individuals may engage in their creative work as human beings discovering connection with one another.

Tori encourages professional actors, or students from middle school, high school and college to engage their curiosity, trust their bodies’ wisdom and connect with their intelligence, and emotional awareness.

As a reflective practitioner, Tori continues to learn from her students, especially those whose experiences are different from her own. Currently, she is engaged in research listening to those who identify as trans or non-binary to add to the voices in an upcoming book. As a teacher, Tori adapts and responds to the needs of the young people and adults with whom she is working.   Tori strives to create spaces where everyone can respectfully and playfully listen, learn from, and alongside one another.  

TRAINING, ORGANIZATIONS & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Tori’s graduate study at NYU integrated the teaching pedagogy of Shakespeare & Company with the Relational Psychology work of Carol Gilligan, Niobe Way, Bessel van den Kolk, Robert Landy, Augusto Boal, Dorothy Heathcote, Irmgard Bartenieff, Peggy Hackney, Trish Arnold, and others in each given fields of Gender, Human Development, Trauma and Movement and Theatre for Change practices. She is a senior faculty member of Acting and Movement in Shakespeare & Company’s Professional Actor Training Program, and a senior teaching artist in the nationally-recognized Education Program.  Tori is an adjunct instructor at NYU, and was Associate Professor of Acting Shakespeare at Point Park University, and Guest Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, among others. She was the Founding Performing Arts Director at Sonoma Academy, in Santa Rosa, CA. She works as a free-lance director, performer and choreographer, specializing in Shakespeare, and has taught, choreographed, and directed in high schools and universities throughout the country.

She holds a BS in Theatre (Acting) from Northwestern University, an MA from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and PhD from NYU’s Steinhart School of Culture, Education and Human Development.  She was a two-time recipient of artist grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and awarded Best Production for her direction of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Pitt Stages, and recently recognized for her production of Hamlet with adolescents. She is a member of AEA, SAG-AFTRA, and the EdTA.   She currently serves on the 2024 SAG Awards film nominating committee, served on the 2023 SAG award TV nominating committee, and is a current member of the Editorial Board of the TYJ for the Educational Theatre Association of America. Publications include, “The Courage to Care: Building Connection in the Classroom Between Young Women and Men with Shakespeare” in The Crisis of Connection, Edited by Niobe Way, Alisha Ali, Carol Gilligan and Pedro Noguera (2018).  

KRISTIN WOLD
Guest Teacher.

 Kristin Wold is the Head of the BFA Acting Program at the University of Connecticut.  She is a resident director for Connecticut Repertory Theatre, UConn’s professional performance wing.  Productions for CRT include Metamorphoses, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, As You Like It, Sense and Sensibility, Punk Rock, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party, Thin Air: Tales from a Revolution, North Shore Fish and Judevine.  Acting roles with CRT include All in the Timing (Dawn, Edna), Lovers and Executioners (Julie) and Arcadia (Hannah).  Kristin is a member of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox MA.  Roles there include Creditors (Tekla), God of Carnage (Annette), Shakespeare’s Will (Anne Hathaway), Julius Caesar (Calpurnia, Portia, Lucius), The Tempest (Ariel), King Lear (Regan), Sea Marks (Timothea Stiles), Othello (Emilia), Ice Glen (Sarah Harding).  Kristin also teaches Text and Movement for the Actor in Shakespeare & Company’s renowned professional actor training programs.  Kristin studied acting at the Burt Reynolds Jupiter Theatre, Florida State University and with Tadashi Suzuki in Japan. 

MIMSI JANIS
Collaborator.

Mimsi Janis is an actor and educator from Washington DC. She has performed with Studio Theater, Signature Theater, Washington Stage Guild, South Dakota Shakespeare, NextStop Theater, Chesapeake Shakespeare, Maryland Shakespeare, and many others. She is co-director of the DC Coalition for Theater and Social Justice, through which she has facilitated numerous workshops on Theater of the Oppressed. She has over 15 years experience as an educator and is on the faculty of George Mason University, where she is an assistant professor of Performance and Head of Theater Education. She holds a BA in Theater from Principia College, a M.Ed from George Mason University, and an MFA in Acting from The Catholic University of America.