ABOUT

SHERYL STOODLEY  Artistic Director, Co-founder Serious Play Theatre Ensemble

Sheryl Stoodley has performed, directed, and taught physical actor training and ensemble theatre-making with regional and academic theatres throughout New England for over 30 years. She holds an M.A. in Theatre from Smith College and serves on the theatre faculty of Holyoke Community College. She studied theatre and performance as an undergraduate at Roger Williams University, University of Rhode Island, and later in Portland Maine with the Alternative Theatre Ensemble under the direction of Peter Clough. For several years, Sheryl trained in Grotowski acting technique, performed and taught with Stage One Theatre Lab at Boston Center for the Arts, under the direction of Kaleel Sakakeeny.

For three years, as part of her Master’s degree at Smith College (professor-advisors: Len Berkman, Deborah Lubar & Katharine Kendall), Sheryl led movement and acting workshops with women in Massachusetts prisons where she developed, shaped, and directed the collaboratively created original play, AIN’T NO MAN DRAGGED THAT MOON DOWN YET. This production toured to Smith College, Hampshire College, and the Boston Women’s Theatre Festival, and led to Cultural Images Group Inc. publishing two books of inmates’ writings including the play, in THE WORLD SPLIT OPEN- Theatre & Writing With Women In Prison, (Volumes I and II).  Along with directing the majority of theatre productions for Serious Play Theatre Ensemble since its founding in 1995, Sheryl has directed five presentations of CELEBRATE THE CHILDREN OF RESISTANCE for the Rosenberg Fund for Children (RFC) across the country, dramatizing the prison letters shared between Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and working with activist performers: Angela Davis, Susan Sarandon, Mandy Patinkin, Ossie Davis, Danny Glover, Ani Defranco, Eve Ensler, David Strathairn, among others. 

Sheryl leads lecture-demonstrations and workshops in the ensemble’s approach to acting and physical theatre-making through the Serious Play Intensive Theatre Training (SPITT) process, incorporating the methodology of Tadashi Suzuki, Anne Bogart and SITI Company’s Viewpoints vocabulary, and other physically-oriented ensemble acting techniques. Among many outstanding Serious Play productions, she directed the original play, MILOSEVIC AT THE HAGUE, written by Milan Dragicevich, examining the issues of political power and corruption. This production toured by invitation to the JoakimInterfest in Kragujevac, Serbia, where it received an international theatre award and a write up in TCG’s American Theatre magazine.

Sheryl Stoodley has devised, deconstructed and directed many Serious Play productions including: Alice Tuan’s COASTLINE which toured to the Edinburgh Fringe, and Lenelle Moise's new adaptation of the Kafka story, MATERMORPHOSIS. Serious Play Alumni Company’s MARAT SADE: WHAT’S LEFT IS NOT RIGHT with new music by Elizabeth Swados toured to London; and, HAMLET: ASALTO A LA INOCENCIA, played at the Women In Theatre Festival in Athens, Greece -a reinterpretation with new text by Migdalia Cruz. META PINA, a devised piece developed over a two-year period into BLIND DREAMERS, was inspired by the rehearsal process of the late choreographer Pina Bausch. This production toured to Mt. Holyoke College, South Hadley, and to Irondale Theater Center in Brooklyn. Serious Play was highly praised with five stars from the Herald Scotland and much acclaim from the Guardian during their Edinburgh Fringe tours in 2016 and 2018, for their original production, THE RED GUITAR, collaboratively created with musician John Sheldon. Sheryl has received the Jane Ahlfeld Award for Dynamic Impact in the Arts from the Northampton Arts Council, and twice received their BJ Goodwin Award. 

“Sheryl is an intrepid explorer, one who is constantly discovering new territory on the theatrical landscape.  She seeks a theater that matters, that engages the community, that shakes up our conventional ideas and expectations.  For her, the theatrical experience is one that brings the community together to witness an unfolding story that has resonance with our contemporary lives.  She knows that the theatrical experience holds a mirror up to today’s conflicts and tribulations.  Sheryl understands that the theatrical arena has a special calling in today’s digitally wrapped world. It is a place where one can stand back, question, examine, explore, and rearrange the coordinates of storytelling.” -Milan Dragicevich, Associate Professor/Performer, Department of Theater, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

ROBIN W. DOTY     Managing Director, Co-founder Serious Play Theatre Ensemble

Robin W. Doty is a graduate of the University of Florida in visual arts and photography. Robin has worked as a video and multi-media producer, at WGBY TV Springfield, and for many years in the Boston PBS educational market. He worked with Chedd-Angier Production Co, River Run Media, Monitor, and others as a freelance videographer and producer. As a collaborating artist, he has created scenic & sound design and fabrication, lighting design & operation, and video documentation for Serious Play, since its inception, and produced and toured Serious Play productions locally and to Boston, NYC, Greece, England, Serbia and numerous times to Scotland’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Robin worked with the Museum of Science, Boston as the Managing Director of the Mugar Omni Imax Theater for many years, until his recent retirement in May 2020. Robin co-founded with Sheryl Stoodley, Cultural Images Group Inc. in 1985, a tax-exempt arts corporation, and Serious Play Theatre Ensemble (a project of Cultural Images Group Inc.) in 1995 in residence at Available Potential Enterprises (A.P.E.), Thornes Third Floor Artspace, in Northampton, Massachusetts. As Serious Play’s Managing Director, he has coordinated grant writing and fundraising for all projects since the company's founding. He organizes all the ensemble touring, locally, nationally and internationally.