Re:working – Educating and Engaging The Next Generation

For many of us, our love of theatre sprang from the inspiring, talented teachers and artists who introduced us to it. How do we carry forth that gift and usher in the next generation of theatre makers and lovers? How do rehearsals for revolution extend beyond the theatre and spill into the classroom and the post-show talk? Join Mikael, Anna, Jared, and Diane Thursday, November 5th, to reenergize these questions during a time in which theatre education finds itself at a crossroads.

Re:working Chicago Theatre is a new roundtable series to follow up on long-standing challenges faced by local creatives and forge ahead with renewed perspectives and solutions. This partnership between Pocket Theatre, The Understudy Coffee + Books, and American Theatre magazine aims to serve an ecosystem which finds itself at a crossroads and foster connections across specializations and companies. Each month, Gabriela Furtado Coutinho welcomes four theatre folks to The Understudy in Andersonville to confront distinct issues in a warm, community-driven setting. These guests are selected from a public nomination form, linked here.

Mikael Burke is a black queer director, deviser, and educator. A Princess Grace Award-winner and two-time Jeff Award-winning director, he is an Assistant Professor of Theatre, Acting, within the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. Recent credits include: A STRANGE LOOP by Michael R. Jackson (About Face Theatre & Raven Theatre); GOODNIGHT MOON by Chad Henry (Chicago Children’s Theatre); FAT HAM by James Ijames (Nashville Repertory Theatre/Nashville Shakespeare Festival); OAK by Terry Guest (Raven Theatre); PRIMARY TRUST by Eboni Booth (Forward Theater); AT THE WAKE OF A DEAD DRAG QUEEN by Terry Guest (The Story Theatre); A TALE OF TWO CITIES, adapted by Brendan Pelsue (Shattered Globe Theatre, winner of 4 Joesph Jefferson Awards). Mikael received a Black Theatre Alliance Award for Directing (2022), and was named one of New City Magazine’s 50 Players of Chicago in 2023 & 2025. Mikael is an Artistic Associate at Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, as well as at About Face Theatre, where he previously served as Associate Artistic Director. He is a proud member of SDC. MFA Directing, The Theatre School at DePaul University. | mklburke.com

Anna Rogelio Joaquin is the School Programs Manager at Goodman Theatre. Prior to The Goodman, she was a company member of Gathering Ground Theatre, a collective amplifying stories of people experiencing homelessness to spark dialogue and action. As an educator, Anna has worked with GEAR UP, Upward Bound, The Cherubs at Northwestern University, Youth & Opportunity United, The University of Texas at Austin, and Chicago Public Schools. Her writing has been published in Chicago Reader, Theatre Topics, HowlRound, Jacobin, and Scapi. She recently served as Assistant Dramaturg on HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF STARS at TimeLine Theatre and THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO at Goodman Theatre. Anna holds a BA in Theatre with minors in Mathematics and Musical Theatre from Loyola University Chicago, an MA in Theatre from The University of Texas at Austin, and an MA in English Education with a Professional Educator License from University of Illinois Chicago.

Jared Bellot, he/him, is a theater artist, facilitator and arts educator currently serving as the Clifford Director of Education and Engagement at the The Goodman. In this role, he leads a team of educators, facilitators and producers that provide free and low-cost programs serving Chicagoans of all ages. Since joining the Goodman in 2023, Jared has more than doubled the number of community members engaged through the theater’s Education and Engagement programming. During his tenure, Jared has piloted the development of Goodman’s emerging Theater for the Very Young programming, piloted new in-school residency models and worked to codify and expand Goodman’s partnership model with community organizations throughout the city of Chicago.

Previously, Jared managed arts education programs at leading cultural institutions, including Steppenwolf Theatre, where he oversaw programming for 20,000+ students and educators annually, led in-school residency partnerships with Chicago Public Schools, developed teacher training and teen initiatives, and created City Connections, an initiative fostering equitable arts-based partnerships. He also served as the lead producer for Steppenwolf’s first dedicated education space, The Loft, launching its inaugural programming in Fall 2021. Prior to Chicago, Jared was a public-school teacher in Fall River, MA.

Jared’s work focuses on curating community spaces that allow for moments of deep reflection, authentic curiosity, and intense joy. He has taught classes for university, high school and middle school students as a professional theatre practitioner in Chicago on a variety of topics including arts leadership, civic engagement, storytelling, devising, playwriting and dramaturgy. As a freelance theatre artist and educator, Jared has worked extensively with organizations throughout the city including Definition Theatre (where he serves as Associate Artistic Director), Timeline Theatre (where he is an Associate Artist), and Jackalope Theatre (where he is a Company Member), in addition to The Goodman, Steppenwolf Theatre, Victory Gardens Theatre, Northlight Theatre, Northwestern University, DePaul University, University of Chicago, and 2nd Story.

Jared holds an AB in Theatre Arts from Brown University and an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Diane Claussen is Associate Professor/Head of Theatre Management at The Theatre School at DePaul University. Prior to 2018, she worked as a Managing/Executive Director at Court Theatre at the University of Chicago, Paper Mill Playhouse and George Street Playhouse in New Jersey, Philadelphia Theatre Company and the Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts at Northwestern University. Diane is past Co-President of the Association of Arts Administration Educators and past President of the League of Chicago Theatres. She is Co-Editor of the American Journal of Arts Management. Her book Adaptive Theatre Organizations: From Crisis to Renewal in Chicago will be published by Routledge in 2027. Diane received her MBA/MA in Arts Administration from Southern Methodist University and BA degrees in Theatre and Communications from the University of Washington.

Gabriela Furtado Coutinho is a writer (plays/poetry/prose), actor, cultural strategist, and proud graduate of Northwestern University (Theatre/English Creative Writing BA). For the past three years, she has guest lectured at Northwestern in the theatre department and served as an editor of TCG’s American Theatre magazine. Grateful for previous work with the Emmy’s/Television Academy, The Kennedy Center, and various Chicago collectives, she holds experience in developing both new work and tangible care practices.

Recent projects include Goodman Theatre’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (understudy actor); Blood Wedding (lead actor); The Bloody Bricks and Blows of American Dream High (playwright); Much Ado About Nothing: A Miami Party to Joy, featured in the Latinx Shakespeares archive (director); and Lookingglass’s Circus Quixote (dramaturg). Gabriela is a past fellow of the Fornés Playwriting Workshop and O’Neill National Critics Institute. She was also a 2026 semifinalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference.

Her theatrical writing practice, like the Brazilian identity, embraces hybridity and excavates ancestral specificity. Raised between Rio and Miami, three languages, and stages of her family’s disability experience, Gabriela likes to translate the silences and voices that can’t quite be heard. Her multigenerational, lyrical plays abound in movement and ground themselves in intensive research. She believes playwrights are bridges, minding gaps in language, understanding, knowledge, experience, hope, and isolation. They trouble binaries and stand at the crossroads, taking the hands of both other creatives and audiences. As such, Gabriela is into de-centering and sees herself as an engaged “people writer,” working not just on her plays, but reimagining what’s around them and serving the theatre ecology and community at large.

AT bylines include creative nonfiction piece “How to Survive a Dictatorship, the Theatre Artist’s Way” (highlighted in TCG’s Fall of Freedom participation), personal cover story “Tomorrow’s Tamoras and Titanias,” and poem “in your hands, american theatres” (the editor’s letter for AT‘s Immigrant Imaginations issue). She feels deeply honored that many of her stories have been featured in syllabi around the country, from high schools to university programs.

​​​Latest endeavors include contributing to a new Routledge companion on Latine and Caribbean musical theatre, leading the new monthly series Re:working Chicago Theatre at The Understudy Coffee + Books, and honing in on her playwriting craft and new works at the intersection of migration and disability justice.

She also loves to reimagine classics, embody power roles, empower youth, and dream up kinder futurisms with friends whose language is laughter. She brings a warm Brazilian sensibility and optimism to all her work, and creates across her three native languages.

Please feel free to contact her at gabriela.furtado.coutinho.us@gmail.com. As an actor, Gabriela Furtado Coutinho is represented by Talent X Alexander (lsmith@talentxalexander.com).