Teresa Stirling Forsyth
Teresa Stirling Forsyth, MFA (Dramatic Arts), MS (Mgmt & Leadership), member DG & SDC, is Board President and Producing Artistic Director for Placer Repertory Theater. For Placer Rep, she performs administrative duties as well as the duties of a producer, resident playwright and director. She has also been known to design costumes, props, furnishings, sets, lights and sound, to relish scenic painting opportunities and reluctantly perform.
Having moved to Placer County in 2017, in 2019 she directed with Sacramento Theater Company while she performed a three-part feasibility study of Placer County and determined there was sufficient interest, community and economic support available for a home-grown professional theater company.
In 2019, she began testing the waters, offering classes and one-on-one training and mentorship, while developing the founding board members. On April 10, 2020, Placer Rep officially was recognized as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization by the State and Federal government. As President, Tess leads the board and the company through use of servant and transformational leadership principles.
Tess’ Entre to the Performing Arts
Her earliest career background centers around performance. She studied voice from an early age. Her primary professional training in opera and legitimate voice was with Nancy Ness Bowman (Nancy Nessman), who trained with the same instructors as and competed for roles with Maria Callas, until Nancy married a dashing U.S. Diplomat, retired from opera and moved to the U.S.
Teresa’s early love of theater and music lead to two touring shows as a performer: seven European countries with a singing, dancing Jazz & Blues ensemble performing at venues such as the Montreux Jazz Festival, and as an actor/singer/dancer throughout Japan with The Western Stage’s ensemble production of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown. She moved to Los Angeles, where she performed onstage, in front of the camera, and as a voice-over artist while she began to exercise her skills in producing, directing and screen/playwrighting. After a few years in L.A., returned to the UC system to complete her academic studies and professional training.
While completing her MFA and moving out into the world of professional theater, Teresa was mentored by Jael Weisman, director/performer with the San Francisco Mime Troupe & Dell’Arte International, and veteran BBC/Granada/Royal Shakespeare director William Gaskill, among other renowned directors. In the 1990’s, she founded, was board president and operated TheatreMaker in the San Francisco Bay Area for five years, where she also held the position of Artistic Director for the statewide touring company, King’s Court Play’rs, for two years.
It is during this time she worked as a writer and director with renowned professionals, such as Dell’Arte Theater Company (the AEA professional touring theater company) and international solo performance artist Brenda Wong Aoki, and exercised her skills as an educator and director for several universities.
She had worked her way through her BA and MFA programs performing a variety of contractor positions, including conceiving, designing and overseeing the development and quality assurance of software. This eventually led to a financial-safety career in the Silicon Valley while pursuing her true passions in the performing and visual arts.
Inspiring High Tech to Use Producing/Directing Principles
Among her many career experiences, Tess is a former security representative and financial advisor, as well as retired from the high-tech sector. As a Silicon Valley vice president whose responsibilities often included oversight of groups or departments related to product development & product management, the products she oversaw had millions of users. She specialized in product concept, user-interface and user experience design, as well as product & lifecycle management and Quality Assurance (QA). Her goal then, is the same as it is today – she seeks to engage and inspire audiences, the board and company members alike.
Creativity was in abundance, as the software products could include videos, cut scenes, splash screens and graphic design – all skills she attributes to her MFA, including her training and experience in film and TV direction. “A computer screen is a proscenium,” she has often said. She applied her theater and film experience and knowledge about how to grab an audience’s attention, how to focus their view on the right element at the right moment, to design attractive and easy to use software products. While working in the corporate sector, she also wrote and directed touring solo artists and stand-up comedians, as time permitted.
Nonprofit Leadership
Forsyth’s background also includes being the founder and/or a board officer for several arts & culture and economic development nonprofit organizations, such as Board President of the Solano County Arts Council, Board Secretary of the Jaycees (Junior Chamber of Commerce), Founder & President of A Place To Start, Inc. (APToS), an economic development nonprofit. Tess was appointed by the interim officers of the Placer Repertory Theater board in 2020 as its President. In December 2020, at the annual election committee meeting, the board unanimously voted her as president of the board for a two-year term. She has since been re-elected as the board’s president through December 2024.
Engaging Audiences through Bringing the Written Word to Life
Having written and directed both musicals/operas and straight works, large scale and small cast plays for stage and screen under a prior nom de plume, recent works are penned as T.S. Forsyth, and she has discovered she particularly enjoys collaboration on new works with solo artists. A few of the plays she has written, co-authored or collaborated on include:
- Ghosts of Placer County (playwright, director)
- Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of the Four (playwright, director)
- Sherlock Holmes: Domestic Mysteries series (episodes 1, 2, 4, 5) (screenwriter, director)
- UNDONE (director and dramaturg for poet/performer Natalie Farrell)
- Schrodinger’s Cat and the Jackpot (playwright, director)
- (Premiere version) My Jekyll & Hyde (playwright, director)
- (Preview version) My Jekyll & Hyde (director and co-playwright with Ryan Gerberding)
- New Beginnings: the Placer County Roundhouses (dramaturg, director)
- Persuasion: a holiday romantic comedy (playwright, director)
- Immy & Oddy (screenwriter)
- Cal (screenwriter) (20th Century screenwriting awards semi-finalist)
- Romantic Notions (playwright, director, opera musical director)
- Wisdom While On My Back (director, co-playwright with Kathryn Carner),
- Random Acts of Kindness (collaborator with Brenda Wong Aoki, direction w/ Jael Weisman)
- The Queen’s Garden (dramaturg for Brenda Wong Aoki, direction w/ Jael Weisman),
- Fear of Falling (Dell’Arte Int’l. writing & directing teams),
- Love, Romance & Passion, Comedy of Errors (playwright, director),
- Starving Actors Perform: A showcase of Music, Dance, Sorrow & Laughter (dramaturg, director)
- Legend of the Fifth World (playwright, director)
- Tellin’ Tall Tales (playwright, director)
- What a Wonderful World (dramaturg, director)
- Tracks to Malibu (dramaturg, director)
- Yes, But is it Zen? (dramaturg, director),
- Values (dramaturg, director),
- The Frogs (collaborator with Audrey Stanley, assistant director, music & lyrics composition).
Venues
Forsyth’s theatrical work has been produced by or performed at the
- Kennedy Center
- Lincoln Center
- Smithsonian
- Placer Repertory Theater
- Sacramento Theatre Company
- San Diego Repertory Theatre
- Julia Morgan Theater
- Cowell Theatre
- Magic Theatre
- Bayfront Theatre
- Dell’Arte Theatre
- Loriane Palace Theater
- Ellen Eccles Theatre
- Dallas Theatre Center
- Corn Island KY Storytelling Festival
- NAPPS National Storytelling Festival
- Laney Theatre
- Gill Theatre
- Barn Theater
- Oakland Lyric Opera
- Lake Merritt Scottish Rite Center
- Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center
and other U.S. locales, as well as venues in Europe, Asia and South America.
Recognition & Awards
Productions and works in which Forsyth contributed have received the following recognition
- Dramalogue Awards
- Critics Circle Awards
- Indy Award: Best Spoken Word Album: The Queen’s Garden for Rounder Records
- Grants from the NEA, NEH, CAC, ACPC and corporations
- 7 Nominations & 4 Awards from Broadway World for 2021, 20 nominations in 2022
- Placer Herald “Best of the Best: Best Live Theatrical Group” 2021
- Placer Herald “Best of the Best: Best Live Theatrical Group” 2022
- Placer Herald “Best of the Best: Best New Business” 2022
- Placer Herald “Best of the Best: Finalist – Local Hero” 2022
- Gloria Burt Sacramento Region Arts Fellowship in Literature 2022
- Stage Directors & Choreographers Foundation (SDC) 2022 Denham Fellowship Finalist
The Queen’s Garden was also selected for publication in an anthology of Women Playwrights by Routledge Press listing T.S. Forsyth as dramaturg under a prior nom de plume.
Sharing through Education & Professional Association
Board President Forsyth has taught or created curriculum for higher education, including, U C Davis, University of San Francisco, U C Berkeley, Shawnee State University, University of Minnesota at Morris and other educational institutions. She is currently a member of the Dramatists Guild of America (DG), Stage Directors & Choreographers Society (SDC), NNPN: New Play Exchange, and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE).
Currently
What is Tess working on now? Shh. It’s always a secret until it’s imminent. But here’s the public information regarding upcoming productions and events.
President — President — President
President of the board for Placer Repertory Theater.
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