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San Mateo High School Drama


2020-2021 Season


This time, theater comes to you! Grab some popcorn, your favorite snacks, and enjoy performances from the 2019/2020 musical theatre class, under the musical direction of Rick Reynolds.

Mini Musicals Fridays in September at 7pm!

9/4: Pippin – Directed by Alison Hagen
9/11: Spiderman – Directed by Jeremy Pitzer and Adam Hilt
9/18: Avenue Q – Directed by Daniel Soloman and Grace Borgeson

Zoom: bit.ly/Bearcat_Drama

Audition Information

About SMHS Drama

San Mateo High School is the home of one of the Bay Area’s finest and most comprehensive high school drama programs. Offering courses in Drama, Musical Theatre and Cinema and Society, students are exposed to the dramatic arts in multiple forms and formats. Coursework provides students with hands-on academic opportunities in acting, directing, design and choreography (often in conjunction with San Mateo High’s highly acclaimed dance and music departments).In addition to its high-level classroom work, San Mateo High School typically produces 3 exceptional quality shows each year in the newly renovated state-of-the-art on-campus performing arts center. Boasting multiple awards from both San Jose Stage Company’s Top Honors and American Musical Theatre of San Jose’s Honors, San Mateo High School has developed a reputation for excellence in drama education and performance. By providing a robust drama curriculum, San Mateo High School is developing students’ skills in numerous areas emphasized by California’s recently-implemented Common Core curriculum, including real-world problem-solving, collaborative learning and communication. Most importantly, San Mateo High School’s drama program provides students the opportunity to develop a time-honored craft: telling stories, using a toolkit comprised of their voices, bodies and imaginations, while testing their maturing senses of reasoning and emotion. By making high-quality productions accessible to the greater Bay Area community, San Mateo High’s drama students are educating the next generation of audience members.

Booster Meetings

Join us at our monthly booster meetings, the second Thursday of the month, 7:00pm at: bit.ly/Bearcat_Drama

2020 - 2021 Board of Directors


Stephanie Wozniak (Artistic Director)
Kim Pitzer (Treasurer)
Jodi Zwiebach (Parliamentarian)
Linda Oberstein (Publicity/Outreach)
Dina La Bove- Administrative Assistant

Christina Simmons (President)
Jennifer Gloss (Vice President)
Martha McKenna (Recording Secretary)
Ellen Fellenz (Corresponding Secretary)
Shari Yoshihara (Historian)

Join the Drama Boosters

Join the Drama Booster

We hope you’ll join the San Mateo High School Drama Boosters and help support our wonderful drama program.Your financial support will help us fund our shows this year. Our program is almost completely self-funded, so every donation—large or small—is important. You’ll receive benefits, too—a discount on all of the tickets you purchase to SMHS drama performances (20% off).As a booster, you’ll receive advance notice of all of our shows and social events. You can also hear about opportunities to lend your skills (carpentry, sewing, tickets, sales, etc.) to our productions. You don’t need to have a student in the cast or on the crew—all with an interest in the drama program are welcome! Complete the Online Booster Membership Form or fill out the Booster Membership Form and mail it in with your support check. You may also pay via Pay Pal. Please consider adding $10 to your donation if paying via credit card. Join us at our monthly booster meeting the second Thursday of the month in the Multipurpose Room at 7:00 PM.

Support the Drama Boosters
Business Sponsorship
DONATE HERE

Leadership

Stephanie Wozniak

STEPHANIE WOZNIAK — Ms. Wozniak graduated from Marymount Manhattan College in New York with a degree in Acting before working at Meredith College in Raleigh North Carolina for three years as the Assistance Technical Director of the Dance and Theatre Department. She received her Masters in Classical Acting from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London and studied briefly at the Moscow Art Theatre School before returning to the states. Ms. Wozniak spent several years working as an actress and casting director in San Francisco where she eventually signed with an agency and found moderate success as a commercial actress. Highlights of these years include playing various roles in Tony and Tina’s Wedding for a year, working with Boxcar Theatre, SF Shakespeare, California Shakespeare, and starring opposite a real bear in a national commercial.
Ms. Wozniak began shifting away from onstage work to dedicate her time to youth theatre. From 2009 to 2013 she ran the audition-based youth theatre program The Dream Team for Starting Arts in the South Bay. She was the Youth Theatre Conservatory Director for Broadway By the Bay as well as the director of Hillbarn Theatre’s Teen Company.

Ms. Wozniak is incredibly honored to be working to train future theatre professionals or theatre fans here at San Mateo High School.

Rick Reynolds - Music and Vocal Director

Musical Conductor

RICK REYNOLDS — Rick Reynolds (Music and Vocal Director) teacher the Musical Theater class at San Mateo High School.

Attilio Tribuzi - Musical Conductor

Musical Conductor

ATTILIO TRIBUZI — Attilio Tribuzi (Musical Director) has been teaching music since 1986. Since 1992 he has been at San Mateo High School and has conducted Jazz Band, Marching Band, Symphonic Band, Orchestra and Chorus classes in addition to directing over 30 musical theatre productions. His groups have won numerous awards through the years and have toured from Florida to Hawaii. He is currently the SMUHSD Coordinator for the Visual and Performing Arts, as well as Master of Ceremonies for the SMUHSD’s In Concert series. Mr. Tribuzi studied music at San Francisco State University as an undergraduate and earned his Master’s degree at CSU Hayward, graduating summa cum laude at both institutions. He studied trumpet performance with Joe Alessi, Jay Rizzetto, Don Reinberg and Glen Fishtal, and conducting with Edwin Kruth, LeRoy Roach and Timothy Smith.Mr. Tribuzi has composed numerous pieces for his amateur and professional performing groups, and has written a children’s musical entitled To the Moon and Back. In addition, Mr. Tribuzi has also worked as Musical Director for Broadway by the Bay’s theatre productions (where he has won a Bay Area Theatre Critic’s Award), and has been an adjudicator and conductor for honor bands. He wishes to thank Robyn, Heather, and Antonia for their love and support.

Brad Friedman - Director

Drama Director

BRAD FRIEDMAN — Brad is celebrating his 26th year as the Drama director at San Mateo High School and his 29th year teaching. He has produced and/or directed 77 productions here, including Evita, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Urinetown, Hairspray, The Wedding Singer (the 2011 winner for Best Musical at the SJSC Honors Program), Guys and Dolls, Rent, West Side Story, Peter Pan, Hello, Dolly! (winner of Best Musical in the 2006 AMTSJ Honors Program), 42nd Street (which received 14 nominations at the 2010 SJSC Honors Program), The Laramie Project, Seussical (nominated for Best Musical in the 2005 AMTSJ Honors Program), Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Secret Garden, The Will Rogers Follies, Oklahoma, The Mousetrap, Fiddler on the Roof, Sweeney Todd, Lucky Stiff, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Gypsy, The Miracle Worker, Brighton Beach Memoirs and Into the Woods. Brad was the recipient of the 2005 Art Share award as theatre educator, and in 2007 received the Bravo Award from Hillbarn Theatre for excellence in theatre education. He is a graduate of Lowell High School and UC Berkeley and has acted and/or directed for a number of theatre companies, including Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Shakespeare Festival, The Eureka Theatre, Peninsula Center Stage and Broadway by the Bay. He is especially proud to have acted with many of his present and former students in such BBBay productions as Beauty and the Beast (Cogsworth), Peter Pan (Smee) The Boyfriend (Percy Brown) and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Jacob/Potiphar). His favorite production at SMHS was The Drowsy Chaperone, directed by his good friend Virginia Musante, and featuring Brad as The Man in the Chair. In addition, Brad has directed City of Angels, Beauty and the Beast, Jr. and Peter Pan, Jr. for Hillbarn Theatre and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Pinocchio, and You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown for BBBay’s YTC program. For sixteen years Brad hosted a weekly television game show, Bay Area Quiz Kids, seen on KRON-TV (Channel 4) every Saturday at 2:00pm. He currently writes a blog about murder mysteries and musicals, which he hopes you will check out at: https://ahsweetmysteryblog.wordpress.com.

Class Syllabus

Drama
The purpose of Drama One is to give you a chance to become better performers, theatre scholars and critics. Advanced Drama students have the opportunity to deepen their acting skills, as well as take a leadership role as improvisation team leaders and scene directors. Our curriculum is aligned to the state and district standards for theatre in which you will be expected to demonstrate proficiency in order to pass the class. Download Drama Syllabus

Cinema and Society
The purpose of this class is to make you talk and think and write about art – in this case, one particular art form that we call film – and how it reflects the society in which we live. I never want you to stop enjoying watching movies; however, I hope that after this year will watch them more critically and with a better understanding of how form and content are interrelated. Download Cinema and Society Syllabus

Musical Theater
The purpose of Musical Theatre is to teach the history and structure of this most American form of drama. This is done through a minimum of lecture, a bit of research, and primarily through your performance of a variety of projects. For those of you who are new to this, the materials you will need are: water to drink, comfortable clothes so that you can sing and move as needed, a small recorder (if possible) to record songs you will need to sing, and a pencil to mark your materials. Download Musical Theater Syllabus

Sponsors


Foster City Rotary Club

All shows performed at the
San Mateo Performing Arts Center

600 N Delaware St, San Mateo, CA 94401

Contact Information

Box Office

(650) 558-2375
customerservice@smhsdrama.org

Stephanie Wozniak - Director

swozniak@smuhsd.org

Booster President

Christina Simmons

Webmaster

webmaster@smhsdrama.org