If these Winship walls could talk.

Kelly Pechal (BA 2009) is an assistant for the IFA Talent Agency in Los Angeles.

Jacqueline E. Lawton’s (MFA 2003) play, The Hampton Years, will receive a world premiere production at Theater J May 29 - June 30, 2013. This play was commissioned as part of Theater J’s Locally Grown Festival.

Lawton is a 2012 TCG Young Leaders of Color award recipient. She is a member of Arena Stage’s Playwright’s Arena and the Dramatist Guild of America. And, she is a National New Play Network (NNPN) Playwright Alum and has been nominated for the Wendy Wasserstein Prize and a PONY Fellowship from the Lark New Play Development Center. Since 2010, Lawton has served on Round House Theatre’s Artists’ Roundtable and was named one of 30 of the nation’s leading black playwrights by Arena Stage’s American Voices New Play Institute.

Photo: Jason Hornick

2013 is off to a fabulous start for actor Yesenia Garcia (MFA 2007)! You can catch her in role of “Ms. Hernandez” in Abel’s Field and as “Hilda” in Pit Stop, recently screened at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

Alumnus David Baker (BFA 1986) has carved out a successful career as a professional actor based in New York City.

Fans of some of television’s top hits will recognize him from his work in FOX’s The Following (starring Kevin Bacon), Boardwalk Empire, The Big C, Deception, Made in Jersey and Orange is the New Black. Last fall, he shot an independent film titled Blood and Circumstance. Check out highlights on his career!

Inspired Teaching: Essays on Theatre Design and Technology Education, edited by alumnus Erik Viker (MFA 2003), was released at the 2013 USITT Conference and Stage Expo in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The collection of insights on best teaching practice is available as either a print-on-demand or e-book from the USITT online bookstore in April.

The book includes essays provided by over 20 members of USITT, including alumni Viker and Cliff Simon (MFA 2002).

Cliff Simon is an associate professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has designed at the Truck and Warehouse Theater, the Lamb’s Club, Playwrights’ Horizons, T. Schreiber Studios in New York, the George Street Playhouse in New Jersey, the Cleveland Play House, ZACH Theatre, Tapestry Dance Company, Rude Mechs, Zilker Summer Theatre, and the Riverside Playhouse in Vero Beach.

Erik Viker is an associate professor of theatre and the production manager for Susquehanna University where he teaches courses in stagecraft, production, stage management and dramatic literature.

Visit our alumni spotlights and learn more about fellow Longhorns life beyond the 40 Acres.

Travis Tate (BA 2012) is creating a new web series entitled Black Mountain, a show about the trials and smiles of a group of twenty-somethings as they navigate the rugged terrain of post-collegiate life.

Since graduating in 2012, Wilberth Gonzalez has costume designed for the theatre, a children’s television pilot for PBS, and a feature film. He is currently working for the La Joya School District as the costume designer for the district’s children’s theatre. He also designed for McAllen Ballet’s production of Alice in Wonderland.

YaliniDream (formerly Yalini Thambynayagam) (BA 2000) is a 2013 artist in residence at University of Michigan’s Center for World Performance Studies. One of the South Asian diaspora’s most prominent performance poets, she has toured nationally at hundreds of venues throughout the U.S. as well as Europe and South Asia. Her work has been performed at theater venues such as NYC’s Lincoln Center and New York Live Arts (formerly Dance Theater Workshop), Manchester’s Contact Theater, Houston’s Diverse Works, Chicago’s Vittum Theater; poetry venues such as NYC’s Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Minneapolis’s The Loft, London’s Royal Vauxhall Tavern, and universities such as Yale (USA), University of Manchester (UK), Loyola College (India), and University of Peradeniya (Sri Lanka).

YaliniDream was a 2006 Mid-Atlantic Artists in Community Fellow at the Asian Arts Initiative, a panelist for the Leeway Foundation’s 2007 Transformation Awards, a 2008 Urban Arts Initiative Fellow and a 2010 recipient of the Jerome Foundation’s Travel and Study Award in Literature.

She has facilitated workshops for war-affected communities in Sri Lankan refugee camps in Tamil Nadu, India as well as war-affected communities in Mannar, Vavuniya and Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. In addition, she has worked with survivors of violence from multiple communities including Cambodian-American and communities of African descent in the United States.