Join us in November to learn from these world class instructors!

2025 Teaching Staff

ASHLEY h. WHITE

Ashley H. White (she/her) is a multi-hyphenate artist, whose passion lies within storytelling. As a playwright, Ashley recently enjoyed a hit run of her original work, Imposter! Hypocrite! Tartuffe! (based on the play by that one guy), at Circle Theatre in Fort Worth. Her previous devised pieces include The Forever Quest at Cry Havoc and A Room For Vincent at Union. She is currently under commission with Bishop Arts Theatre Center to pen a new play based on Ibram Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning, set to debut in early 2025.
She is also an award-winning director, fight and intimacy director, and teaching artist, with international credits and decades of experience creating theatre. As a director, she has helmed numerous productions, each incorporating significant play and a pursuit of creative risk. She is a certified Intimacy Director with IDC Professionals and has worked across the U.S., in addition to film and television, where her intimacy coordination work can be seen on Amazon, The CW, Paramount+, and other networks and studios. An accomplished Fight Director, she is also a Certified Teacher with the Society of American Fight Directors. Ashley is a sought-after educator and the creator of The Cycle of Consent—an approach to building and navigating safe creative spaces.
Ashley is the recipient of five DFW Critics Forum Awards for Outstanding Direction, as well as special recognitions from the Critics Forum for her fight and intimacy work. She is a proud member of SDC and has received nominations for the SDC Zelda Fischander and SDC Barbara Whitman awards for innovation in directing.
Ashley serves as the Artistic Director of Circle Theatre in Fort Worth, TX, and is available for projects locally and regionally.
Ashley is the Artistic Director of Circle Theatre in Fort Worth, TX.
For more information go to www.ashleyhwhite.com

Andrew dylan ray

A-Ray (he/him) is an actor, director, fight director, motion capture performer and educator who works from coast to coast. He is a Certified Fight Director and Certified Stage Combat Instructor with the Society of American Fight Directors that holds a BA in Theatre from The University of Kentucky and an MA in Theatre from Louisiana Tech University where he studied performance and stage movement and currently teaches acting and directing. He also teaches stage combat at the University of Kentucky Fine Arts Institute. On top of that he teaches stage combat and directs fights in New York, Illinois, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, Ohio, North Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri and Florida. He also spends time in Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Wisconsin and New York working as a motion capture performer and fight coordinator. He is one of the lead motion capture performers for the Agents of Mayhem, We Happy Few, Saint’s Row and Borderlands video game franchises. He also works as a motion capture actor for Penn and Teller.

brandon sterrett

Brandon Sterrett (he/him) is a theatre professional and teaching artist with a wide range of theatrical experience. Along with teaching theatre for over a decade, he has been a director, fight director, and actor for stage and screen. Brandon is currently an Theatre Instructor at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He holds an MFA in Theatre Pedagogy from Virginia Commonwealth University.
He has served as an artistic advisor on multiple new-works within the movement theatre style (e.g. Galatea, Prism) and in 2010 he produced his first original collaborative work, *Inspiration*. The level of specificity and body-text connection required by the classic and movement theatre styles inspired his thesis on cross-disciplinary performance and non-text based theatre, which culminated in a produced exploration of the ancient myth surrounding Jason and Medea (details below). In the 2016 he debuted his collaborative production of Medea Myth (details below) in both Richmond, VA and Dallas, TX. He also had the privilege of joining these two styles in a single performance as the Monster in the new work Frankenstein: Dawn of a Monster at VCU in 2015. Brandon has worked extensively as a fight director in various productions between 2011 and to this date (*Julius Caesar, Wait Until Dark, Equivocation–AD, Romeo and Juliet, Taming of the Shrew, Andromache, Comedy of Errors*).
For more information go to www.brandonsterrett.com/

Skye Bronfenbrenner

Skye Bronfenbrenner (she/her) is a fight and intimacy director currently serving as Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts with specialties in Movement and Theatrical Intimacy Education at Marymount Manhattan College. She holds an MFA in Theatre from the University of Houston where she was also taught Movement for the Actor in the BFA program. She has taught movement and stage combat for Houston Grand Opera's Butler Studio and YAVA programs, Rice University, the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and as a teaching artist for the Alley Theatre. As a fight and intimacy director her work has been seen at the Houston Grand Opera, Drunk Shakespeare, Heartbeat Opera, Catastrophic Theatre, Rec Room Arts, Marymount Manhattan College, the University of Houston, and Rice University; and as a performer she has toured with the national tours of Beauty and the Beast, Guys and Dolls, and the international tour of Shrek the Musical. She believes in making bold and visceral work safely and that theatre is above all a collaborative process.

da’mon stith

Da’Mon Stith is the Founder and former President of the Historical African Martial Arts Association (HAMAA). With over thirty years of experience in martial arts, he has dedicated his life to researching, preserving, and reconstructing traditional African and African Diasporic fighting systems.
As the founder of the Guild of the Silent Sword, Da’Mon has taught widely across the United States and internationally, including in the United Kingdom. His instruction draws from a broad range of disciplines from around the world—including Shorin-Ryu Karate, Western Boxing, Kickboxing, Jeet Kune Do, Pekiti Tirsai Kali Penjat Silat Mande Muda, Muay Thai, as well as fighting arts from Africa and the African Diaspora such as Capoeira, El Matreg, Morengy Kickboxing, Kokobale, Haitian and Colombian Machete Fencing—allowing him to bridge historical martial traditions with practical self-defense.
Da’Mon has also brought historical African martial arts into the public eye through appearances on the El Rey Network’s Man at Arms and the History Channel’s Forged in Fire and Forged in Fire: Knife or Death. He has been featured on numerous podcasts and video platforms, where he shares his insights on African martial traditions, history, and culture with a global audience.
For more information go to www.austinwarriorarts.com

Zhenya Leverett

Zhenya is a Certified Teacher with the British Academy of Stage & Screen Combat and teaches sword fighting and unarmed combat at various drama schools in London, including RADA NYU, Royal Central, YATI, and IDFight. She is an accomplished fight coordinator and has choreographed fights for numerous theatre and film productions across the UK.
Zhenya has also worked internationally, most recently teaching at the Summer Sling 2024 Stage Combat & Stunt Workshop in New York City. As an action performer, she is best known for her role in the BAFTA-winning TV series Killing Eve (Season 1), where she played prisoner Agniya, trading punches with Jodie Comer. She is an Equity member and works professionally as an actress with Xameleon Theatre in London.
For more information go to www.actingaction.com

David reed

David Reed is a director, educator, and stage movement professional currently serving as an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas. He has directed, choreographed, and trained professional and collegiate actors across the country, most recently working with New Stage, Theatre Squared, Riverside Theatre, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, Orlando Rep, Liberty Mountain, Theatre West End, and the Southern Appalachian Historical Association. David is an Associate member of Stage Directors and Choreographers, a Certified Teacher and Fight Director with the Society of American Fight Directors and a Certified Intimacy Director with Intimacy Directors and Coordinators.
As an artist, David is drawn to Movement in a variety of forms. He has studied Commedia Dell’Arte with international master Antonio Fava, Meyerhold’s Biomechanics with Gennady Bogdanov, and many others across a spectrum of movement pedagogies. David also pursues academic interests. He has been chosen on numerous occasions to present his work at academic conferences, which include the Mid-America Theatre Conference, Southeastern Theatre Conference, Musical Theatre Educators Association, and the Horton Foote American Playwrights Festival. In addition, his work has been published in scholarly journals such as the Voice and Speech Journal, Ecumenica, and the Texas Theatre Journal.
David received his MFA in Directing from Baylor University in 2012. He also holds an MA in Speech/Theatre from Louisiana Tech University and an undergraduate degree in Theatre from the University of Saint Mary.
For more information go to www.davidreed-director.com/

Hannah Roccisano

Hannah "Rock" Roccisano (she/they) is a Midwest and New York City/Connecticut based fight and intimacy choreographer, director, educator, movement practitioner, and Shakespeare nerd. Off-Broadway fight direction credits include; CATS: The Jellicle Ball, Upside Down, Wolf Play, and Montag. They are a Certified Teacher with the SAFD and the founder of Expand, Educate, Empower, an initiative bringing free stage combat training to students in underserved communities across the U.S.

Daniel Savage

Daniel Savage is the head jiu-jitsu and submission grappling coach at Atomic Athlete and Fox House Martial Arts in Austin, Texas. With over 16 years of experience—and more than a decade as both an instructor and active competitor—he is committed to making high-level jiu-jitsu safe, inclusive, and accessible to everyone, regardless of background or experience. His goal is for students to walk away from class having gained something meaningful, along with the skills to be safe, thoughtful training partners.

For more information go to www.foxhousemartialarts.com or www.atomic-athlete.com/