Our Guest Artist Program is one of the ways Denver School of the Arts is different from a traditional high school theatre program. In no other high school in Colorado will you see professional artists, directors, actors, and designers coming in to work with students one-on-one. Guest artists are selected for their advanced professional training, current and past professional experience, and willingness to give back to students. Our guest artists include broadway stars, award winning actors and directors, professional choreographers and high level theatre educators.
All of our artists also concurrently act, direct, dance, write, or choreograph professionally, both regionally and nationally. Guest artists are pulled to DSA because of the high-caliber theatre students we have. Bringing in professionals from the Denver Metro area as guest artists to share their valuable knowledge with our students enhances the DSA Theatre curriculum tremendously. We are constantly seeking new and fresh artists as well as people that come year after year to teach units or direct our young actors. Without our guest artists, we could not function.
Tim Grant
A native of the D.C. Metro area, and former North Carolina resident, Tim has called Denver, Colorado home for 19 years. He has been working professionally in the Theatre Industry for over 30 years, as an actor, director, designer, technician, and teacher. He holds a BA in Theatre and English Minor from Catawba College. He has been fortunate to have worked with companies such as Roundhouse Theatre, Harlequin Dinner Theatre, Charlotte Shakespeare Company, Charlotte Rep, Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, Walden Family Playhouse, Nomad Theatre, The Bug Theatre, No Holds Bard, and The Firehouse Theatre. Tim spends much of his time as a workshop presenter and guest artist in the Denver area including The Denver Center Theatre Academy, and this is his eleventh year at Denver School of the Arts. Some of Tim’s directing credits include A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Scapino!, Bridge to Terabithia, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Comedy of Errors, Art, The Moon is Down, Blythe Spirit, The Good Doctor, On the Verge, House & Garden, The Dining Room, Silent Sky, As You Like It, Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, The Serpent, and Pericles. He has appeared in Oleana (John), The Glass Menagerie (Jim), Amadeus (Mozart & Emperor Joseph), True West (Austin), Measure for Measure (Lucio & Duke), Prelude to a Kiss (Taylor), Waiting for Godot (Pozzo), and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Demetrius), Macbeth (Malcolm), and Henry IV / Richard III (King Edward). Along with his work on the stage, Tim can be seen in film and TV productions of Three Pages, Chasing the Dragon, Shift, The Closest Thing to Heaven, and Dawson’s Creek. When he isn’t presenting workshops across the country, he works at The Denver Center Theatre Academy, Denver School of the Arts, and The Wolf Theatre Academy. Find his article “Sharper Contrast” in Dramatics Magazine’s January 2013 issue.
Alison Watrous
Allison Watrous is the Executive Director of Education at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, which has been her artistic home for the past 20 years as an educator, actor and director. Allison and her team manage a wide variety of educational programing, which serves more than 142,000 students per year. Allison is a collaborative leader of artists, teaching artists, actors, and educators and an innovative teacher who is passionate about working with students of all ages. She is an artful developer of new curriculum that explores using theatre as a springboard to teach various subjects. Allison has taught at The New Victory Theatre, The New York Film Academy, TADA!, The Buckley School, University of Northern Colorado, the National Theatre Conservatory, The International College of Beijing and the University of Denver. She is currently on faculty of Denver School of the Arts and the University of Colorado Denver. Acting work includes Kelly Young in Just Like Us, A Christmas Carol, John Brown’s Body and Scapin (Denver Center Theatre Company); Girls Only – The Secret Comedy of Women (DCPA Cabaret); Astronomical Sunset (Curious Theatre Company), and Savage in Limbo, Crimes of the Heart, American Notes, Talley’s Folly and Gidion’s Knot (Sis Tryst Productions) Directing work includes Bus Stop (Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities), The Revolutionists (BETC), Brighton Beach Memoirs (Miners Alley Playhouse), Big Love (University of Denver), and Failure: A Love Story, The Laramie Project, Eurydice, Wintertime, Arcadia and The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Denver School of the Arts). Allison studied at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s National Theatre Institute, earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre at Drake University and a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts in Acting from the National Theatre Conservatory.
Alan Osborne
Mr. Osburn was seen as Inspector Javert in both the Broadway and National Touring companies of Les Miserables. While in NYC he worked in film, television, and commercials. He was in the original Off-Broadway casts of The Wonder Years and the critically acclaimed ELT production Side by Side by Sondheim. He has directed five world premiere plays Off-Broadway and has served as both the Artistic Director for Theatre Aspen and as the Producing Artistic Director for the Fine Arts Center Theatre Company. He has been on the faculty at Tisch School for the Arts at New York University, the National Theatre Conservatory at the Denver Center Theatre Company, and the Denver Center Academy. In addition to working locally at the Denver Center Theatre Company, Arvada Center, Lake Dillon Theatre Company, Miners Alley, and Town Hall, his regional theatre credits include Hartford Stage, Theatre Under the Stars, Alley Theatre, Stages Repertory Theatre, Maine State Theatre, and Mill Mountain Playhouse. He has a MFA in acting and directing from the University of Houston.
Sabin Epstein
Resident Director for the American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T., San Francisco), Georgia Shakespeare Festival (Atlanta), and A Noise Within (Los Angeles). Guest director for the Alabama, Oregon, Utah and Southwest Shakespeare Festivals, the Juilliard School (Drama Division), The Guthrie Theatre Actor Training Program and the National Theatre Company, among others. As an educator, Head of Performance Skills for the National Theatre Conservatory (Denver), Head of Acting for the Old Globe MFA Actor Training Program (San Diego), Conservatory Director for the A.C.T. Advanced Training Program and an Adjunct Instructor at the University of Southern California. Taught, directed, and/or coached actors as diverse as Cate Blanchett, Denzel Washington, Anna Deveare Smith, Meatloaf, Tom Cruise, Delroy Lindo, Sanaa Latham and Billie Piper, among others. Co-author: Acting with Style (Prentice Hall) and Basic Acting (Allyn & Bacon).