Elective Faculty
Carlos Brown

Class
Costume Design

Octavio Tizoc Gaitan-Diaz is a graduate from LACHSA. Mr. Gaitan-Diaz (Call him "O") will co-teach First Year Stagecraft/Design and ROP Stagecraft with Mr. Panman. Mr. Gaitan-Diaz majored in communications at Pasadena City College before going right into the professional theatrical technical field. He is a member of I.A.T.S.I. Local 33 and I.B.E.W. Local 45. His television credits include KCBS/KCAL TV-News. He coordinated the world's largest news merger between KCBS-TV and KCAL-TV and was selected employee of the month. At KCBS/KCAL he worked as an E.N.G. Technician, Audio Technician, Electrician, Carpenter and Painter. For Telemundo/SONY, Mr. Gaitan-Diaz was the Set Director for Los Beltran and Solo En America. He wrote and acted in the TV show Illegal Interns Television. He was a Production Assistant and Electrician on Surviving L.A., There's Nothing Funny About Serial Killers and My Family/Mi Familia prodcued by Francis Ford Coppola. His work in the theatre has been extensive. As Master Electrician, Scenic Painter, Carpenter, Production Manager, Audio Technician, Lighting Director, and, yes, Stuntman, Mr. Gaitain-Diaz' credits include the Japan America Theater & Cultural Community Center, Goethe Institute, Actor's Gang Theater, Willie Bietak Productions, S.P.A.R.C/Cesar Chavez Center UCLA, Colony Theater, Canon Theater, UCLA Royce Hall, Renaissance Entertainment, Plaza De La Raza/Latino Theater Company, Bilingual Foundation of the Arts, and Theater Geo.

Class
Stagecraft Design

Jeremy Guskin, who teaches First Year Voice and Speech is an accomplished actor whose film credits include Admiring Melora, Simone, Kennedy Space Center, Smoke and Mirrors, The Son of Sam Greenbaum, The Last Days of Flannel Daphne and Damned.  On television he appeared in Angel-WB, Six Feet Under-HBO, Do Over-WB, Septuplets-Fox Pilot, ER-NBC, Even Stevens-Disney, Roswell-WB, The Geena Davis Show-ABC, Hang Time-NBC, The King of Queens-CBS, and Jag-CBS.  As a stage actor, Mr. Guskin appeared in Midsummer’s Night Dream, MacBeth, The Bear, The Wedding, Electra, The Lower Depths, Charlotte’s Web, The Duchess of Malfi, Murder Mayhem, Fortinbras, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. He has experience performing using Standard British, Cockney, Australian, Irish, Indian, and Iraqi accents.  He plays the Alto Saxophone, Tambourine and Ukulele.  He is skilled in Commedia Dell’arte, karate, capoera and stage combat.  Mr. Guskin received his BA at Connecticut College and his MFA at Carnegie Mellon University.  He had additional training at Yale Drama Schol, Moscow Art Theatre School, R.A.D.A.-London, and National Theatre Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.

Class
Improvisation

Damian Lewis began performing at the age of 10 in the musical tour of the play Dreams Over Drugs.  He completed and won first place awards at the DTASC Junior High School competition.  He later attended the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts where he studied drama.  In his senior year he received a first place award from the Arts Recognition and Talent Search competition held in Miami, Fl.  Upon graduation, he continued his studies in drama and received his BFA from The Julliard School in New York.  While at Juilliard, Damian began teaching and directing youth from various schools in plays that were performed at the 92nd Street “Y” in New York.  In the fall of 2000, Damian returned to LACHSA where he began  to teach acting, movement, voice and speech, and Comedia del Arte.  He also directed The Amen Corner by James Baldwin for the 2001-02 theater season and is currently co-directing Drums in the Night by Bertolt Brecht for the 2002-03 season.  Meanwhile, Damian’s career as an actor continues to thrive with appearances in Frasier, One on One, One Life to Live, Guiding Light, Trinity, Chicago Hope and various commercials and plays.  He is currently working on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Andrew Tsao, to be performed at the Edinburg Theatre Festival in 2004.

Class
Stage Combat

Flora Plumb, after twenty years in the theatre as an actress, became a director with her award-winning production of David Mamet's The Duck Variations. Since becoming a director, a majority of her productions have been recommended or listed as a "Critic's Choice" in one or more publications, four times by The Los Angeles Times. Most recently she directed Translations by Brian Friel, Buried Child by Sam Shepard, an award-winning production of Uncle Vanya, the west coast premiere of Mark Medoff's The Homage That Follows, and an unusual and highly acclaimed production of A Midsummer Night's Dream performed by five actors. She also directed the World Premiere of The Cottage by Julie Gilbert, Sticks and Bones by David Rabe, Ladies At the Alamo by Paul Zindel, Fragments by Murray Schisgal, Sam Shepard's The Rock Garden and novelist Don DeLillo's absurdist comedy The Day Room. Ms. Plumb is in her fourteenth year teaching and directing at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, where she directed Stand and Deliver, adapted with the filmmakers from their screenplay; The Seagull; Sam Shepard's Angel City; The Importance Of Being Earnest; Romeo and Juliet; A Midsummer Night's Dream; As You Like It; Our Town; Becoming Memories, a musical; three pieces she adapted from poetry and songs: Subterranean Homesick Blues - Some Other Kinds Of Poems by Bob Dylan, Ascension, Poems For New America, and La Poesia - A Tree Within, and several Shakespeare programs. Last year she co-directed the musical Annie with LACHSA Theatre Department Chair Vicky Silva. For seven years Ms. Plumb and Ms. Sliva have also co-directed the Commencement Exercises for Arts High School at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Ms. Plumb was last seen as an actress as Mrs. Webb in Our Town. Ms. Plumb has worked as a producer and lighting designer and served as president of Theatre 40 for three years.

Class
Directing