Assistant Professor - Movement Assistant Professor - MovementDepartment of Theatre
Stephanie “Tippi” Hart is originally from Louisiana where she received her bachelor’s and her master’s in Theatre from Louisiana Tech University. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Theatre and Performance of the Americas at Arizona State University where her research is what she has named Emotional Dramaturgy. She defines Emotional Dramaturgy as attending to the emotional world of the play and how actors safely engage, and more importantly, disengage with that world, without taking the character’s emotions home with them. This research extends from her work and training as a fight and intimacy director.
Her work combines her backgrounds of theatre, dance, and stage combat and is rooted in embodied learning and kinesthetic storytelling. She is a director, choreographer (dance, fight, and intimacy), dancer, stage combatant, and actor. She has studied internationally with Kawa:wi Dance Theatre in Canada, Frantic Assembly of London, the Ostrenko Brothers in Austria, and with Matteo Destro of Atelier Mask Movement Theatre in Tuscany, Italy. She served as the assistant artistic director for Phoenix’s professional company CaZo Dance Theatre.
Tippi has been seen locally on stage at Virginia Rep as M’Lyn in Steel Magnolias and in the world premiere of Roman A Clef at Firehouse Theatre as Queenie. Her work as a fight and intimacy director has been seen in the Richmond area on such works as Anonymous, Let the Right One In, MacBeth3, Rent, and Gross Indecency, and the upcoming The Wild Party at VCU; 4000 Days, Sugar in Our Wounds, Log Cabin, Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties, and Rocky Horror Show at Richmond Triangle Players; How I Learned to Drive at The TheatreLab; A Soldier’s Play at Swift Mill Creek Theatre, The Play that Goes Wrong, Chicago, Bonnie and Clyde and the upcoming Hadestown: Teen Edition at James River High School; and as Intimacy Coordinator on the second season of Apple TV’s Swagger.