Featured Speakers

Friday morning, 9:00 am Session

Keynote Speaker Krista Carson Elhai

Krista Carson Elhai has been a Theatre Educator for 41 years and has directed 300+ productions. She is currently serving as the president of the Educational Theatre Association’s (EdTA) national board, is a mentor teacher for the performing arts in the Foothill Consortium in Southern California and supervises student teachers in theatre for CSU East Bay.

As chair of the Claremont HS Theatre program, she had over 500 students and produced 7-10 shows a year, with 11 sections of theatre.  Her productions performed mainstage at both the CA State Thespian Festival (13 times) and the International Thespian Festival (3 times).  Her program at Hemet HS and Claremont HS were both named an Outstanding School Theatre Program by EdTA.

Serving on the CA State Thespian board since 1993, Krista held three terms as the California State Thespian Director where she oversaw the 500+ Thespian Troupes in CA.  She completed her second three-year term on the EdTA's Governing Board in 2020 before becoming President of the association. She also sits on the California Educational Theatre Association’s (CETA) board as Past President and is a trustee on the Educational Theatre Foundation board.

Krista has taught numerous workshops throughout the country as well her Theatre Teacher Bootcamp, an intensive workshop for theatre teachers and was on The College Board’s Pre-AP Arts Committee where she worked on designing theatre curriculum. Most recently, she was the keynote speaker for the Indiana Thespian Conference and the Georgia Theatre Educator Conference.

A two-time Finalist for the LA Music Center Bravo Award, Krista was awarded a Chase Fellowship from the LA Music Center. She has received the CA Educational Theatre Association’s Theatre Teacher of the Year (2008), Claremont USD’s Teacher of the Year (2011), and was inducted into the EdTA’s National Hall of Fame in 2009, and the CA State Thespian Hall of Fame in 2012.

Krista produced the EdTA west coast benefit Thespians Go Hollywood for many years and, in honor of that work, was named the EdTA National Volunteer of the Year in 2017. She has received CETA’s Theatre Teacher of the Year, the CETA Medallion for lifetime contribution to educational theatre. In the fall of 2022, she was awarded the EdTA’s Presidents Award for exceptional service to the organization.

Sunday Morning, 9 am session

Devon Baur, Professional Development Intensive

Devon Baur is a scholar and curator whose career has been dedicated to the interplay of art and technology. Her research focuses on performance, new media, and the senses (with a particular focus on smell).  She recently finished a Ph.D. in Theater and Performance Studies at UCLA, and will be lecturing on performance and technology in the fall. Her dissertation examines how artists working with emerging technologies can expand the sensorium. She has lectured at UCLA and Stanford on topics of AI, VR, robots, and digital theater since 2019. She has also been invited for public-facing talks, including AI4ALL, The Armory, and the World Economic Open Forum in Davos.

Beyond her scholarship, she also has public-facing praxis and collaborates with technology labs. She has held a five-year residency in Stanford’s Electrical Engineering department as a researcher and artist-in-residence. During this time, she embarked on interdisciplinary projects that explored multisensory storytelling in virtual spaces. A highlight was her art installation Smell.Print. , which had a solo exhibition at the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles and was curated in a special screening hosted by The Getty and NASA JPL. She also held residencies/fellowships in the Multi-Sensory Devices Group at the University College of London, and in both the Center for Engineering Media and Performance (REMAP) and the Center for Scholars and Storytellers at UCLA.

Prior to this, she worked in the VR/AR industry for over half a decade as both a curator and producer. Most notably, she produced the award-winning Tree VR, which toured to over 100 festivals, including Tribeca Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, and twice to the World Economic Forum in Davos. As a curator, she was lauded by the LA Times for her programming as the Director of the Topanga Film Institute.

She holds a MPhil from Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) and a BA from Aberystwyth University (UK).

To read about Devon's workshop, visit the Professional Development Intensive page.

 

Old Globe Arts Engagement Panel

Friday Morning, 9 am Session

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Randall Eames, Youth Programs Manager at The Old Globe
• Kim Heil, Associate Artistic Director at The Old Globe
• Erika Phillips, Associate Director of Arts Engagement/ Emotional Intelligence Programs Manager
• Becks Redman, Artistic Producer at The Old Globe
• Adena Varner, Director of Arts Engagement at The Old Globe, Moderator