Annika Pfaender Purvis

MFA Theatre for Young People                             

Annika is a second year graduate student in the TYP program at UNCG.  She comes to Greensboro from Chapel Hill, NC, where she developed an early taste for performing while attending Durham Academy.  Her experiences working at a summer day camp helped her realize that her career needed to involve children; the opportunities she had to perform while at Durham Academy made her see that her life also needed to include theater.  After graduation, Annika left North Carolina for Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio, where she quickly discovered that she preferred being behind the scenes.  At Kenyon, she had the chance to stage manage, direct, produce, design and work on costume, wardrobe, and set crews. 

Annika considers the year she spent abroad in England, working backstage at Miss Saigon in London and attending classes at the University of East Anglia, as one of the most important experiences of her life.  Infused with the spirit of adventure, Annika spent the following summer interning with the Summer Drama School at the Seattle Children’s Theatre.  She finished her senior year of college back in Ohio, where she adapted, designed and directed a puppet production of The Little Prince for her senior thesis in Drama.

After teaching drama at Chatham Hall, an all-girls boarding school in southern Virginia, Annika returned to Chapel Hill where she taught various drama classes for: Act One Act Now Community Theatre for Young People, Carrboro ArtsCenter, Raleigh Latin High School, Applause Cary Youth Theatre, The Raleigh Little Theater, and ArtsTogether PreSchool.  In her six years of teaching, she has encountered a wide range of students, from toddlers to high schoolers, from home schooled children to Girl Scout troops.  She assistant directed several productions with Applause!, with casts of up to 40 children.  She has also designed costumes for Deep Dish Theater in Chapel Hill.  

Annika has special interests in the adaptation and creation of plays for and with children, puppetry, folk and fairy tales, and discovering Shakespeare with young students. Having worked in the field of public health for three years, she is interested in further exploring the fields of arts therapy and theater in health education, while she pursues her MFA in Theatre for Youth.  Annika is an avid, though amateur, chef, and loves literature of all genres.