Department of Theatre
Lorraine Shackelford
Lorraine Shackelford (Director of Theatre Education, Performance Faculty) is in her fourteenth year at UNCG. She has a B.S. in Drama and Speech, with a Dance minor from East Carolina University, where she had the privilege of studying with Mavis Ray, a renowned choreographer, ballet, and jazz teacher who served as assistant to both Agnes de Mille and Joe Layton. Lorraine spent nine years in the North Carolina and Virginia public schools as a K-12 drama teacher. Her Masters of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) degree in Acting is from Virginia Commonwealth University. A member of Actors' Equity Association, Lorraine worked as a freelance actor in the Boston, Massachusetts area for several years. Returning to North Carolina in 1990 to perform in a production of Nunsense with Pat Carroll, she took a break from her acting career to spend a year in North Carolina and re-acquaint herself with the public schools system by teaching dance and drama in Raleigh, North Carolina. Plans to return to her Boston acting career were sidetracked by an opportunity to develop the Theatre Education program at UNCG.
In 1993, Lorraine created the Summer Institute for Theatre Education (S.I.T.E.), a program through which in-service K-12 Theatre Arts teachers may pursue a Masters of Education (M.Ed.) degree. The 2004-2005 academic year marks S.I.T.E.’s eleventh anniversary. Ms. Shackelford’s career has included numerous special experiences such as: attending the 1995 Professional Actor Training School for the National Theatre of the Deaf (NTD), consulting for the Drama Department at Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts , and working for nine years as the State Coordinator for the North Carolina Theatre Conference (NCTC) Middle and Secondary Play Festivals. In 1996, she designed the B.F.A. degree program in Theatre Education to replace the old B.A. degree program. At that time, the new degree program was one of only two such programs in the country. In 1999 she re-designed the M.Ed. in Drama to become the current M.Ed. in Theatre Education, the only Advanced Masters Licensure program in K-12 Theatre Arts in North Carolina.
Lorraine is currently exploring the voice work of Catherine Fitzmaurice, and she continues her long-time work with Gabrielle Roth's Five Rhythms as a warm-up technique for actors. She is collaborating on a new children’s play with a former M.Ed. student, Jennifer Jamieson, who teaches drama at Parkview A+ Magnet Elementary. Favorite acting roles include: Olga (The Three Sisters) , Mrs. Norman (Children of a Lesser God) , Princess Puffer (The Mystery of Edwin Drood) , Sister Hubert ( Nunsense) , Nancy (Oliver), and Reno (Anything Goes) . Choreography experience includes Batboy, Godspell, My Fair Lady, The Music Man, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, The Cocoanuts, and Amahl and the Night Visitors. Directing work includes: Dark of the Moon,Godspell ,My Fair Lady, Reckless, and The Emperor's New Clothes.