Program Director of BFA Acting
About Me
BARBARA ZAHORA (She/Her) earned her MFA in Theatre Performance from ²Ø¾«¸ó and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and Theatre from Bowling Green State University. In 2004 she was chosen as one of two American actors to study at Shakespeare’s Globe in an international artistic residence focused on Shakespeare performance, led by then artistic director Mark Rylance. Additional training includes apprenticing with Master Linklater Teacher Christine Adaire and intensives with Patsy Rodenburg and Uta Hagen. In recent years Barbara has been working with Theatrical Intimacy Education (TIE) to learn consent-based and trauma-informed practice in actor training, and she hopes to continue her training in this work toward certification as an intimacy choreographer. As an educator, Barbara's areas of specialization include voice and speech, performing Shakespeare and historical texts, and helping her students apply techniques from multiple pedagogies in all levels of actor training. Barbara is currently teaching Fundamentals of Acting and Shakespeare in Performance. She also teaches scene study performance classes in the Acting program at all levels and directs Senior Showcase.
As an actor, Barbara’s credits include The Winter's Tale (Oak Park Festival Theatre), All My Sons and Les Liaisons Dangereuses (American Players Theatre); Hamlet, Heartbreak House, A Little Night Music, and Misalliance (Writers Theatre);The Country Girl (Illinois Theatre Center); Marionette Macbeth (New Victory Theatre, NYC); The Moliere Comedies, The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, Richard II, The School for Scandal, and All’s Well That Ends Well (Chicago Shakespeare Theater); Lady Windermere’s Fan (Northlight Theatre); A Christmas Carol, Wit (Goodman Theatre); Hard Times (Lookingglass Theatre); Arms and the Man, The Devil’s Disciple, Major Barbara, Coward in Two Keys, and What Every Woman Knows (ShawChicago); and numerous appearances with the Shakespeare Project of Chicago, where she completed an 8-year tenure as their associate artistic director. TV and film credits include Chicago Fire, Operator, and The Legend of Amba.
Professional directing credits include The Tempest, Elizabeth Rex and Macbeth (Oak Park Festival Theatre); Shrewish (her original adaptation commissioned by Artemisia Theatre); Candida, Hay Fever, Misalliance, and Private Lives (ShawChicago); and Coriolanus, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Winter’s Tale, All’s Well That Ends Well, Troilus and Cressida, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and The 50 Minute Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare Project of Chicago). For CCPA, Barbara has directed Pride and Prejudice, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Ovidian Myths, Something Shaw and Spoon River: Coming Home.
Barbara was the artistic director of Oak Park Festival Theatre, one of the oldest Equity outdoor theatres in the United States, from 2018-2022, and is a current company member. She has previously taught at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music and at North Central College, and has almost 25 years of experience as an executive leadership coach with Speak by Design, a firm founded by fellow CCPA alumnus Stephanie Bickel. She is a member of Actors’ Equity Association (AEA), the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Radio and Television Artists (SAG-AFTRA), and is an associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC).