Assistant Teacher (2016)

Education Director
Marin Shakespeare Company
San Rafael, CA 
415 499 4487

Office email: education@marinshakespeare.org

Personal email: Elanakepner@gmail.com

Elana Kepner (she/her) is theatre teaching artist, voice, dialect and text coach, director, performer and a Certified Assistant Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework®. Elana is currently Education Director for Marin Shakespeare Company, where she has directed Teen Touring Company and Shakespeare for Student Audience productions in addition to teaching and coaching.  Born and raised in Marin, Elana returned to the Bay Area after forays in Eastern North Carolina, Northeast Ohio, St. Louis and Kansas City.  Highlights from Elana’s extensive career as a teaching artist include piloting Shakespeare Squadron, St. Louis Shakespeare Festival’s advanced teen training program, and teaching the progression of voice and speech courses for the BFA performance degree programs at East Carolina University, as well as serving as voice, text and dialect coach for ECU's mainstage productions. Most significantly, Elana served as Founding Artistic Director of Whirligig Stage (Greenville, NC), where directing credits included Macbeth, Newsies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and James and the Giant Peach for Whirligig Youth Academy with actors ages 7 to 18.  Elana has also worked as an actor, director and teaching artist with Dobama Theatre (Cleveland, OH), Unicorn Theatre (Kansas City, MO), the Akron Symphony Orchestra, Kansas City Repertory, Rubber City Shakespeare Company (Akron, OH), Shakespeare Santa Cruz, and San Francisco Shakespeare Festival. Elana earned her MFA in Acting and Directing from University of Missouri, Kansas City, and trained with Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA.  Elana is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association and Voice and Speech Trainers Association.

MFA University of Missouri, Kansas City; BA University of California, Irvine.

Languages: English
Specializations: Private Coaching