Trainer Profile

Valerie is the Head of Musical Theatre at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is a member of Actor’s Equity Association, an Associate Member of Stage Directors and Choreographers, and a Certified Estill Mentor and Course Instructor in Estill Voice Training. As an Equity actress, Valerie played Margy Frake in the First National Tour of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s State Fair, starring John Davidson. Other roles include the title role in Cinderella, Maria in The Sound of Music, and Katherine Blake in Freaky Friday. She first began her studies in musical theatre at the University of Miami and received a BA in Musical Theatre Pedagogy from Otterbein University and an MFA in Theatre Pedagogy from Virginia Commonwealth University. She was the Head of Drama at Campion School, a British international school in Athens, Greece, directing seven productions including Godspell, which toured to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the summer of 2010. Valerie was a guest director for five seasons at Weathervane Playhouse in Ohio directing Oklahoma!, Pippin and Matilda among others. Her other directing credits include Cinderella and Beautiful at Red Mountain Theatre, the world-premier musical Savage, Gypsy, Into the Woods and Fun Home. In addition to her directing and teaching work, Valerie stays active in other areas of the theatre business. In 2013, she worked as a rehearsal accompanist at Arena Stage in Washington DC on Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children starring Kathleen Turner. She has had articles published in Studies in Musical Theatre and Voice and Speech Review, was a contributing author of The Voice Teacher’s Cookbook and Voice and Identity, and regularly presents at conferences including the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Estill World Voice Symposium, and Musical Theatre Educator’s Alliance.