Leadership

Executive Director

Dominic Missimi, chair of AMTP's executive committee. Dominic Missimi is the director of Northwestern's Certificate Program in Musical Theatre. He has served as head of the M.F.A. Directing Program and summer programs, and holds the Donald Robertson Endowed Chair in Music Theatre.

Professsor Missimi has directed more than 30 equity productions for Chicago's three major music theatres. He has received several Joseph Jefferson Award nominations for productions he has directed at Marriott's Lincolnshire Theatre, where he won two Jeff Awards. He has directed many regional opera companies, including the Chicago Opera Theatre, Michigan Opera Theatre, Piedmont Opera, Augusta Opera, Sarasota and Orlando Opera.

Professor Missimi has also staged over 50 plays, musicals and operas at NU, and is director of Northwestern's famed WAA-MU Show. The National Opera Association awarded his NU production of Massenet's Cendrillon first place.

He was founder and artistic director of Dance Detroit, and a recipient of a Kellogg Fellowship that provided for theatre research in England and Italy. Professor Missimi has also been a member of the theatre faculties of Long Island University and the University of Detroit-Marygrove. He is an alumnus of the University of Detroit, Wayne State University and New York University, and a licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music in Drama.

He teaches all levels of acting, directing, and musical theatre techniques with special interests in acting styles, especially the commedia dell 'Arte and the history of the lyric theatre.

 

Artistic Director

Stuart Oken, Artistic Director of AMTP. Mr. Oken's 30 year career spans both the legitimate theater and feature film industries. Mr. Oken spent the past 9 years at Disney Theatrical Productions where he served as Executive Vice-President and co-head of the company. At Disney, his role focused on developing and producing the company's new theatrical projects including the U.S. and International rollout of Beauty And The Beast, the creative development, production and rollout of The Lion King (6 Tony Awards, 1998), Der Glockner Von Notre Dame (a German language world premiere of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame in Berlin, 1999) and Elton John and Tim Rice's AIDA (4 Tony Awards, 2000.)

A native Chicagoan and graduate of the University of Illinois, Mr. Oken began his career in Chicago. His first theatrical position was Managing Director of Chicago's acclaimed Organic Theater Company from 1974-76. In 1976, he simultaneously produced his first solo production, Michael Weller's Moonchildren, which won 3 Jeff Awards and marked the professional directing debut of Robert Falls.

From 1978-1985, he was founder and producer of Chicago's Apollo Theater Center, building a new 400 seat theater that presented regional premieres of such acclaimed works as David Mamet's Sexual Perversity In Chicago, Albert Innaurato's Gemini, Jules Feiffer's Hold Me and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company productions of Sam Shepard's True West and Lanford Wilson's Balm In Gilead.

Relocating to Los Angeles in 1985, Mr. Oken entered the film business and produced 4 full-length feature films: About Last Night (stars: Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Jim Belushi, Elizabeth Perkins; director: Edward Zwick, Tri-Star), Impromptu (stars: Judy Davis, Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Bernadette Peters; director: James Lapine, Hemdale), Queens Logic (stars: John Malkovich, Kevin Bacon, Jamie Lee Curtis; director: Steve Rash, New Line) and Freejack (stars: Emilio Estevez, Anthony Hopkins, Mick Jagger; director Geoff Murphy, Warners.) From 1992-1995 he served as President of Witt-Thomas Films at Warner Brothers.