Ovation: RIT’s Performing Arts Showcase

Thomas Warfield is an international performing artist who’s lived in six countries. As a singer, dancer, actor, model, composer, pianist, choreographer, director, producer, educator, activist, and poet, Warfield has performed on stage, television, and film in more than 100 cities worldwide.

His childhood dance training in Rochester, NY was with Olive McCue at the Mercury Ballet, and piano and voice training at Eastman School of Music where he performed with Opera Theatre of Rochester and local theatre groups. He also trained in New York City at the School of American Ballet. Warfield holds a bachelor's degree in dance and journalism from SUNY Purchase, and a master's in dance ethnology from the University of Utah. His professional dance career has included performing with the Joffrey Ballet, Jane Dudley in London and New York, and ballet companies in Hong Kong, Stockholm, Paris, San Francisco, Macau, and elsewhere. His numerous and diverse professional performances include at the New York City Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, The Yard on Martha’s Vineyard, a circus in Japan, three U.S. prisons, HBO Shorts, Marie Claire Magazine in Hong Kong, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Utah Symphony, Gateways Music Festival Orchestra, a Royal Command Performance for Queen Elizabeth II in London, and an East Coast tour of his original project AstroDance, which combines dance and astrophysics, funded by the National Science Foundation. He the founder and artistic director of the 33-year-old PeaceArt International, Inc., a global project using arts to foster world peace. For 25 years Warfield has been the director of dance at the Rochester Institute of Technology and is the first Professor of Practice for NTID. 

He is former dance critic for the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.

Warfield was recently appointed by Governor Kathy Hochul to the New York Hate and Bias Prevention Council, and appointed by Rochester mayor Lovely Warren as co-chair of the City of Rochester’s Arts & Creative Community Committee. He serves on the boards of Garth Fagan Dance, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Rochester Area Community Foundation Advisory. He has served on the YWCA Diversity Advisory Board, Eastman School of Music Action Commission for Racial Justice, is a former president of ARTWalk, a former president of Association of Teaching Artists, a founding board member of MuCCC Theatre, and president emeritus of the William Warfield Scholarship Fund.

He's also served on the board of the World Dance Alliance in Hong Kong, Young Audiences, Greentopia, the Rochester City Ballet, Gateways Music Festival, Rochester Chamber Orchestra, Rochester Area Community Foundation, Rochester Fringe Festival, NY Dance Festival, Education for Peace, and China Millennium Council. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the U.S. House of Representatives Congressional Special Recognition Award, New York State Commendation Award, United Nations Peace Award, American Ethical Union Award, Empire State Pride Agenda LGBTQ Champion Award, National Dance Education Association Award, University of Rochester Medical Center Red Ribbon for HIV Research, City of Rochester Unsung Heroes Award, National Task Force on AIDS Prevention Award, Rochester Pride Parade Grand Marshall, and an off-off Broadway award for choreography. His Global Poem In Praise of Peace garnered global recognition in letters from composer Leonard Bernstein, Mother Teresa, The Dalai Lama and hundreds of others. Thomas Warfield’s first solo album of original compositions, "Celebrate the Moment," has sold throughout the world and can be found on itunes.com and Spotify.

Brynn Tyszka, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, has worked professionally in the theatre industry for over 20 years. Prior to her new role at Blackfriars, Ms. Tyszka has served as the Social Media Manager (as well as teaching artist, director, and performer) for OFC Creations Theatre Center in Brighton and as Director of Education for Actors' Theatre of Indiana, where she also performed as an ATI cast member (A Comedy of Tenors, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and a reading of Lindsay Adams' new play, Rattler). Ms. Tyszka served as Acting Department Chair for the Rochester Association for the Performing Arts (RAPA), where she developed and taught several acting classes, including Fundamentals, Scene Study, Characterization, The Art of Comedy, Script Analysis, and Movement for the Stage. Additionally, she taught acting and coached musical theater privately as the founder of BKT Studio for Actors. She has also directed and choreographed several shows for high schools, colleges, community theaters, and semi-professional theaters throughout the Rochester area. A former member of Actors' Equity Association and a proud alum of the Nazareth College Theatre Arts program, Ms. Tyszka has performed nationally on tour with NETworks and ArtsPower productions as well as regionally with Geva Theatre Center, Actors' Theater of Indiana, DEEP Arts, JCC CenterStage, Pittsford Musicals and Playhouse on the Park in Connecticut. Ms. Tyszka's history with Blackfriars began in 2006, when she played Susan in tick, tick ... BOOM! under the direction of Haldoupis. Since then, she has worked and performed several times with Blackfriars, including on Heathers the Musical (Heather Chandler), Beehive (choreographer), and Boeing Boeing (Gretchen), as well as performing in multiple Season Soirées. Most recently, she partnered with Hoskins and Hoffman to conceive, produce, and direct Blackfriars's 2020 digital holiday show, Home for the Holidays. Ms. Tyszka is the first female-identifying Artistic Director in Blackfriars’s 73-year history.

Founding Producer, CEO, and Board President of the Rochester Fringe Festival

ERICA FEE is the founding producer, CEO, and board president of the annual Rochester Fringe Festival, which celebrates its 14th festival in 2025. Under her stewardship, the non-profit Fringe has blossomed from the mere seed of an idea to the largest multidisciplinary performing arts festival in New York State. It has become an internationally-known powerhouse festival for theatre, comedy, music, dance, children’s entertainment, spoken word, and multi-disciplinary work. Over 850,000 people have attended the more than 6700 performances and events since its inception.  In 2023, The New York Times named the Rochester Fringe Festival “one of the country’s more prominent multidisciplinary events.”

Fee is a classically trained professional stage and screen actor with an M.A. from ArtsEd London. She first became involved in fringe festivals after performing at the Edinburgh Fringe to nightly sell-out crowds. 

Fee lived in the United Kingdom for ten years, running her own London-based theatrical production and general management company. Her many producing, directing, and performance credits include U.K. premieres, and productions in London as well as at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She was the first American to receive the prestigious New Producer’s Award from StageOne (Society of London Theatres/TMA), winning it twice, which is the maximum amount. She was mentored by acclaimed Broadway and West End producer, Paul Elliott.

In addition to her M.A., graduated with a B.A. (magna cum laude) from the University of Rochester, where she was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa.  She also holds certificates in Commercial Theatrical Production from StageOne, Festival Production from the University of Minnesota,  Non-Profit Leadership and Finance from Cornell University, and in Art in Public Space from the In-Situ European Platform for Artistic Creation in Public Space in Marseille, France.  

She is a frequent speaker, panelist, and invited delegate to numerous educational and arts and culture forums worldwide.  She is also an International Advisory Board member for the Master of Management International Arts Management (MMIAM) through HEC Montreal and SMU.

In addition to running the Rochester Fringe Festival, Fee runs her own theatre and TV production company.

In 2016, Fee was honored by her alma mater, the University of Rochester, as their Commencement Speaker.  In 2024, she was inducted into Who’s Who in America.

Maestro Eric Townell is an experienced and creative conductor of operatic, orchestral and choral repertoire from the Baroque period through the 21st Century. Since joining the Rochester Oratorio Society in 2006, he has led the ROS in subscription concerts, regional outreach performances, live radio broadcasts, a televised concert, collaborative concerts with the region’s leading arts organizations, a concert tour to Eastern Europe and an award-winning tour to Beijing and Shanghai for the 2008 Olympic Cultural Festival.

Maestro Townell has prepared the Rochester Oratorio Society for a number of appearances with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra for conductors Christopher Seaman, Jeff Tyzik, Ward Stare, and numerous guests, performing the music of Bach, Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, Handel, Verdi, Gershwin, and Orff, among numerous others. In 2008, Eric also established Resonanz, a select high-quality choral ensemble that represents the Rochester Oratorio Society at special engagements.

Eric concurrently directs the Finger Lakes Choral Festival. He is the former music director of the Festival Choir of Madison (1993-2006), the Master Singers of Milwaukee (2003-2010) and the Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra (1991-2001). He holds a doctorate of musical arts degree from the Peabody Conservatory and degrees in music performance and conducting from Northern Illinois University and Indiana University. He studied conducting and solfege with Catherine Comet at St. Louis Conservatory; opera conducting with Georg Tintner in the Czech Republic; orchestral conducting with Frederik Prausnitz at Peabody and Charles Bruck at the Monteux School, and choral/orchestral conducting with Helmuth Rilling as a member of the 2002 Master Class at the Oregon Bach Festival. An experienced and effective communicator on music and arts topics, Eric is in demand as clinician and adjudicator for choral and orchestral festivals and for choirs of all types across the country. He has offered pre-concert chats, creative consultation and program annotation for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic and several other ensembles and chamber music series. Eric is a frequent commentator on arts topics on WXXI radio and serves the Boards of the William Warfield Scholarship Fund and the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester. He is the producer and host of “In the Spotlight,” an arts interview program distributed via cable access television stations throughout Western New York. His orchestral and choral conducting were the subject of the 1994 Wisconsin Public Radio broadcast “Music from Wisconsin: A Wisconsin Conductor.”

Erica Haskell is the Inaugural Director of the School of Performing Arts and Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She holds a Ph.D. and MA in ethnomusicology from Brown University and a BA in music performance from Mills College (CA). She has taught courses in The Politics of Music, Film Music, Illegality in Theater and Music, World Music and American Roots Music. Before coming to RIT, she served as the Oskar Schindler Humanities Endowed Professor at the University of New Haven during which she, and her students, produced several podcasts about refugee musicians based on ethnographic interviews they conducted in Connecticut. She has also conducted field research in Cambodia, Hungary, Romania and Bosnia-Herzegovina. At the University of New Haven she held the position of Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences among other leadership positions. 

Haskell is the co-founder of Free Dirt Records, a record label based in Silver Spring MD. In the last few years label artists have received four Grammy nominations. Free Dirt has released albums by Pokey LaFarge, Anna and Elizabeth, Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerard, Willi Carlisle, Jake Blount, Che Alpalache Rachel Baiman, Mighty Poplar, Vivian Leva and The Wilders among others.