J. Randall Colborn
Associate Professor of Theatre
MFA in Acting Performance, Purdue University.
Randy was a member of the Artistic Collective of Lifeline Theatre in Chicago from 1988-2001. Chicago credits include The Goodman, Wisdom Bridge, Remains, Immediate, Stormfield, Pegasus, and Bailiwick Repertory, of which he was a member of the Artistic Ensemble from 1988-90. Award winning productions include Chaos, ‘Til The Fat Lady Sings, Execution Of Justice, And Ourselves Alone. Randy was Guest Artist with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in 1999, 1995, 1994 and 1993. Credits with C.S.F. include Sir John Falstaff in The Merry Wives Of Windsor, The Player in Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night and Antiochus, Cleon, Simonides and Pander in Pericles, Prince Of Tyre. In 1997 he appeared as Junior Swansen in The Ice Fishing Play (1997) at Next Theatre in Evanston, IL. In 2003 Randy performed the role of George in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf for the Theatre Company at I.U.S.B.
In 2002, 2001 and 2000 Randy directed at the Red Barn Summer Theatre, including Leslie Sand’s Something To Hide, Mary Hanes’s Doin’ Time At The Alamo, and Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire. In 2000 he directed William Shakespeare’s The Comedy Of Errors for the Indiana Thespians All-State production at the University of Indianapolis. The All-State company was comprised of outstanding high school students from the state of Indiana. Other directing credits include Durang’s Betty’s Summer Vacation, Lovers And Executioners, Alan Ball’s Five Women Wearing The Same Dress, Playhouse Creatures, Fuddy Meers, Winnie The Pooh, Marivaux’s The Triumph Of Love, Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day, Tartuffe, Richard III, Fool For Love,The Servant Of Two Masters, American Buffalo, The Learned Ladies, The Living, Merton Of The Movies, Lydie Breeze, As You Like It, The Country Wife, God’s Country, Orphans, Our Country’s Good and True West.
Randy has had the good fortune to have worked with award winning playwrights Scott McPherson (Marvin’s Room) on his first play, ‘Til The Fat Lady Sings; John Logan on Snow and Nebraska; (other works by Logan include Never The Sinner, Hauptmann, and the screenplays for Gladiator, Star Trek: Nemesis, Every Given Sunday, The Last Samarai,and The Aviator); and Neil Labute on his “new” play In The Company Of Men in 1992.
At Indiana University South Bend Randy teaches all levels of Acting and Voice/Movement for the Actor. Specialized courses include The Comedy of Manners, Acting Shakespeare, Clowning, Mask Work (Commedia, Basel, Neutral, Character) and Theatre Games. In the summer of 1998, with a generous Summer Faculty Fellowship and a Grant in Aid of Research/Creative Activity from IUSB, Randy applied for and was selected as one of twelve participants for the Teacher Development Workshop at the Actor’s Center/Shakespeare Lab of the Public Theatre in New York. Randy worked with Master Acting Teachers Christopher Bayes, Frank Deal, Barry Edelstein, William Esper, Earle Gister, Dudley Knight, Kristen Linklater, Joanna Merlin, and Carolyn Serota.
