2024 Melee Teaching Staff
Instructors
Jessica Bennett
Jessica Erin Bennett is an Atlanta based Stunt Professional & Intimacy Director & Coordinator with credits such as, Stunt Doubling Billie Eilish on Swarm, Intimacy Coordinating shows such as The Big Door Prize, Swarm, & upcoming The Idea of You, Intimacy Direction for Nashville Rep's Fences and Nashville Symphony's The Jonah People, & Stunt Coordinating the Never Hike Alone Series & You're Killing Me on Showtime. Jessica can be found teaching at SAFD Regional Workshops, Acting Out Academy's Summer Camp, and Sweet Spot of the Flame's fire burn workshops. Jessica is also a founding member & Head of Operations with Intimacy Professionals Education Collective (IPECIntimacy.com) where they offer movement based training for Intimacy Directors & Coordinators & working professionals looking for certification & continued education. You can connect with Jessica on Instagram @jessicaebennett.
Rachel Lee Flesher
Rachel Lee Flesher (they.she.he) is a certified fight director, certified intimacy director, certified intimacy coordinator, SAG-AFTRA stunt performer, actor, director, gender and sexuality educator, and teacher. Rachel is passionately engaged in making safer sets and stages around the world by helping to produce best practices and procedures for intimate and hyper-exposed content in multiple areas of film, tv, theatre, and education. Currently Rachel is part of the collaboration team advising SAG-AFTRA on their effort to standardize, codify and implement guidelines for on-set intimacy coordinators. You can see Flesher's Intimacy Coordination on over 30 shows on HULU, FX, CBS, SHOWTIME, NETFLIX, HBO, STARZ, Apple, and more. Rachel is a Certified Fight Director, Certified Fight Instructor, and Advanced Actor Combatant with the Fight Directors Canada, and an Instructor with Tactics on Set. Rachel began intimacy directing in 2009 after training with Tonia Sina and intimacy coordinating in 2017 after collaborating with Alicia Rodis. She was the second intimacy coordinator on SAG-AFTRA sets in the United States. They are a certified Intimacy Coordinator, and Intimacy Director with Intimacy Directors and Coordinators. Rachel is a founder and CEO of the group Intimacy Professionals Education Collective, an Intimacy Coordination training program geared towards creating individualized learning for participants and accredited by SAG-AFTRA. Rachel’s Fight Direction and Intimacy Direction have been featured at Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Shakespeare Dallas, Steppenwolf for Young Adults, and many more. With a deep love for teaching and learning Rachel has mentored many fight directors and intimacy directors and coordinators in the industry today and is excited to continue to do so as the industry grows to be more inclusive. Through studying mental health first aid, trauma, abuse, survival, and healing, and collaborating with other directors, psychologists, and mental health experts, Rachel is developing techniques to help actors safely portray trauma and abuse on screen and stage - Traumaturgy. Rachel specializes in consent for youth, working with trans and non-binary actors, queer intimacy, and telling stories of nonconsensual intimacy. Their goal is to help create safer and emboldening spaces for actors to do daring work through consent culture
Casey Kaleba
Casey Kaleba has arranged fights, movement, and intimacy for more than five hundred productions including the Guthrie Theatre, Washington National Opera, Spoleto Festival, Round House Theatre, Wolf Trap Opera, Folger Theatre, Glimmerglass Festival, Northern Stage, Olney Theatre Center, and Signature Theatre. He has received Helen Hayes nominations for productions at Keegan Theatre, Constellation Theatre, Avant Bard, and We Happy Few, and currently teaches at Mary Washington University, the University of Maryland, and Johns Hopkins University. A Certified Teacher and Fight Director with the SAFD, he also holds a PhD in Theatre History and is a full member of SDC. Over the last twenty years he has rumbled dancing gangs, swashbuckled musketeers, stabbed Beasts of London and exploded a dozen Farrah the Fairies, dismembered every limb, poisoned fifty Romeos, stabbed too many sopranos and not enough tenors. www.toothandclawcombat.com
Craig Lawrence
Craig Lawrence has been a working artist in the DC area for most of his life. Working in local theater as a teen, and returning to teach, choreograph and photograph as an adult. A SAFD Certified Teacher, Craig loves working at regional workshops and looks forward to being part of the Mid Atlantic Melee.
Tonya Lynn
Tonya Lynn (FD/CT) is a fight and intimacy director and theater instructor based in Pittsburgh, PA. She currently works as a Teaching Artist-in-Residence in Performance at the University of Pittsburgh, and an Adjunct Instructor at Carnegie Mellon University and Point Park University. Tonya’s fight directing credits include over 150 productions, including the world premiere of Storming Heaven (West Virginia Public Theater), Il Trovatore and Iphigénie en Tauride (Pittsburgh Opera), the sold-out Pittsburgh premiere of She Kills Monsters (University of Pittsburgh & August Wilson Center) and SwordPlay (Hallam Players of Colonial Williamsburg). Tonya is a co-founder of Brawling Bard Theater (a five-time award winner at the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival) and a founding company member with New Renaissance Theatre Company. She serves as a workshop coordinator for The Allegheny Alley Fight Stage Combat Workshop, and the Fight Choreographers’ Track of the New York Summer Sling Stage Combat Workshop.
David Reed
David Reed is a director, educator, and stage movement professional currently serving as an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas. He has directed, choreographed, and trained professional and collegiate actors across the country, most recently working with Theatre Squared, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, Orlando Rep, Theatre West End, and the Southern Appalachian Historical Association. David is an Associate member of Stage Directors and Choreographers, a Certified Teacher and Fight Director with the Society of American Fight Directors and a Certified Intimacy Director with Intimacy Directors and Coordinators.
Tom Ringberg
Tom Ringberg is Stunt Coordinator, Fight Choreographer, and a Certified Teacher with the Society of American Fight Directors in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Tom specializes in fight choreography and is a weapons specialist and Theatrical Firearms Instructor with the Society of American Directors. Tom's recent work is on the set of Sanctified, in North Dakota coordinating and choreographing multiple firearm shoot outs. As well as working as History Channel ‘I Was There’ working as the Stunt Coordinator and armorer for the series. As Fight Choreographer Tom has worked with the Minnesota Opera choreographing multiple scenes of violence for various productions such as: The Fix, Rigoletto, Dead Man Walking, and assisted in Silent Night. As well as other Theatre companies around the Twin Cities area. Tom teaches at Art in Arms as an Associate Instructor. Teaching a variety of classes such as: Whip, Fighting for Film, Skill and Proficiency Test classes, Kali. Tom also works with a variety of different High Schools such as: Eagan, Chaska, Robbinsdale, Shakopee, as well as works with Hennepin Trust High School Program.
Associate Instructors
Bess Kaye
Bess Kaye (she/they) is a stage combat instructor and Fight and Intimacy Director based out of Washington, DC. She teaches stage combat to young actors and professionals alike with The Noble Blades Stage Combat Troupe and the Institute for the Arts with Fairfax County Public Schools. She is the Associate Stage Combat Instructor under Robb Hunter at the Shakespeare Theater Company's Academy MFA program. Bess has worked locally as a fight and intimacy director with Flying V, Avant Bard, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, Monumental Theater Company, the Washington Stage Guild and others. She is a proud Advanced Actor Combatant with the SAFD and has served as an Associate Instructor at The Tourist Trap and Brawl of America. www.thebesskayescenario.com
J. Tyler Jones
J. Tyler Jones (he/him) has been studying stage combat in one form or another since 2004, and he hopes that he never stops learning more about it. Tyler spent about a decade in southern California working as an actor, teacher, and fight choreographer. He relocated to Washington DC in 2019 to get his MFA and is currently based in the DC area. These days he works primarily as a teacher, and has taught locally with both Noble Blades and Fire and Ice.
Jillian Riti
Jillian Riti is an actor, fight & intimacy director, and physical storyteller based in DC (and occasionally Chicago). Jillian began their stage combat training in Los Angeles in 2011 and has never looked back. She has performed and coordinated violence and intimacy for dozens of plays and short films. Jillian also teaches stage management to students around DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Ask her about the fight ballet she calls her magnum opus.
Will Snyder
Will Snyder is a stage combat teacher, fight director, and SAFD Advanced Actor Combatant based in Chattanooga, TN. In 2019, seeing the need for stage combat training in his home state of Tennessee, will started BattleKat Combat in hopes of building a stage combat community in the Volunteer State. Will has been teaching stage combat and fight directing shows across Tennessee for the past 4 years. Will recently completed his Theatre Arts MFA from the University of Idaho with an emphasis in pedagogy. In 2023, Will founded and coordinated the first stage combat workshop in Tennessee, the Scenic City Slam! Thank you so much to awesome the coordinators of Mid-Atlantic Melee
Teaching Assistants
Alex Taylor
Alex Taylor (she/her) is an actor, teacher, and an SAFD-certified Intermediate Actor Combatant living and work in New York City. In her work, Alex is drawn to stories and processes that create safe, comfortable spaces so that actors feel free to explore and play. Some of Alex’s favorite combat-heavy roles include Richmond (Richard III) and Aufidius (Coriolanus), and she loves to bring her perspective as a queer woman of color to classical roles that have traditionally been played by white men, especially when it comes to violence and war.
Molly Van Pelt
MOLLY VAN PELT (she/her) is an actor and fighter in New York and DC, and has been performing stage combat professionally for 14+ years, particularly as part of the Vixens En Garde, the all-femme sword-fighting and Shakespeare troupe, of which she is a founding member. AEA. BFA from NYU. IG: @molly.van.pelt
Emma Wirthwein
Emma Wirthwein began her love of combat when she watched the movie 'Gladiator' with her mother at the age of 5. Since then, she has trained in Cleveland, New York, London and now in Washington DC trying to learn everything she can. She has assisted Fight Master J. David Brimmer, Certified Teacher Dan O'Driscoll and most recently is, jokingly, the assistant to the assistant for Fight Master Robb Hunter. Emma hopes to inspire audiences, especially young girls, by showing them that anyone can pick up a sword and look awesome while doing it.