Adjunct Faculty

Israel Garcia
garciai@fiu.edu

Israel Garcia has been teaching theatre for the past twenty years at Florida International University, as well as with Miami Dade County Public Schools, Florida Atlantic University, and Miami Dade College. At FIU, “Izzy” teaches Introduction to Acting and Theatre Appreciation. Although his focus and passion is sharing theatre experiences with non-majors to broaden their understanding of culture, themselves, and the human condition, several of his students have taken the journey further and majored in Theatre at FIU.

Izzy continues acting professionally as a member of Actors’ Equity. Credits include classic roles such as Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew as well as lead and supporting roles in contemporary plays, children’s theatre and musicals in South Florida venues such as New Theatre, Palm Beach Playhouse, and Actor’s Playhouse. He has also performed in theatre festivals in Orlando and Argentina. Credits also include television commercials and a featured “baddy” in Burn Notice.

Izzy has also written short plays produced in Miami by White Rose Miami, Microtheatre, and New Theatre. Awards and honors include two Carbonell Award nominations, the Silver Palm Award for Performance in 2010, the New Theatre Award for Best Actor (twice), as well as the Excellence in Teaching Award at FIU. He received his MFA in Performance from Florida Atlantic University.

Terry Hardcastle
terryhardcastle@mac.com

Winner of three Carbonell Awards and a 24 year member of Actors’ Equity Association, Terry Hardcastle has performed at Actors’ Playhouse, Gablestage, Maltz-Jupiter Theatre, Palm Beach Dramaworks, and many others. As a Professor of Theatre, Mr. Hardcastle has taught Performance and Effective Speech at Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Sioux Falls, Broward College, and New World School of the Arts. He holds a BA in Theatre Arts from Earlham College and an MFA in Theatre Pedagogy from Virginia Commonwealth University. As a writer, he penned the chapter on Lee Strasberg in A Field Guide to Actor Training, published by Applause Books.

Evelyn Saavedra
saavedrasoprano@gmail.com

Praised for her “lustrous soprano voice”, Cuban-born soprano Evelyn Saavedra is quickly establishing herself as a “gifted young singer to watch” (South Florida Classical Review). Most recently, Ms. Saavedra returned to Pensacola Opera to sing the role of Rosalba in Florencia en el Amazonas, she traveled to Poland as one of 25 selected singers invited to participate in the 2018 Karol Szymanowski International Music Competition and was the recipient of an Encouragement Award in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions-Florida District. Recent credits include Maria in Maria de Buenos Aires, Kate Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, Antonia in Man of La Mancha, Young Alyce in Glory Denied, Sacerdotessa in Aïda and Sister Catherine in the Florida premiere of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, where she also covered the role of Kitty Hart. On the concert stage she has recently been featured as a recitalist and soloist with The Choral Society of Pensacola singing in Mozart’s Coronation Mass and Handel’s Messiah. Other notable concert appearances include her feature as the soprano soloist in Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music and Symphony No. 3 with the Brevard Music Center Orchestra. Ms. Saavedra holds a B.M in Vocal Performance from Florida International University and a Graduate Degree in Vocal Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music where she was the First Prize winner of the Friends of Eastman Opera Competition in 2015.

Pioneer Winter
Dance Minor Coordinator
pwinter@fiu.edu

Pioneer Winter is a Miami-based choreographer, and director of the Pioneer Winter Collective – a group of allied bodies that democratize performance through unexpected bodies, unexpected places, and unexpected social change. Through his Collective, Winter also directs several programs, including Leaders of Equality through Arts and Performance (LEAP), for LGBTQ-identifying teens and their allies that focuses on using the arts for activism; and the Grass Stains fellowship, a Knight Foundation supported site-specific performance initiative that mentors and commissions artists interested in creating site-based and public art work in Miami through a close collaboration with acclaimed site choreographer Stephan Koplowitz.

A Horatio Alger Scholar, he is an alumnus of the Florida International University Honors College, and holds a Masters in Public Health and Epidemiology. Winter also completed a Master of Fine Arts in Choreography from Jacksonville University/White Oak, as the first artist to be named a Dennis R. Washington Achievement Scholar.

He is a two-time Dance Miami Choreographic Program recipient, Diversity and Inclusion awardee (State of Florida Division of Cultural Affairs) and Luminaries of Equality awardee (SAVE), Miami Goes Elsewhere Fellowship recipient, “Best Dancer” in the Miami New Times “Best of 2018” edition, and is a fellow and faculty member in the FIU Honors College and Theatre Department since 2014. Pioneer Winter has been festival director of ScreenDance Miami Festival since 2016. He was recently awarded a commission and residency for the inaugural season of the MDC Live Arts Lab Alliance (2017-2019), and is a supported artist of the Local Artist-in-Residence program at the Miami Light Project. He has been mentored by noted choreographers Ana Sánchez-Colberg, Michael Kliën, Jüri Nael, and Octavio Campos, as well as intensive labs with Nora Chipaumire, Mario Zambrano, Marc Brew, Alonzo King, Stephan Koplowitz, and Keith Hennessy. He has choreographed and performed throughout the United States and toured in Barcelona and Madrid, Spain and Mexico City; his film work has been screened in festivals internationally. Pioneer Winter has held residencies at Cannonball Miami, Miami Dade College, Miami Theater Center, Nova Southeastern University, Broward College, and Jacksonville University.

The Miami Herald said this about his last premiere: “Pioneer Winter’s work, what he supports, what he thinks about and the ideas he voices, speak to and for people […] it was provocative in just the way you want performance to be provocative, making you think about something you hadn’t or feel for someone you hadn’t identified with before; startling, exposed, unnerving, unexpectedly loving.”