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    Browse & Discover
    Jenna Tamisiea Elser
    Director
    As a stage director, Jenna’s focus is on utilizing opera and musical theatre to enact social change. She is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Glow Lyric Theatre, a vocal arts company producing opera, operetta and musical theatre in direct response to the social and political climate of South Carolina.  She also serves as Director of Converse Opera Theatre in the renowned Petrie School of Music at Converse College. Some of her ground breaking work in her community includes producing and directing The Wiz and Hot Mikado admist the AME Charleston shooting, as well as an innovative production of Gonoud’s opera Romèo et Juliette whose re-staging sparked dialoge about the treatment of immigrants and refugees in the south.  Other recent directing credits include Debussy’s  L’Enfant Prodigue with Charleston Chamber Opera, Hands on a Hardbody with Guilford College, and Spring Awakening with The Warehouse Theatre. She recently made her debut at the USA Spoleto Festival as assistant director for the groundbreaking production of Porgy and Bess. Jenna is also responsible for the original conception of Scène de Carmen, a cabaret-style adaption of Bizet’s opera Carmen.  Scène de Carmen has since been produced by LOLA opera in Austin, Texas and Lawrence Opera Works in Kansas. With a passion for devised theatre, some of Jenna's original works include Cabaret de Cruaté, a musical piece centering on the sensationalism of violence in the media, Twenty Caged Nightingales Do Sing, a re-imaging of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew following a gender questioning Kate, and Pulse with Anam Cara Theatre Company, which reacted to the 2016 tragic mass shooting in Orlando. She is the 2015 receipent of the Robert Porterfield Directing Award from the Southeastern Theatre Conference, and was recently named a finalist for the Drama League New Musicals Fellowship. Jenna holds a BFA in Musical Theatre from the University of Tulsa and an MFA in Directing from Florida State University.