About Us

Theater at SBHS is undergoing a transformation! Building on the formative influences of past directors such as Rick Mokler and Otto Layman, we are laying the groundwork for the new direction of the program. Our goal is to return to what makes the performing arts so exceedingly valuable - the creative experience. Lead by theater director Gioia Marchese, this new direction will be focused on creating a “company” feeling within the department. Classes will be focused on exposing students to a wide variety of techniques that allow them to excavate the depths of their humanity. Working from the inside out as Grotowski states, “Ours is not a collection of skills but an eradication of blocks”. Through powerfully innovative and unique workshops and creative processes, we plan to provide young artists with parameters, tools and permission to exercise their creative muscles. We hope to provide a space and a framework that is inclusive and empowering. With a combined career of several decades of instruction, guidance, and personal creative experiences, the core team of instructors hopes to provide an opportunity for every student to explore and practice their creativity. Main stage productions will be chosen with the aim to amplify the unique gifts of the current company and create shared experiences with the Santa Barbara community that thrill, move, and push us all to evaluate what we think we know.

Gioia Marchese/Theater Director

Gioia Marchese trained as an actor at The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in NY. She spent 20 years working as an actor/director in New York and Los Angeles. Highlights include: Company Member/Company XIV, Cofounder/The Bridge Theatre Company, Producer/Escape From Tomorrow (screened at Sundance), West Coast Revival/Parallel Lives. For the past 12 years Gioia has been teaching and directing in and around Santa Barbara County including: Dos Pueblos High School where she directed The Spoon River Project and choreographed countless musicals such as: Tarzan, In the Heights, Mary Poppins, Newsies, West Side Story, and The Adaams Family. She is looking forward to leading the theater department at SBHS into it’s next incarnation.

Jake Himovitz/Production Designer

Jake Himovitz is a visual artist, designer, technical director, performer, father, and teacher. Jake grew up in Santa Barbara, devising and performing theatre with Proximity Theatre Company before studying visual art at Savannah College of Art and Design where he earned a Bachelor's Degree in Production Design. After traveling around the country working as an artist and educator, he furthered his studies earning a Masters Degree of Fine Art from Columbia College of Chicago. Jake is proud to be back at SBHS and even more proud to collaborate with such talented, lovely, and hardworking students.

Kyra Lehman/Director, Movement Specialist

Kyra holds a Bachelor’s degree from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and a Master’s in Performance from the Art Institute of Chicago. She studied with Anna Halprin, learning her Life Art Process on her dance deck in Kentwood, California and is certified for both Movement for Trauma (MFT) and as a Creative Body Practitioner through the school of Jungian Somatics with Jane Clapp. She is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Proximity, a movement-based theater company in Santa Barbara, CA. She directed over sixty productions, performance-based workshops and classes for the past two decades, yielding a rigorous performance vocabulary and multi-layered teaching methodology.