July 27, 2020
Associate Professor of Practice Rusty Cloyes has been named the recipient of the 2020 Department of Theatre and Dance Teaching Excellence Award, a prestigious teaching accolade recognizing his contributions to student success within the department.
Cloyes is the head of stage management for the Department of Theatre and Dance as well as the vice-regional representative for the Western region of the Stage Managers' Association. In his role at the department, Cloyes also supervises the B.A. in Theatre and Dance area, recruiting, advising and mentoring students to ensure that they are having a meaningful academic experience. Additionally, he is a faculty co-producer of the Cohen New Works Festival and he oversees the Undergraduate Advisory Council, a group of students from multiple areas of the department who offer input from the undergraduate student's perspective. With so many hats in the department, he has an instrumental role in the educational success of undergraduate students.
Before coming to Austin, Cloyes was an associate production manager at the American Repertory Theatre (ART) in Cambridge, MA. While with ART, he served as the production manager for the Institute of Advanced Theatre Training and for the Zero Arrow Theatre, ART's second space, giving him the opportunity to work with up and coming artists and exciting cutting edge companies. Prior to ART, he served as the assistant production manager at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, a historic 4,500 seat theatre presenting entertainment acts from Broadway tours to musical concerts and everything in between.
Before turning to production management, Cloyes served as a professional stage manager in Seattle for 10 years, starting with the Seattle Repertory Theatre in 1991 and continuing with various Seattle companies including the Seattle Children's Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, the Intiman Theatre, the Village Theatre and the Seattle Shakespeare Company. During that time, he also toured nationally and internationally, holding the title of everything from properties master to audio engineer to tour manager, with a band of comedic jugglers called the Flying Karamazov Brothers.