Faculty – Theatre & Dance

Dr. Nathan Bowman is an Assistant Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance at 小草影院. Dr. Bowman is the co-founder and Producing Artistic Director of Kansas City Public Theatre. Dr. Bowman was honored by the State of Missouri with Kansas City Public Theatre being recognized as 鈥淎rts Organization of the Year.鈥� Recent directing credits include Electra, Godspell, The Glass Menagerie, Machinal, Tartuffe, The Trojan Woman (小草影院); Reduction in Force, The Head of Medusa (The Pitch 鈥淏est of KC 2024鈥�), Faustus, Oedipus the King, Mirrors (The Pitch 鈥淏est of KC 2020鈥�), Medea, Talk to Me like the Rain, Bang, Thank You Notes, (KCPublic), 鈥淭artuffenthrope鈥� (KCMoliere, The Pitch 鈥淏est of KC 2021鈥�); Antigone, Hippolytus, The Trojan Women (Oiniades and Messene, Greece). Prior to founding KCPublic, Dr. Bowman worked for eight seasons at Kansas City Repertory Theatre where he collaborated on both technical and artistic teams with Broadway and Tony Award winning artists from across the country. Additionally, Dr. Bowman worked for several seasons at the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival. He has trained at The Second City in Chicago and with the New York based SITI Company in the Suzuki-Viewpoints method of acting. He teaches masterclasses and workshops in Suzuki-Viewpoints at various theaters, universities, and festivals across the region. Dr. Bowman鈥檚 theatre and directing work has been awarded recognition from Charlotte Street Foundation, the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Pitch Magazine, and the New Theatre Guild.

Dr. Bowman is the President of Mid-America Theatre Conference, where he previously served as Co-Chair of Playwriting. Additionally, Dr. Bowman served as Book Review Editor for the journal Theatre Topics. He has presented work nationally and abroad at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Mid-America Humanities Conference, Conference on Contemporary Religion in Quebec, the Athens Institute of Education and Research and the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation in Greece. His work has appeared in such journals as Etudes, The New England Theatre Journal, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and the Greek publication Mandragoras. He recently, along with his wife Elizabeth Bettendorf Bowman, published an anthology of Kansas City playwrights titled Their Own Devices. Dr. Bowman leads the department鈥檚 Summer Theatre in Greece study aboard program.

Dr. Lindsay Kennedy is a Shakespeare/Early Modern Drama scholar, nationally produced playwright, and professional director/dramaturg. Her academic writing on the representation of virginity, confession, and disability on the page and stage has been published in journals like Shakespeare Studies, Sixteenth Century Journal, and Text and Presentation. She writes plays because she believes in theatre鈥檚 ability to make a group of strangers in a darkened room into a community and because she believes that plays can do more than just move an audience, they can move the world. Her full-length plays include Her Own Devices (KC Public Theatre, Theatre Alliance, Judith Barlow Prize, Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award鈥�2nd Place, Darrell Ayers Playwriting Award鈥�2nd Place,), Rattler (Heller Theatre Company, Actors Theatre of Indiana, Midwest Dramatists Center, O鈥橬eill National Playwrights Conference Semi-Finalist), and River Like Sin (Catholic University of America, O鈥橬eill National Playwrights Conference Semi-Finalist, Kennedy Center Harold & Mimi Steinberg Award鈥擠istinguished Achievement, Br!NK New Play Festival Finalist). She cares passionately about supporting new voices in the Midwest as a teacher and dramaturg. She has directed and dramaturged in Kansas City and beyond at The Unicorn Theatre, The Coterie Theatre, The Barn Players, KC Fringe, St. Louis Shakespeare, and others. She has been commissioned to write plays by CLIMB Theatre, Springville Center for the Arts, Johnson County Arts & Heritage Center, and Westridge Middle School. Creative publications include Stage It, Stream It: Plays for Virtual Theatre, Theater in the Time of COVID, and Their Own Devices: A Collection of Kansas City Playwrights. She is a proud member of the Shakespeare Association of America and the Dramatists鈥� Guild. In her free time, she also likes to build and play with puppets. MFA in Theatre (Playwriting): Catholic University of America; PhD in English (Early Modern Drama): Saint Louis University.

Elizabeth Bettendorf Bowman is a multidisciplinary theatre artist and administrator dedicated to arts accessibility, community engagement, and new work development. She holds a BA in Theatre and Psychology from Northwest Missouri State University and MA in Theatre, with a focus in Directing and Theatre History from the University of Missouri鈥揔ansas City Conservatory.
Elizabeth is the co-founder and Executive Artistic Director of Kansas City Public Theatre, winner of the Missouri Arts Council award for Arts Organization of the Year in 2022. Her work with the company has earned recognition from The Pitch KC鈥檚 鈥淏est of KC,鈥� BroadwayWorld, KCStudio Magazine, and residencies at Charlotte Street Foundation. Recent directing credits include: Miss Julie, The Holy Trinity, Tipton, The Real Barbee: Unmasked, The Disappointments (KCPublic); Young Playwrights Showcase (Coterie Theatre); Alice in Wonderland, Eurydice (小草影院).
Elizabeth鈥檚 works spans directing, producing, design, and arts administration. She has collaborated on artistic teams with nationally recognized and Tony Award鈥搘inning artists at institutions including Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre, Coterie Theatre, Heart of America Shakespeare, KCFringe, and the UMKC Conservatory. She also trained with the New York鈥揵ased SITI Company in Suzuki-Viewpoints actor training and has presented work at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE). As an educator, she has served as a resident artist with United Inner-City Services, taught in the Fort Leavenworth Prison System, teaches master classes at the Coterie Theatre, and worked as a manager and teaching artist at Heart of America Shakespeare. Elizabeth also gives grant writing workshops and has served on grant panels with organizations such as ArtsKC and Charlotte Street.
Elizabeth co-edited Their Own Devices: A Collection of Kansas City Playwrights and has been nominated for the prestigious Baum Award for Emerging Kansas City Leaders. She currently serves as Co-Chair of the board for Jerusalem Farm, a Catholic nonprofit devoted to sustainability.

Michael D鈥橝rcangelis is the Technical Director and a member of the teaching staff in the Department of Theatre and Dance. He oversees the implementation of the scenic elements for all the department鈥檚 productions. Michael teaches the courses in Stagecraft, Introduction to Theatre, Speech and Production Arts. Michael earned his BA in Theatre and English from 小草影院 and his MA in Teaching from Missouri Western State University.

While a student at Benedictine, Michael was involved heavily both in onstage and offstage capacities as often as he could. After graduating Benedictine, he took a hiatus from theatre, teaching English at Bishop LeBlond High school for several years. He returned to the field by directing the productions of The Secret Garden and Rodgers and Hammerstein鈥檚 Cinderella for Bishop Leblond High School in the fall of 2023 and spring of 2024 respectively. He continues serve in teaching roles at the high school level, currently teaching a 9th grade English class at Maur Hill Mount Academy.

Since his return to Benedictine, Michael has increased his involvement in theatrical production with scenic design and construction roles in community theatre settings. The most notable of these being the role of scenic designer and construction implementation for Theatre Atchison鈥檚 2025 production of Grease, and The Barn Players鈥� 2026 production of And Then There Were None.

Megan Chiles grew up in St. Joseph, MO studying dance at The Dance Arts Center. Throughout high school she was fortunate to study with dance companies such as: Ballet Austin, State Street Ballet, Hubbard Street and River North Chicago. She also spent a summer studying at The Virginia School of the Arts. She continued her dance education at Stephens College in Columbia, MO and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree with a focus in Dance. She furthered her education by receiving her Masters in Dance Education from Northern Colorado University

She has taught the dance classes for the theatre department since 2017, and also coaches the dance team here at 小草影院.