Michigan Muse Winter 2025 > Sharing a Love for the Performing Arts and Gratitude for Arts Supporters
Sharing a Love for the Performing Arts and Gratitude for Arts Supporters
By Marilou Carlin
For generations, SMTD has graduated talented, dedicated, ambitious, and expertly trained performers and scholars who set out to make their mark in the performing arts and in myriad other fields. After graduation, they move to big cities and small towns all over the world, pursuing their dreams in their individual ways. As different as they are from one another, they share a connection through their experience as Michigan alumni, their abiding passion for their disciplines, and, for many, their deep gratitude for the scholarship support that enabled them to choose SMTD in the first place. For more than half of SMTD students, donor-funded scholarship support makes a vital difference in their decision to pursue an exceptional performing arts education. Below, a small sampling of current students and alumni demonstrates how each has followed a unique path and how they are linked together by life-changing scholarships.
Building Confidence: William and Claribel Baird Halstead Scholarship
For decades, William and Claribel Halstead taught theatre at U-M to students that included James Earl Jones, Christine Lahti, Margo Martindale, and Gilda Radner. The couple was so beloved that a scholarship was created in their honor and endowed in 1993.
When Sas Goldberg (BFA ’07, theatre & drama) was awarded that very scholarship in 2003, she didn’t know all the details of the Halsteads’ history; what she did know was that receiving the scholarship meant that SMTD believed in her talent enough to want to support her enrollment. That vote of confidence was just what she needed to push her to succeed.
Sas Goldberg
Now, 17 years after graduating, Goldberg has parlayed her drive into a thriving career as an actor and scriptwriter, while also raising her two young children. Most recently she’s been a series regular on Hulu’s Life & Beth, starring Amy Schumer, appearing as Beth’s longtime friend Jess. She was story editor for Apple TV’s The Shrink Next Door, for which she also wrote and acted, and she appeared in and wrote for Hulu’s Emmy-winning Only Murders in the Building. Currently she’s writing the book of a musical, a feature film, and two new series.
Much of her career, she says, has evolved from her U-M experience. “My entire community has splintered and spiderwebbed off of Michigan,” she said, “whether that be my husband, my manager, collaborators I work with… I can’t tell you how often in my professional life now, years after college, there is still a connection with Michigan.”
It was, in fact, Goldberg’s friendship with Jake Wilson (BFA ’07, musical theatre) that led her to writing. He suggested they write a film together, despite having no such experience. “We figured it out together,” she said. The result was 2014’s Are You Joking?, with Goldberg starring and Wilson directing, which led to establishing them both as sought-after creators.
Although she doesn’t yet know if her career will look anything like Goldberg’s, Bella Detwiler (BFA ’25, theatre & drama) – current recipient of the William and Claribel Baird Halstead Scholarship – is also a writer, taking a minor at LSA’s Sweetland Center for Writing. She loves the craft and also sees it as a way to increase an arsenal of skills that will help in her career.
“Sometimes people get stuck in that ‘I’m an actor only’ mindset, when really, you want to be a jack of all trades,” she said. “I should know how to run a light board and use a nail gun. I want to be able to get myself into some room, whether it’s a writers’ room or a casting room or an admissions room, and have the skill set to say, ‘I’m an actor, but I’m also this and this and this and this.’”
Detwiler began training early as an actor, attending theatre camps as a child and a performing arts high school in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. At Michigan, she rediscovered the impact the arts can have after enrolling in “Theatre & Incarceration,” offered through U-M’s Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP). On a weekly basis, she and other students visited Saginaw Men’s Prison to lead theatre workshops with incarcerated individuals. “That has definitely been the most educational and informative class that I’ve taken,” she said.
Now, as she finishes her final year at Michigan and makes plans to move to New York, Detwiler says she still gives thanks for her scholarship. “There is still that thing in my head that says, ‘If I hadn’t gotten that scholarship, I wouldn’t be here.’”
Bella Detwiler as Mrs. Van Buren in Intimate Apparel, Arthur Miller Theatre, 2023. Photo: Peter Smith
Discovering Community: Edwin and Mary Meader Endowed Scholarship in Jazz Studies
Multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and music producer Theo Katzman (BFA ’08, jazz & contemplative studies) is a genre chameleon. Though a jazz major at SMTD, he found early success with the dance-punk band My Dear Disco with Michelle Chamuel (BFA ’08, performing arts technology). Then, with Jack Stratton (BFA ’10, performing arts technology), Woody Goss (BFA ’11, jazz & contemplative studies), and Joe Dart (attended ’13), he formed Vulfpeck, the critically acclaimed American funk band with an international fan base. Meanwhile, his solo recordings (six studio and two live albums) are mainly rock but reflect many other influences including R&B, folk, and country.
Theo Katzman
Katzman, who was supported by the Edwin and Mary Meader Endowed Scholarship in Jazz Studies as a student, credits the community he found at Michigan with fostering that versatility. Under the umbrella of jazz & contemplative studies, Professors Ed Sarath and Martha Travers introduced Katzman and his fellow students to meditative practices as they relate to improvisation.
“Without that forum for inquiry among the students, individually or together, I don’t know that we would have felt as comfortable leaning into who it is that we are,” said Katzman. “When I look at my career, it’s very clear to me that the community of people who I love to collaborate with is what made all the difference.”
These days, thanks to extensive touring, his music community stretches throughout the US – LA, New York, Nashville, Chicago, and Detroit – and across Europe, and it continues to inspire him. “For a certain kind of path, where you bring your music to wherever the audience is, the people you meet on that journey are all in that as well, so it’s just a very inspiring three-dimensional thing.”
Like Katzman, trumpeter Adam Solomon (BFA ’25, jazz & contemporary improvisation; BA ’25, economics) has launched a professional performance career while still a student: he performs with the Washington, DC-based R&B band the Portobellos (near his hometown of Rockville, Maryland) and in the Ann Arbor-based Motown band VUP.
Although straight-ahead jazz is his first love when it comes to music – “It’s what I was raised on,” he said – his horizons expanded when he arrived at Michigan, with Ed Sarath again playing a critical role.
“In freshman year, I took a class taught by Professor Sarath that was all about free improvisation,” he said. “It totally opened up my mind to all the other sounds that you can make on an instrument. That really helped me transition into playing all these other types of music.”
Solomon finds inspiration in the great jazz trumpeters that have come before him and in nature. As a member of U-M’s Student Sustainability Coalition, he facilitates a monthly meeting of the Student Carbon Neutrality Network (SCANN) to advocate for a more sustainable and carbon-neutral future at U-M. He also led a presentation on utilizing the creative process to combat climate anxiety, focusing on “the hope that’s found in the creative process and in music.”
The scholarship that both musicians received was created by avid arts supporters and Kalamazoo residents Edwin and Mary Meader. Both Katzman and Solomon said it was the key factor that made it possible for them to attend Michigan, and Solomon credits it with opening up his world altogether. “It’s given me so many opportunities and a deeper understanding of music and how to express myself through music,” he said. “There’s so much that I’ve learned at SMTD that I can apply to everything in life, and the scholarship made it all possible.”
Adam Solomon
Forging a Distinctive Path: Vera Embree Dance Scholarship
Erika “Red” Stowall (BFA ’08, dance) and Ladina Schaller (BFA ’26, dance) – both recipients of the Vera Embree Dance Scholarship – share a deep love of dance, but their backgrounds are decidedly different.
Erika Stowall was born and raised in Detroit and returned to launch her career there after graduating from SMTD. She is the founder and artistic director of Big Red Wall Dance, where she focuses many of her works on “her real-life experiences navigating being a black woman in society.” She’s also been teaching dance at Martin Luther King Jr. High School, her alma mater, for more than 15 years.“That’s one of my passions,” Stowall said, “presenting art that most students will not regularly see and encouraging them to pursue art, if that’s something they want to do. Or using it as a therapeutic tool in life, because sometimes you just have to shake it out!”
Stowall’s decision to forge her career in her hometown came with special benefits. She chose to do so at a time when Detroit was undergoing an arts renaissance (in the 2000s), so she found, with some research, both financial support for her art and a burgeoning artistic community with whom to collaborate. Creating in her home city inspired her.
“My art is taking in all my years and time as an African American woman living in an urban area,” she said. “I think it helped me grow and establish the message that I wanted to put out into the world about how others live – how we have similarities and differences in our struggles, how we prepare our lives after that, and how we form resilience in our daily practice.”
Erika “Red” Stowall. Photo: Mantrell Goodrum
Ladina Schaller, on the other hand, doesn’t have deep roots in any one place. She holds Swiss and American citizenship, thanks to having one parent of each nationality; she grew up in Switzerland, and she now lives something of a nomadic lifestyle. She spent the summer of ’24 traveling, including a stint in Fairbanks, Alaska, working at the visitor’s center there.
“I can’t say that any town in the world is my home, really,” said Schaller. “I have many different homes. My backgrounds, and the cultures of my parents, and the way I grew up definitely influences my art, but I think more of what inspires me is to gain more understanding of other places and other cultures,” she said.
The Embree Scholarship was critical to Stowall’s Michigan experience, and Schaller appreciates its importance in her own unfolding Michigan journey. Endowed in 1991 by friends and former students to honor Professor Emeritus Embree, who taught at U-M for 18 years, the scholarship is awarded to dance majors with exceptional talent in choreography. Stowall said it provided vital support as she learned how to live independently, while Schaller cited it as a key factor in allowing her to choose Michigan, one of the rare universities where she could pursue a dual degree in dance and in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology. “I’m so grateful for the support that is giving me this gift of education,” she said.
Ladina Schaller. Photo: Kirk Donaldson
Giving Back: Chisholm Musical Theatre Scholarship
As an undergraduate, Chelsea Packard (BFA ’05, musical theatre) took advantage of SMTD’s excellent jazz program by taking independent study classes. They introduced her to former SMTD jazz professor Paul Keller (bass) which led to performing with him and his big band at their regular gig at the Firefly Club where she learned “a ton about translating musical theatre repertoire onto the jazz stage.”
Chelsea Packard
Later, Packard recorded an album with Keller that was funded by Don Chisholm (BA ’55, MBA ’56), a well-known Ann Arbor property developer and legendary jazz supporter. Already funders of an SMTD jazz scholarship, Chisholm and his wife Betts Chisholm (BA ’56, MA ’60) then decided to create one for musical theatre students, and Packard became the first recipient as a senior. It was, she said, instrumental in decreasing her debt and easing the transition to life as a working artist in New York City after graduating. “I was so impacted by the Chisholms’ support and their belief in me,” she said.
Packard went on to enjoy several busy years working on Broadway, in touring companies, and on the concert stage while also teaching, marrying, and starting a family. Then, in 2017, while continuing to perform, she returned to SMTD as assistant professor of music, teaching voice to musical theatre students.
“I love that I’m in a mentorship role with students whom I so closely identify with, being able to guide them with such a level of personal experience,” she said. “I feel like I can really relate to the mental and emotional space they’re in.”
With her husband Geoff Packard, an SMTD assistant professor of acting/directing, Packard runs a theatre camp in Ann Arbor each summer called the Broadway Intensive, for students in grades three to twelve. SMTD musical theatre students act as group leaders and teaching assistants, and in 2024, Aaron Syi (BFA ’26, musical theatre), the current Chisholm Musical Theatre Scholarship recipient, was among them. Syi has long enjoyed working with children and has come to realize that he also loves teaching.
“I learned so much from watching Chelsea teach and work with kids,” he said. “It’s so inspirational, knowing that she started as a musical theatre major and is now a professor here. I feel very proud of myself, sharing this scholarship with her. Knowing she ended up in such a great place gives me hope that this scholarship will push me to keep working hard to get to where she is now.”
Syi, the son of Korean immigrants, grew up in Queens, New York, listening mainly to Korean music as a child, especially K-Pop. He began singing at church and attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts as a voice major. But he didn’t love the repertoire and decided to try out for the school musical as a sophomore, on a whim. He was cast in the ensemble and instantly became an ardent fan of musical theatre, immersing himself in the genre.
“All I want to do in life is make people happy and give them joy, and for me to be able to do that with something that I love – singing and dancing and acting – it’s perfect,” he said. “That’s what keeps pushing me, that passionate drive to give it all back to the audience.”
Aaron Syi in the title role of Bat Boy at the Encore Musical Theatre, October 2024. Photo: Peter Smith
Student Support
Scholarships open doors for the next generation of performers, creators, entrepreneurs, and educators, making it possible for them to share their talents with the world, revitalizing and reinventing the performing arts.
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