Todd McNerney
Professor
Todd McNerney is a Professor of Performance in the Department of Theatre and Dance and Associate Dean of the School of the Arts. He served as the Department's Chair from 2005 until 2014. In that time, he successfully led the Department to its initial accreditation by the National Association of Schools of Theatre in 2008 and its subsequent re-accreditation in 2014. He served the College as Speaker of the Faculty from 2014 to 2017. He has taught Acting I, Acting II, Introduction to Theatre, Directing, Modern European and American Drama, Voice for the Actor, and Voice II - Dialects. In his nearly 35-year career in the theatre he has directed and/or acted in over 100 productions. He has worked professionally on both coasts in theatre, film, and industrials. He is an active member of the Department's production program, directing productions of The House of Blue Leaves, On the Verge, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Take Me Out, Spring Awakening and RENT among others. Todd is committed to the development of new plays for the Department and has directed multiple original student works including the KC/ACTF winning The Mind's I and Bread and Circuses. Additionally, over the last eight years, he has annually directed staged readings of the runner-up and winning plays of a national contest created in his honor as part of Piccolo Spoleto. In the summer of 2016, he spent six weeks as a Guest Artist/Director at the nationally recognized Hollins University Playwright's Lab, a low residency MFA program in playwriting. While there, he helped develop and directed a staged reading of Take 81 by Liesl Ehmke.
Todd is also a co-founder of The Shakespeare Project, a former summer component of the Department, which occurred between 1997 and 2013 and produced two productions of Shakepeare's works each year. Some of the works he directed for the Project included The Merchant of Venice (2000), Richard II (2002), The Merry Wives of Windsor (2004), King Lear (2006), Measure for Measure (2008 – voted Best Play [Non- Spoleto] by the Charleston City Paper), Cymbeline (2010), and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (2013).
Just prior to his time at College of Charleston, Todd spent three years touring around the world with the Swiss mime troupe Mummenschanz. In addition to those wonderful experiences of world travel, he developed a passion for the business side of the arts. In order to satisfy that passion he worked with the City of Charleston by serving as the Piccolo Spoleto Theatre Series Coordinator from 1995 through 2005. In 2005, he founded, and for its initial 12 years produced, the College's Stelle di Domani series presented annually at Charleston's Piccolo Spoleto Festival. Stelle focuses on the students, faculty and alumni of the Department of Theatre and Dance and in its 13 years has raised nearly $80,000 for scholarships.
Education
M.F.A. University of Iowa - Acting
B.A. St. John's University
Courses Taught
Courses taught regularly (generally every semester):
THTR 360 - Voice for The Actor
THTR 376 - Acting II: Characterization
Courses taught:
THTR 176 - Introduction to Theatre
THTR 214 - Modern European and American Drama
THTR 277 - Acting I
THTR 378 - Directing