Nutshell Playhouse is honored to work with truly amazing talent. Our performers bring with them a vast variety of experiences, cultivating a dynamic and creative environment. Working with a simple theatrical set, our actors transform the performance space. Within a landscape of sparse dialogue and lyrical movement, our actors travel along side imaginary creatures that are guided by music and often punctuated by the soft contours of puppets.

Don Jordan
Founder and Artistic Director of Nutshell Playhouse

Don Jordan (Director/Lead composer/Live musician) taught and performed with Teatro Studio and I Gesti di Roma throughout Europe for fifteen years before being invited to perform with Mummenschanz on BROADWAY!
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He directed the Pan Twilight Circus’s 1995 production of “Creatures of the Lawn” and served as Artistic Director of the Pickle Family Circus.

Don has also shared his passion with students at the Juilliard School, Barnard College, Smith College, Ohio University, Berkshire Community College, and Shakespeare and Company.

Don is also on the Board of Directors of the Berkshire International Club. 

​Don’s vast experiences are a gift to his young audiences and have shaped the interactive nature of the performances crafted by the Nutshell Playhouse ensemble today.

JOHNNY SEGALLA
Dooter in “SpyJinks!"

Johnny Segalla (Dooter / Nutshell Company Member) is versatile voiceover artist, puppeteer, singer, playwright, composer, theater educator and producer.

A proud member of the Dramatist Guild, he is dedicated to the exploration and development of new and original written works including radio plays and musicals while creating educational theater experiences for all audiences, especially for children. 

Winner of the New Hampshire Theater Award for Best Supporting Actor, as a performer he has appeared locally with Berkshire Theater Company, Barrington Stage, Grumbling Gryphons Traveling Children's Theater and onstage at Shakespeare and Company amongst others.

His original commissioned works for puppetry have been featured by Berkshire School, Nutshell Playhouse, and the New York State Theater Institute's regional tour of “The B-Bomb: an Anti-Bully Show.”

During his free time in the Berkshires he is usually enjoying live music and light fare at one of his favorite local inns, kayaking, skiing, foraging wild edibles, rambling through the woods with his hiking cat Leo, and giving voice and acting lessons from his home studio in Great Barrington.

STEFANIE WEBER
Nemonee in “SpyJinks!”

Stefanie Weber (Nemonee / Nutshell Company Member) has been with Nutshell Playhouse since 2011 when she was formally introduced to the wonderful world of physical theater.

She is an action based dance artist who combines her speciality of the soulful styles in the American art form of Jazz/Tap dance with the more internal movement realms of somatic practices such as the Gyrotonic Method and Continuum.

Over the decades, she has been a member of various under-radar performance groups such as, Tap & Blues, Sole Force, The Silver Swimmers (USA), LiquidBody Dance, and the Commonwealth Tap Collective. Projects under her direction include: They Dance For Rain (Nairobi), Creatures Of Habitat Physical Poetry Public Performance Project, Pittsfield City Hoopla, and the Fancy Nancy Foundation.

She has worked with many organizations in and around the Berkshires including: Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Barrington Stage Company, Berkshire Opera Company, Simon’s Rock, Williams College, and Berkshire Community College. As well as outside the county with Detroit’s SideWalk Festival, Nairobi’s Dance Life Festival, Hudson’s Operation Unite, East Harlem Union Settlement Association, Somerville’s ArtBeat, Cambridge River Festival, and Boston’s Hope Lodge.
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Presently, she is on faculty with Community Access to the Arts and Movement Matters, as well as, juggling a robust private movement facilitation practice at her Tourmaline Z Studio among the Clock Tower Artists in Pittsfield.

MARK HOHLSTEIN
Donut in “SpyJinks!"

Mark Hohlstein (Donut / Nutshell Company Member) studied visual art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He has received multiple Massachusetts Cultural Council grants for his visual art, as well as his music. His visual art has taken him on residency to Brazil and to Sotheby’s auction house in Amsterdam.

Mr. Hohlstein likes to rock out and play music in bands and in the recording studio. Mark began his studies in clown and theatrical acting in his late 30’s. He enjoyed a fifteen-year run in various productions, largely comedy and children’s theater, before his long-term engagement with Nutshell Playhouse.

​Mark is a family man and practices thankfulness and appreciation of life in the natural world everyday.