Hannah is currently a Resident Company Member at Everyman Theatre in Baltimore, MD. Her credits at Everyman include: Harvey (upcoming), The Lion in Winter, Sense and Sensibility, Behold, A Negress, The Skin of Our Teeth, Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, Everything is Wonderful, and The Book of Joseph. She has also performed at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company: Dracula, The Diary of Anne Frank, and Charm City Fringe Festival: Proxy.

"Since graduating from UMBC I have been fortunate enough to become a company member at Everyman Theatre in Baltimore. This has been such an amazing experience because it offers a sense of stability for work and a feeling of home that is not common in this career. I get to perform consistently while also being challenged by new and exciting roles.

I'm so grateful for my time at UMBC and I feel like the professional atmosphere of the rehearsal and performance process really gave me the foundation for entering into the world of professional theatre.

My advice to anyone graduating and entering the professional world is to always keep learning and make it your own journey. Learn from the people in the room with you, soak up any and all advice, and then use that to create the career that you want, not the career you think you should want.

This is such a demanding, fun, fulfilling, and exciting career. It can be overwhelming, but it's worth it."

Learn more about Hannah and Everyman Theatre at Everymantheatre.org.

Jalon Payton currently works as a freelance stage manager mainly based in the Baltimore/DC area. Towards the end of his time as a student at UMBC, he began working as a stage manager for play readings and workshops with Roundhouse Theatre & Taffety Punk Theatre in DC. Following these workshops, he made his debut at Baltimore Center Stage for the first show of their 2021/22 Season, The Swindlers: A Tru-ish Tall Tale, as a Production Assistant. His recent area credits include 10 Seconds (Imagination Stage, Stage Manager), Is Edward Snowden Single? (Single Carrot Theatre, Stage Manager); The Folks at Home (Baltimore Center Stage - world premiere, Production Assistant); Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery (Everyman Theatre, Assistant Stage Manager), The High Ground (Arena Stage - world premiere, Assistant Stage Manager). Jalon has experience working out of town as an Assistant Stage Manager at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin for 2 summer seasons (The Brothers Size, A Raisin in the Sun, The Royale, and Anton’s Shorts). In Fall 2023, Jalon will be returning to Arena Stage as an Assistant Stage Manager for the east coast premiere of the new musical, Swept Away.

Jalon was able to create a stable foundation out of his passion and drive for stage management at UMBC, thanks in part to his Stage Management Professor at the time: Samantha Paradis.

“My connection with Baltimore Center Stage began because Sam passed them my information for a position in the spring of 2020. While the show I was supposed to work on was postponed, the connection I had established with them was not forgotten. It led to my first PA position, which then opened up a lot of opportunities for me. Recently, Sam was able to visit APT to see The Royale, and it's a great feeling when your mentor gets to witness your professional work. It’s been really good getting to have conversations with Professors Eve Muson, Susan McCully, and Susan Stroupe (to name just a few) about what I’ve been up to since graduating when I periodically visit UMBC.  Watching friends who were my classmates continue to do new and exciting projects post college has been really inspiring to watch from afar.”

You can keep up with Jalon by following him on Instagram, or learn more at his website.

"After graduating in 2020 and spending a year away from theatre due to the pandemic, in 2021 I moved to NYC to work as an assistant costume designer for opera, drama, and dance at The Juilliard School as part of their Professional Apprentice Program. After my season at Juilliard, I was a freelance design assistant at several regional and off-broadway theatres before starting my MFA in Costume Design at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale.

While my first year at Yale has certainly been challenging, it's also been incredibly rewarding, and I feel that my time at UMBC thoroughly prepared me for both graduate school and the professional world. As a student I loved UMBC's emphasis on professionalism in and outside of the classroom; my experience working on shows like Girls on a Dirt Pile and Gwyneth in conjunction with my classes helped teach me how to be a successful working designer. They also sparked a love for developing new work that has carried over into my career, including being the associate costume designer for At the Wedding, a new play that premiered at Lincoln Center Theater last year.

I received an excellent design education at UMBC, but non-design classes unique to UMBC such as Mods with Susan Stroupe and Capstone with Eric Abele have also been instrumental in helping me build a career, succeed in graduate school, and figure out what kind of theatre artist I want to be. Capstone especially is a class that I benefit from every single day, and my biggest piece of advice to current students would be to really invest in using the resources provided in that class to set yourself up for success after graduation. Even though I graduated into a very uncertain world, Capstone gave me a path to make a way for myself once theatres reopened, and encouraged me to put a lot of thought into who I am and who I want to be not only as an artist and collaborator, but also as a human being."

Learn more about Caroline and her costume design work at carolinetyson.com.