Regina Ress (Adjunct) is an award-winning storyteller, actor, teaching artist, author and educator who has brought storytelling to students, teachers, after-school staff, and parents in NYC, across the US, and as far south as a Quechua village in the mountains of Peru. She teaches a graduate course on Storytelling in the Classroom for the Program in Educational Theatre and a workshop on using storytelling to teach language for the NYU Steinhardt Department of Teaching and Learning. She produces the Professional Storytelling series NYU’s historic Provincetown Playhouse featuring national and international storytellers.
Regina has been a Teaching Artist for over 20 years in grades K-12 both in the classroom and for after-school programs. She has given numerous Professional Development workshops for teachers and has been a regular workshop leader for the Literacy Assistance Center of NY. For the past 25 years, she has told stories professionally across the US, including at The White House. She has performed and given workshops in Spanish in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil and Spain. A certified ESOL teacher who taught English to adult immigrants in New York City, Regina was the recipient of a 2004 National Storytelling Network grant for her project Voices from Washington Heights: Immigrants Tell Stories About and From Their Homelands.
Her work with “at risk” populations includes two years as lead teacher in an after-school program for CAYR (Creative Alternatives for Youth at Risk) through Arts Horizons in Newark, New Jersey, a weekly workshop for teens at a JINS shelter in Cape May, NJ and performances and workshops (co-leader) at York Women's Correctional Institution, CT; Baylor Women's C.I., DE; and Bedford Hills C.I., NY with The Avodah Dance Ensemble. More recently she has given workshops for the Youth Shelters in Santa Fe, NM and has led workshops for incarcerated women in the Santa Fe County Correctional Facility. In the aftermath of 9/11, under the auspices of Mercy Corps, she facilitated workshops for adults on the issue of children and trauma.
Regina Ress was a Board member of the NY Storytelling Center for a decade, and has been the NY Metro Liaison to the National Storytelling Network which, in 2003, awarded her an Oracle Award in Regional Leadership and Service. She teaches English for Art to foreign students studying at Santa Fe University’s summer ArtFest. She has published numerous articles, including: "Once Upon a Time… In the Language Classroom," Tantagora Magazine, 2007; "Love at First Sight," Parabola Magazine, 2005; "The Holocaust, Littleton, and Our Children," Storytelling Magazine, 1999; "A Matter of Cultural Survival," Storytelling Magazine, 1997; "A Storyteller Tells Her Story," Carnegie Mellon Magazine; 1994; "Inanna as a Woman of Power," The Quest Quarterly Journal, 1990.
As an actor, she has appeared on Broadway, on tour and in regional theatre. In 2014, her CD of New York Stories, originally broadcast on NPR affiliate WFUV, won the Storytelling World Honor award. Website: www.ReginaRess.com