Executive Directors

Philip Lehl

Philip is an actor, director, and teacher.

He is the co-founder and Co-Executive Director of Stark Naked Theatre Company, for whom he has acted in Debt Collectors, and Dinner With Friends. Acting credits include: Broadway: Blood Brothers, The Kentucky Cycle. Off-Broadway: Hundreds of Hats. National Tour: Titanic, the Musical. Since arriving in Texas in 2001: Stages: Oh, the Humanity, Yankee Tavern. I Am My Own Wife, Mr. Marmalade, Lady, Souvenir, Amy’s View, The Pavilion, Dirty Blonde. Over thirty productions at the Alley including: The Pillowman, The Farnsworth Invention, Eurydice, The Crucible, The Exonerated, Our Lady of 121st Street, The Mousetrap, Hamlet and The Invention of Love. Main Street Theatre: Arcadia. Classical Theatre Company: Ghosts, Uncle Vanya, The Tempest. Houston Shakespeare Festival: King John, Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Julius Caesar, Cymbeline. TUTS: Wonderful Life, Sound of Music, and one memorable performance of Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. Generations: Our Town, Bat Boy, Spring Awakening. BCCM: On the Town, Fiorello, Assassins, She Loves Me. EHS: The Tempest. Regional: St. Louis Repertory, Cleveland Play House, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Missouri Repertory Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Portland Stage Company, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The New Harmony Theatre and Weston Playhouse. Film and TV: Tripwire, The Nanny, Martial Law and Hollywood Off-Ramp. Education: The Juilliard School, Drake University, NTI, Moscow Arts Theatre School. As a director: Almost, Maine, Reckless (Brave Dog Theatre) Debt Collectors (co-director, Stark Naked Theatre), Art (Generations), Ferdinand the Bull (Stages), On the Town (co-director, BCCM.) Upcoming direction: Body Awareness (Stark Naked.) Upcoming acting: Christmas Carol, Clybourne Park (Alley), Shylock (CTC), Macbeth (Stark Naked). Teaching: Philip teaches ongoing classes in Shakespeare’s Verse and Mask for Kim Tobin Acting Studio.

Kim Lehl

Co-Executive Director: Throughout the years Kim has worked as an actor, director, teacher, producer and writer. Kim grew up in Houston, Texas where she studied acting and directing at the University of Houston (BA Theatre, Summa Cum Laude.) She spent ten years in New York where she was an officer of the New Mercury Theatre Company from 1994 to 1996. She was also the Co-Artistic Director and a founding member of Blue Sphere Alliance East, the sister company to the award-winning Los Angeles theatre company, Blue Sphere Alliance, where she was also a member. Kim began teaching acting in 1999, in Los Angeles – she is the founder of the Kim Tobin Acting Studio here in Houston, which has been in existence since 2009. She has worked and studied continuously over the last 20 years with some of the greatest teachers and actors of our time. Kim has trained extensively in the acting techniques of Konstantin Stanislavski and Stella Adler (Stella Adler Conservatory, with Stella, herself), Sanford Meisner and Lee Strasberg (by teachers who trained directly with these teachers) and also with the current leading teaching professionals in NYC and LA listed below. She has taught Improvisation, audition technique, script analysis and scene study classes from beginning to advanced levels over the last 13 years. While at U of H, Kim trained or worked with Jose’ Quintero, Edward Albee and Sidney Berger (Shakespeare.) While studying in Texas she won an “Actress Excellence” award at the annual Texas College Play Festival in 1992 for her portrayal of Sarah in Children of a Lesser God. She moved to New York in the summer of 1993. During her years there she had the privilege of studying and/or working with Gene Frankel, Seth Barrish, Lee Brock, F. Murray Abraham, George C. Wolfe, James Earl Jones, Kevin Klein and Marian Seldes, to name a few. Favorite Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway credits include: Sally in the 1995 revival of Sam Shepard’s, A Lie of the Mind, Talk to me Like the Rain…, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Fifth of July, Fool For Love, Savage In Limbo, The Smell of the Crowd, Bed, Bawd & Beyond, Impassioned Embraces (Emotional Recall), Ctrl, Alt, Delete and Trust,as well as the Barrow Group’s production Short Stuff Two and Kim’s original One Woman Show, Inside Out. Kim also spent three and a half years in Los Angeles where she studied with Sandy Marshall and Larry Moss, and where her teaching career kicked off. Some credits during her stay in LA include; The World Premiere of Children of Shame , The Interrogation, Masseur, Baby with the Bathwater, Check to Check, and The Foreigner . Kim can been seen in the films; The Alarmist, The Big Lebowski and Sex Maniac as well as on Sunset Beach.