Michael Nehring

Professor Michael Nehring is an accomplished actor, director, teacher, and choreographer.  Michael is a founding member of several successful theatre companies, most recently Son of Semele Ensemble in Los Angeles.  For Son of Semele, he played Napoleon in the Ovation Award winning musical Animal Farm.  As a founding member of Shakespeare Orange County, Michael has been seen as Iago in Othello, Touchstone in As You Like It, Horatio in Hamlet (Dramalogue Award), Don Pedro in Much Ado About Nothing, the Fool in King Lear, Autolycus in Winter's Tale, Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar, Feste in Twelfth Night, Gratiano in The Merchant of Venice, a witch in Macbeth  and as Caliban in The Tempest.  Michael was also a founding member of the award-winning Friends and Artists Theatre Ensemble (FATE) in Los Angeles. For FATE he appeared as the Herald in Marat-Sade (L.A. Weekly Award, Dramalogue Award), Semyon in The Suicide (Dramalogue Award), and Precious in Dolores and Her Loved Ones. Other roles include La Flech in The Miser and Pippin in Pippin at the Gem Theatre. He spent four seasons as a leading player with the Hollywood Theatre Ensemble in Pennsylvania and performed in over twenty musicals. He can be seen in the lead role of the 1998 feature film release Celestial Rhapsody, which was featured at the Berlin Film Festival.

Directing and choreography credits include If I Should Die Before I Wake, La Mirada Civic; West Side Story, San Jose Civic Light Opera; Looking Glass, Laughing Horse Repertory - Washington; Mame, the Gem Theatre; The Threepenny Opera, FATE and A Shakespearean Christmas for Shakespeare Orange County. Michael has served as an on-camera acting coach for The Disney Channel and for Sal Romeo Workshops in Los Angeles during the last fifteen years.  He was awarded Chapman University Faculty of the Year in 1990 and a Chapman University Excellence in Creative Activity Award in 2000.

Directing credits at Chapman include:  The Crucible, She Loves Me, The Creation, Cloud Nine, The Grapes of Wrath, Hair, The Madwoman of Chaillot, Playboy of the Western World, The Bacchae, Animal Farm, The Fantasticks, Brigadoon, Oklahoma and Die Fledermaus.