Randy Messersmith

The Athletic Actor | Movement, Laban & Physical Transformation

Randy Messersmith is a professional actor, director, educator, fight choreographer, and co-founder of Southwest Shakespeare Company, with more than four decades of experience across theatre, film, television, and actor training. A SAG-AFTRA actor with an MFA in Acting and Directing, Randy spent five years working professionally in New York before building an extraordinary career in Arizona as both an artist and educator. He has taught actors at Arizona State University, Scottsdale Community College’s School of Film + Theatre, Phoenix College, Glendale Community College, MiraCosta College, Scottsdale Conservatory Theatre, and Arizona Actors Academy. His work spans classical theatre, on-camera performance, physical comedy, stage combat, directing, and filmmaking—bringing Acting Essentials students the perspective of an artist who has spent a lifetime exploring the craft from nearly every angle.

David Barker

Connected Motion | Physical Responsiveness & the Actor

David Barker is an actor, director, movement specialist, fight choreographer, author, and Emeritus Professor of Theatre at Arizona State University, where he taught movement and acting for 40 years. His professional career spans Broadway, Off-Broadway, national and international tours, regional theatre, international festivals, and television, and he has taught master classes, workshops, and residencies throughout the United States and internationally. David holds an MFA in Theatre Arts from Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts and is the author of Connected Motion: A Common Sense Approach to Movement Training for Actors. With a career devoted to understanding how the actor’s body, imagination, and physical choices work together in performance, David brings Acting Essentials students an extraordinary depth of experience and the opportunity to learn from an artist who has spent four decades training actors to develop a more expressive, responsive, and fully embodied instrument.

Rosy Mack

Somatic Understanding & Emotional Expression and Ensemble/Connection

Rosy Mack is a professional dancer, choreographer, producer, and teaching artist with more than 15 years of experience in somatic movement and contemporary choreography. She is the founder and former artistic director of Ignite Collaborative, a nonprofit dance organization she led from 2011–2021, producing original concert-length works and facilitating interdisciplinary collaborations. Her choreography has been presented at Tempe Center for the Arts, Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, Canal Convergence, Herberger Theater, Taliesin West, and Alwun House, as well as Dance in the Desert Festival, Arizona Dance Festival, and Third Space Dance Festival. From 2016–2020, she created commissioned, site-responsive work for Canal Convergence. In 2019 and in 2025, she was selected as an artist at Taliesin West, presenting her solo Delirium with composer Michael Dana in 2019 and leading a somatic creativity workshop and performance for donors and patrons in 2025.

Trained through the Wolf Trap Arts Institute and Kennedy Center for the Arts, Rosy works with Scottsdale Arts as an arts-integration specialist, facilitating residencies for pre-K through high school students. Her pedagogy uses movement as a tool for creative inquiry, connecting embodied practice with academic curriculum while fostering expression, collaboration, and critical thinking.