Instructors

Liz Hayden started Kids Create! over 15 years ago here at Lakewood.  She started teaching adults and children after receiving her MFA in performance at NIU.  Upon moving to Portland in 2004, she had the great pleasure of teaching at Northwest Children's theatre up until a few years ago.   She runs her own after school drama program at West Hills Montessori, where she also teaches Shakespeare and adapts and directs the Spring Musical each year.. She is a performer herself, and had the pleasure of being a company member of Hand2Mouth theatre devising shows from 2006 - 2019.  There she dove into the world of devising work from scratch.  She loves it, and brings it full circle back to her Kids Create! young performers, where they devise their own shows.  Being an actor herself, Liz has had the pleasure of working with many of Portland's great artists, friends and companies, and always is brainstorming the next show!

We are very excited to announce that Eve Brindis will be joining our dance staff. Eve is a very popular dance educator and choreographer. She teaches youth and adult dance classes in ballet and various styles for Spotlight Musical Theatre Academy, Lake Oswego Parks & Recreation and local schools and dance studios. Her choreography has most recently been seen in productions of The Little Mermaid, Legally Blonde JR., Bring It On and Lakewood’s Elf JR. and Shrek JR. She received her BA from Linfield College.

Nancy McDonald has lived a joyful life steeped in the arts. She is an actor, director, performing arts educator and corporate trainer. As well as having starring roles in over 40 theatre productions and the soap opera All My Children, she founded Shakespeare Stage Company in New York City and The Writer’s Lab in Hollywood. Directing credits include A Scrooge Mart Christmas Carol and The End of the World and Other Funny Stuff for No Illusions Theatre in LA, Murder on the Nile, Wait Until Dark on Lakewood’s Headlee Mainstage. She currently teaches her signature classes Acting For Non Actors, Professional Acting, How To Tell Your Story, and Playing with Shakespeare at Lakewood Theatre. During the school year, you can also find her teaching at various elementary and middle schools, junior highs, the arts residencies, and Loud and Clear and Read Write Act with Oregon Children’s Theatre.

Sandra Peabody is an Emmy-award winning writer/producer/director and has worked in film and broadcast television. She is a graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City where she studied with master acting teacher Sanford Meisner for two years. She also studied drama at Carnegie-Mellon University, and later earned a B.A. in Arts and Letters. As a teacher and coach for the past twenty-five years, Sandra develops actors and also teaches speech. She splits her time between Los Angeles and the Northwest to help prepare talent for a professional career. She is proud of her students careers which range from becoming a lawyer, novelist, and teacher, to a television reporter, host, and actor. Students acting credits include; leads and series regulars on Breaking In (FOX), The Pretty Little Liars (FAMILY), The Loop (CW), Grounded for Life (WB), All about Us (NBC), The Reaper (CW) and reoccurring episodes on “V” (ABC), and Dexter (SHOWTIME).

Liz O'Donnell is a local performer and has been seen most recently at Lakewood Theatre as Daphne in Holiday Inn and in the Lost Treasures series for A Day in Hollywood / A Night in the Ukraine. Liz has also been on stage at Broadway Rose (Thoroughly Modern Millie, West Side Story, Footloose), Stumptown Stages (West Side Story, Mamma Mia), and triangle productions (The Nancy Boggs Story, Last Summer at Bluefish Cove). As the resident choreographer for the Newberg High School Theater Department, Liz has had the pleasure of working on productions such as The Addams Family, Matilda, Mamma Mia, The Spongebob Musical, Little Women, and Hello Dolly. Liz is the creator of bit.ly/pdxtapdance, a website resource devoted to helping adults find a tap dance class. Ig: @liz.dnce

Laurence Overmire is an actor, director, educator, poet and genealogist. Graduating with an M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota, he began his professional acting career with the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and has performed on Broadway in Amadeus as well as the New York Shakespeare Festival and the television soap operas All My Children and Loving. He has an international reputation as a poet and has been involved with the NEA's Poetry Out Loud program for several years.

Overmire has spent much of the last two decades involved in genealogy research. He created several reference databases online including The Ancestry of Overmire, Tifft, Richardson, Bradford, Reed, which has received over 1.8 million hits and has helped hundreds of thousands of people trace their family trees. He is also the author of five genealogy books. His latest is Digging For Ancestral Gold: The Fun and Easy Way to Start Your Genealogy Quest. Laurence has been an arts educator for over 30 years and currently teaches Oregon Children's Theatre's Loud and Clear public speaking program.

Terry Brock's diverse background includes multiple choreographic works, and an international performing and teaching career.  Terry has shared the stage with legendary dancers including Ben Vereen, Shirley MacLaine, and a host of others. She has created repertory and appeared with major symphonies. Terry has collaborated with Mercer Ellington in a tribute to his father, Duke, and is the conservator of the late great Eleanor Powell's choreography. Terry is a former member of the Nationally acclaimed Jazz Tap Ensemble appearing with members Lynn Dally and Sam Weber for several years both as a long-standing company member, and then as a guest artist. She has shared tap stages with legendary hoofers over the years, including Gregory Hines, Steve Condos, The Nicholas Brothers, Bunny Briggs, Honi Coles, Cholly Atkins, LaVaughn Robinson, Brenda Bufalino, Dianne Walker, Eddie Brown, and many others. Terry appears worldwide at tap festivals and has been the Ambassador of Tap in conjunction with the U.S. Embassy in Prague, CZ.  She is artistic advisor to the Vancouver Tap Society, and her students could be seen in the opening number of the 2010 Olympics.   She is regarded as an American Tap Master and has been honored at UCLA’s Women in Tap along with her idols Ginger Rogers and Eleanor Powell.  Terry was resident choreographer, lead dancer and back-up singer with the Solid Gold recording group, The Spiral Starecase, touring with the group for ten years.  Their song, “More Today than Yesterday” is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  She has staged Las Vegas premiers, dinner theater, stage acts, and the Mrs. America and Mrs. World pageants.  Terry has created choreography for musical theater, dance companies, and dance-based academies. Terry teaches privately, and her passion to train the next generation thrives.

Laura Onizuka is the founder and owner of Experience Flamenco. She has become a conduit of flamenco in the Pacific Northwest organizing classes, workshops, and events for the community. 

She leads yearly flamenco tours to Spain where students from all over the world join her to experience flamenco in its birthplace. She loves sharing her love of flamenco in Spain with others while furthering her study of this complex art form.

Laura has performed with such renown artists as Latin Grammy winning flamenco guitarist, Antonio Rey, Ricardo López, Manuel Gutierrez, and Nat Hulskamp and Lamiae Naki of Seffarine.

Laura is fueled by the challenge and beauty of flamenco. She believes anyone who is moved by flamenco has the capability to access it.

Website: experienceflamenco.com

Class info (general): https://www.experienceflamenco.com/portland-flamenco-classes

Registration: https://www.experienceflamenco.com/class-registration

Julie Lane is an educational coordinator for the West Linn-Wilsonville School District and in her spare time directs the 100+ person, double-cast West Linn-Wilsonville Middle School Musical presenting popular classics such as Shrek, Grease (School Edition), Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and Bye Bye Birdie. She believes in the power of theatre, especially for today’s youth, and can’t wait to work with the Lakewood team once again to bring more young people to the stage.

A Portland native, Kaeli Porter has been involved in music and theatre since childhood.  She sang in the Pacific Youth Choir, Oregon Repertory Singers and Cleveland High School Choirs and participated in plays at the Northwest Children's Theater.  She holds a Bachelors of Music Education from University of Oregon (2008) and a Master of Music in Conducting from Portland State University (2014).  Currently, Kaeli teaches choir and drama at Inza R. Wood Middle School in Wilsonville and provides musical direction for the West Linn-Wilsonville Middle School Musical along with her partner in all things theater, Julie Lane.  In her spare time, Kaeli is the Soprano Section Leader in the choir at St. Michael and All Angels Church in NE Portland and serves on the boards of the Pacific Youth Choir and the Oregon Chapter of the American Choral Directors Association.  

Cyndy Ramsey-Rier has served as the music director and conductor for Lakewood Theatre productions of Hands On A Hardbody, Funny Girl, Holiday Inn, Something Rotten, Sister Act,  All Shook Up, A Christmas Story and more. She has been musical director and conducted over fifty regional high schools and colleges productions. As a performer, she has been seen onstage at Lakewood Theatre, Triangle Productions, Clackamas Rep and The Musical Theatre Company.  Favorite roles include: Anna in The King and I, Marian Paroo in The Music Man, Irene Malloy in Hello, Dolly!, Johanna in Sweeney Todd, Agnes in I Do! I Do!, Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus and the title roles in Mame and Little Mary Sunshine. A proud member of NATS, Cyndy is a voice teacher and vocal coach, with an independent studio located in Beaverton. 

Melody, true to her name, has been a lifelong musician and outspoken advocate for the arts, particularly for disadvantaged and underserved communities. She began attending Berklee College of Music in the Fall of 2012 on a performance scholarship, where she confidently and wholeheartedly declared her major as Music Education. While living in Boston, she played in pit orchestras for local theaters and high schools, sang and played in recording studio ensembles for albums, short films, and video games, as well as conducted the pit orchestra for Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences’ 2013 production of Footloose.

She has been teaching private voice, piano, and woodwind lessons since 2017, and she was thrilled to be able to move her studio to Lakewood Center for the Arts in October of 2025. She specializes in vocal techniques for Musical Theater and Stage Acting, though she also loves to teach rock, pop, folk, classical, and music theory. If your child has always wanted to take private lessons but cost has been a barrier, ask about Melody's need-based scholarship program (subject to slot availability). Learn more and inquire about private lessons for ages 5-18 here: https://knoxtheater.com/

She is also proud to have been co-directing Lakewood’s Jr Theater Program with her husband, Gavin Knox, since September of 2023. This free program aligns perfectly with their core mission of providing access to quality performing arts education to all, as they know they would never have been able to succeed without the robust band and choir programs in their public K-12 schools in New Jersey. They put on a late Fall show and a late Spring show each year, and auditions are usually end of September and end of February, respectively. You can keep an eye on opportunities to join the Jr program here: https://lakewood-center.org/theatre/auditions/

Lastly, come join them both each Summer for their 2-week-long Shining Stars Kids Camp. Your child will dance, sing, act, learn, laugh, make friends, and put on a 30-minute musical that they can be proud of– complete with professional lighting and sound on Lakewood’s Main Stage!

Gavin has been directing and teaching youth theater for 10 years, working with students braving their first production to high schoolers preparing for their college auditions. He directed the theater program at Pemberton Township High School in Pemberton, NJ from 2017 to 2022 and has been the director of youth theater at Lakewood Center for the Arts in Lake Oswego, OR since 2023. Gavin’s students have gone on to land roles in productions with Stumptown Stages and the Lakewood Center Mainstage, and be admitted to Tisch School of the Arts at NYU.

Since 2017, Gavn has worked on two coasts as an actor and stage manager with community and professional theater companies such as Pegasus Theater Company, Kelsey Theater, G&S Society of West Chester, The Eagle Theater, Bridge Players, Lakewood Center, Penguin Productions, and OPS Shakespeare Festival. He’s also done a bit of extra work with Lucca Films and Amazon Studios.

Gavin teaches acting, directing, and audition prep for Musical Theater, Modern, and Shakespearean and Classical styles. He breaks the complex, emotional world of acting down into clear, concrete fundamentals that students of any age can understand and practice to improve their skills. He helps students find confidence in themselves as they connect with characters from stories old and new and do things they never would have thought themselves capable of.