Kaya is a multi-faceted performing artist. Kaya has been a part of the BSA family since 2006 when they were in TWIGS, graduated from the BSA acting department in 2012, and came back to BSA to teach TWIGS in 2017 and began teac
Tony Tsendeas is a core acting instructor at The Baltimore School for the Arts. He is the former Artistic Director of Action Theater; named Baltimore’s Best Theater by Baltimore Magazine, and featured in national theater publications American Theater Magazine and The Drama Review.
Action theater’s initial production of David Mamet’s American Buffalo was met with tremendous critical enthusiasm. The News American’s Scott Fosdick enthused that Action was “…the type of company that has reshaped the American Theater…go see it, at the least you will see an excellent production of a hard-hitting play, whether or not you’ve seen theater history remains to be seen.” Tony directed Beckett’s Happy Days (later moved to Barnard College for a Beckett Festival), The Water Engine by David Mamet, Albee’s American Dream – named Best Production by the Baltimore City Paper, The Madman and the Nun by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, and I Married a Fly by company member Thomas E. Cole. For many years, Action Theater was in residence at The Baltimore Theater project and presented many productions at this venerable venue.
Tony conceived and directed, BeckettLand . This collection of short dramatic pieces by Samuel Beckett was set in a ‘Ghost Carnival’ or ‘Bemusement Park’. Action presented BeckettLand at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The show was a tremendous hit. London Stage Magazine called the production, “A marvelous production and a must for all Beckett Fans.” Scotland’s largest daily paper, The Scotsman opined that the show was “A boldly conceived and memorably luminous production”. BeckettLand earned the company representation by renowned European Impresario, Hans de Visser who booked a multi-city tour for the company in The Netherlands.
Tony then directed Action company member Robb Bauer’s adaptation of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Presented at Goucher College as part of the company’s residency there, this multi-media, trip-hop, dark clown show phantasmagoria was named best production of the year by The Baltimore City Paper. This was the 2nd time a show directed by Tony earned this distinction; the first being Action Theater’s production of Edward Albee’s The American Dream.
For The Clown Theater troupe – Theatrics, Tony directed Circus Berserkus at Wolf Trap, Café Quikus for The Theater by the Sea and Payatz! at Roundhouse Theater in DC and The Baltimore Theater Project. For The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, Tony directed Macbeth, Othello, Julius Caesar and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. At Rep Stage, Tony directed I Am My Own Wife and Wittenberg by David Davelos, for which Tony was nominated for a Helen Hayes award as best director.
As a stage actor Tony has played a wide variety of roles in a broad array of theaters and venues in the US and abroad, including: Action Theater, Center Stage, The Lyric, The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, The Edinburgh Fringe, Scena Theater, The Meyerhoff, Theater J, Woolly Mammoth Theater, Denver’s The Verizon Center, and Verizon Hall in Philadelphia and most city theaters in The Netherlands. Roles assailed at these venues include Teach (American Buffalo), Chebutykin (The Three Sisters), Beethoven (CSI:Beethoven), Sigmund Freud (Analyze This), Bam (What Where – BeckettLand), Claudius (Hamlet), Benedick (Much Ado About Nothing), Buckinham (Richard III). Tony was formerly actor-in-residence at The Baltimore Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum and his one man show – The Poe Show has toured extensively.
Tony’s voice has graced Audible and he has narrated shows for The Discovery Channel, The History Channel and The Learning Channel. Film work includes the features, Her Alibi, The Fall from Paradise, Television: HBO’s The Wire, HBO’s Autopsy and NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Streets, The learning Channel’s Great Books Series,
While writing and directing Look Alive Baltimore 2, for the City of Baltimore, Mr. Tsendeas cast Tony award winning actress Trazana Beverly as civil rights icon Lilly Carrol Jackson. Out of this work, mutual respect and friendship evolved. Mr. Tsendeas’ first exposure to BSA came as a substitute teacher for Trazana. When Trazana prepared to leave BSA, she asked Tony to take over her classes; Donald Hicken agreed and thus began a long and productive artistic and educational journey.
hing in the Theatre Department in 2019. Having graduated from Towson University with a BFA in Acting, Kaya has maintained their local roots having performed with notable Baltimore theatre companies such as Single Carrot, Submersive Productions, Center Stage, and ACME Corporation. Kaya is currently a company member with the ACME Corporation. While Kaya is a Voice teacher for the Acting department, their passions lie in merging both the voice and the body in all forms of performing arts, specifically in poetic language.
