Meet Crown Theatre
Hello, Welcome to Crown Theatre! We are a Non Profit 501 C-3, producing theatre in South Austin/Buda/Kyle. We strive to make live theatre accessible, educational, and fun. Our mission is to create a thoughtful and inclusive theatre home where we cultivate meaningful experiences through high quality performance and education for the South Austin/Buda/Kyle area.
Andreá Smith (Co-Producing Artistic Director)- Andreá has been active in the Austin theatre scene for nearly two decades as an actor, director, producer, set designer, costumer, and choreographer. She’s worked on a range of theatre productions, from Shakespeare to musicals, and everything in between, and has garnered 10 B. Iden Payne nominations (and a few wins) along the way, including: Best Director of a Play for Youth, Wiley and the Hairy Man, (Second Youth Family Theatre), Outstanding Set Design, Wiley and The Hairy Man, (Second Youth Family Theatre), Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play for Youth, Charlotte’s Web, (Scottish Rite Theatre), Outstanding Small Cast Performance, Storm Still, (The Vortex), Outstanding Cast Performance, The Rover, (Hidden Room Theatre). Andreá is a former board member of the Hidden Room Theatre, and Penfold Theatre, as well as a company member for The Vortex and Shrewd Productions. By day, she works in Human Resources at a tech company, and she is the founder of an official 501(c)3 nonprofit, bakingforgood.org; which uses the power of flour to raise funds for Austin-based nonprofits in need.
Tobie Minor (Co-Producing Artistic Director)-Tobie is the Director of Stage Combat and teaches Movement at Texas State University and is the co-founder of Violent Crown. He has been a certified Advanced Actor Combatant and has been with the Society of American Fight Directors (SAFD) since 2000. He has choreographed violence at Texas State, Zach Theatre, Austin Shakespeare, Austin Playhouse, Hidden Room Theatre, and Penfold Theatre to name a few. He has been nominated and won many awards both locally (B. Iden Payne) and internationally (Falstaff Award), and his choreography has been featured at the Blackfriars conference and on The Globe stage in London. He is an award wining actor who's credits include several short films, commercials, voice over work, and a rather lengthy list of stage productions in Austin, Chicago, Colorado, and many points between, working with theaters like Creede Repertory, Austin Shakespeare, Zach Theatre, Austin Playhouse, Chicago Shakespeare, Stage Left Theatre, Looking Glass, Hidden Room, and Penfold Theatre.
Amy Minor began touring in Germany with the American Musical Theater Company as Luisa in the Fantasticks when she was 16 yrs old in bilingual German/English production. She holds a B.F.A. in theater from Stephens College and lived in Kansas City and Chicago for many years acting at various theater companies (Coterie, American Heartland, Chicago Shakespeare, Chicago Jewish Theater, Lifeline Theater, Barrel of Monkeys). Her favorite roles include Hen in the original musical ‘Click, Clack, Moo, Cows that Type’, and Petra in Sondheim’s ‘A Little Night Music’, and most recently Jenny Hill in ‘Big Fish’ at the Austin Playhouse Theater. Since moving to Austin in 2008, in addition to being a busy realtor and mentor, she has been diligently working on her other favorite role, being a mom to her two sons: Aiden and Liam. Amy is a founding member, and the managing director, for Crown Theatre and has served on the boards of several other amazing theater companies in Austin (Hidden Room Theatre and Penfold). You can catch her on stage in the fall in Jarrott Productions next show!
Jennifer Jennings (Co-Education Director)- Most recently seen eating up all the okra as Weezy the Talking Goat in the Rolling World Premiere of Alabaster by Audrey Cefaly, Jen is honored to be a founding member of The Crown Theatre with her beloved quaranteam. Fairly new to the production side of theatre, she served as assistant director for the Vortex Rep’s Summer Youth production of Alice’s Wonderland in 2019 and as assistant music director for Sing Muse in 2013. She is slated to direct Summer Youth Theatre 2021 for the Vortex Repertory. Favorite shows include Much Ado About Nothing (Penfold Theatre), Agent Andromeda (Sky Candy), The History of King Lear (The Hidden Room), The Great American Trailer Park Musical (Austin Theatre Project), Still Now (Shrewd Productions), Lear (Vortex Rep), Wild Horses (Vortex Rep; 2018 B. Iden Payne Outstanding Actress in a Drama; Robert Faires' Top 10 (+1) Theatre Riches of 2017; 2018 Austin Critics Table Performance by an Individual), Storm Still (Vortex Rep; 2018 B. Iden Payne Small Cast Performance in Scripted Theatre), Terminus (Vortex Rep; B. Iden Payne Outstanding Cast Performance), and Sing Muse (Vortex Rep; B. Iden Payne Outstanding Original Score). Jen is an elementary school counselor by day with 16 years experience in public education, and she is currently pursuing her Master’s in Psychology to join her Master’s in Education. She is raising her precious daughter, Selah, with her lighting designer husband James, and their two pittie rescues, Pepper and Cash.
Advisory Board Members
Libby Hollinger (Co-Education Director) is a lifelong Texan and long time educator. She studied Musical Theater at Texas State University and Theater Pedagogy at NYU. She loves being able to share the joy of theater with young actors and is thrilled to be a part of Crown Theatre- serving central Texas with passion and inclusion.
Beth Burns
Beth Burns began her career at the world-famous Groundlings Theatre in Los Angeles, where she worked as a teacher and performer for over ten years. She is an actor (Saturday Night Live, American Crime, Friday Night Lights), director, producer, and NEA award-winning playwright, studying under theatre luminaries José Quintero, Sydney Berger, and Edward Albee. Now, Burns is the Founder/Artistic Director of the award-winning Hidden Room Theatre, specializing in immersive/interactive new works and scholar-driven classics. The company toured the US and abroad, including stops at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, Oxford University, the British Library, and the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-Upon-Avon. In the daytime, Burns is Director of Creative for archiving and technology company Inveniem, the driving force behind the Metallica Black Box, the Def Leppard Vault, and many more music icons' online museums.