About Met2 ~ About the Director
As the protégé of educator Alex H. Urban,
Alison Bretches has a varied background in the performing arts that includes performing, teaching, directing, choreographing, producing, and theatrical administration. For over eighteen years, Alison has been working with MET2 and Alex H. Urban as a director, choreographer, and educator. In that time, she has directed and choreographed Big River (2008 National Youth Theatre Award for Best Director of a Musical), Beauty and the Beast, The Wizard of Oz, Bye Bye Birdie, A Christmas Carol and Peter Pan, as well as choreographed such shows as Annie, The Music Man, The Sound of Music, The Wiz and many others. Alison has also choreographed or assisted on the company’s international programs with such shows as West Side Story and Grease in Moscow, Beauty and the Beast in Paris, and Peter Pan in Sydney.
Alison graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.F.A. in Musical Theatre from Boston’s Emerson College. In addition to performing and choreographing at the college, she produced such productions as Company, Fame, and Wonderful Town. She is featured in Who’s Who Among Students in American Colleges and Universities. Alison received her M.F.A. in Musical Theatre from San Diego State University, one of only three such programs in the country. Her studies at SDSU also took her abroad, where she briefly studied at the Artisten School of Theatre, Opera, and Musical Theatre at Gothenberg University in Sweden.
As a performer, some of Alison’s favorite roles have been Fricka/Erda/Needa in Das Barbecu at the Theatre in Old Town, Mary Flynn in Merrily We Roll Along, Celeste in Sondheim’s Saturday Night, the Homeless Lady in A New Brain, the Narrator in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in New Zealand, Young Sophie in Sophie: The Red Hot Mama at the Kravis Center for Performing Arts in Florida, the Old Lady in Candide, Mazeppa in Gypsy, and Cassie in A Chorus Line.
In addition to performing, Alison was also an assistant agent at a leading New York talent agency. She has choreographed A New Brain, Honk! (KPBS Patté Award winning production), Bat Boy, The Musical, A Man of No Importance, and In the Beginning for SDSU’s M.F.A. program, Leading Ladies and No Way to Treat a Lady for North Coast Repertory Theatre, directed A…My Name Will Always Be Alice at The Coronado Playhouse, and assistant directed Too Old for the Chorus at the Theatre in Old Town and Baby at North Coast Repertory Theatre. Additional choreography credits include productions of The Boys from Syracuse, Little Shop of Horrors, Once on this Island, A Chorus Line, and numerous revues. She has assisted on productions of Gypsy and Fame at Emerson College, The Root Beer Bandits at the Falcon Theatre, and Tarnish, a new rock musical that premiered at the 2001 New York International Fringe Festival.
Ms. Bretches has taught acting at Grossmont College and San Diego State University, as well as musical theatre dance at SDSU’s M.F.A. program. Alison hopes to eventually publishher thesis, Musical Theatre Dance Styles: Combining Scholarly and Practical Pedagogy. A proud member of Actors Equity Association, Americans for the Arts, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and Phi Kappa Phi (an international honors society), Alison is also a recipient of the Marion Ross Teaching Fellowship and the Carol Burnett Award for Performing Arts.
She is honored to carry on Mr. Urban’s legacy as MET2’s Artistic Director.
