Sharon D. Tolczyk, Artistic Director
Mollie Washburne, Administrative Director

Elizabeth Roberts, Music Advisor
Boomie Pedersen, Theatre Advisor
John A. Hancock, Visual Arts Advisor

Sharon D. Tolczyk, Artistic Director & OCSA Founder

Sharon Donohue Tolczyk previously taught ballet on the faculties of the Boston Ballet School, Walnut Hill School for the arts (Natick, MA), Boston Ballet’s Children’s Summer Dance Workshop, Amherst Ballet Centre (MA), Schwarz School of Dance (Dayton, OH), Wright State University’s PRODANCE (Dayton, OH), Albemarle Ballet Theatre, and recently at the Greenwood Community Center. At Walnut Hill School, she was a member of the dance department’s ballet faculty, and Director of the Dance Extension Division and Summer Dance Workshop. Prior to her teaching career, Sharon danced with the Dayton Ballet Company and Peridance, a contemporary ballet company in New York City. While in Dayton, she also served as Ballet Mistress for the company and apprentice company, Dayton Ballet II. She has choreographed for the Amherst Ballet Theatre Company, Dayton Ballet II, Walnut Hill, and Albemarle Ballet Theatre.

Sharon received her early training at the Princeton Ballet and in London, England. She studied at Walnut Hill School and the Amherst Ballet Centre during high school, and completed the Major Exams for the Royal Academy of Dancing, London, qualifying her as an Associate Member. After graduating from high school, she was a scholarship student for two years at the School of the Pennsylvania Ballet where she trained with Lupe Serrano and performed in the Pennsylvania Ballet’s Nutcracker. During her professional dancing career, she studied in New York City with Maggie Black, Marjorie Mussman, Benjamin Harkarvy, Larry Rhodes and others. She attended workshops with the Twyla Tharp and Paul Taylor dance companies.

Since moving to Charlottesville in 1996, Sharon has studied art at PVCC with Chica Tenney, John Hancock, and Rebekah Wostrel, and at Mary Baldwin College with Sue Marion. She was a T.A. at Murray Elementary School, where she also served as Chair of the PTO’s Cultural Enrichment for three years, and was an Art Print volunteer. She is a member of the Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society. She and her husband, Dariusz, an Associate Professor in the Slavic Department at the University of Virginia, live in western Albemarle with their two children, Adam and Aleksandra.

Mollie Washburne, Administrative Director & OCSA Founder

Mollie Washburne holds a B.A. in Journalism and Theater from Indiana University, Bloomington. A lifelong ballet enthusiast and supporter, Mollie began her dance training at the Montgomery School of Ballet in Alabama and danced with the Montgomery Civic Ballet, under the direction of Audrey Gryder and Duane Dishion. She went on to train with George Verdak, formerly of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and with Jürgen Pagels at Indiana University. She also studied at the Briansky Ballet Center and was a scholarship student with the Joffrey Ballet in New York City.

Mollie and her husband, Jake, who is the General Registrar for Albemarle County, have lived in Crozet with their three children, Spalding, Ben, and George, since 1988. Mollie established the Art Print program at Brownsville Elementary School and has taught ballet at the Lexington School of Ballet (Virginia) and more recently at Albemarle Ballet Theatre. She is the Managing Editor of New Literary History, a journal of theory and interpretation at the University of Virginia.

Elizabeth Roberts, Music Advisor

Principal Bassoon and Outreach Coordinator of the Charlottesville Symphony, and Principal Bassoon of the Roanoke Symphony, Elizabeth Roberts joined the performance faculty at the University of Virginia in 2001. She freelances on bassoon and contrabassoon with orchestras such as the National Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Richmond Symphony, and Virginia Symphony. She is an active chamber musician, serving as the bassoonist for the Albemarle Ensemble, and greatly enjoys teaching private lessons in bassoon and reedmaking to local middle school and high school students. As a student she attended the Aspen Music Festival (summers 1998-2003), the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (2004), and the Banff Centre for the Arts (1997, 2008-2009). She has served as a performer and faculty member at several summer festivals, including Music Mind and Reading (Winston-Salem, NC), the Wintergreen Performing Arts Festival, and the Cascade Festival of Music (Bend, OR). Ms. Roberts is the Director of the UVA Summer Chamber Music Festival. Her principal teachers include Arthur Weisberg, Stephen Maxym and Frank Morelli.

Boomie Pedersen, Theatre Advisor & Instructor

Boomie Pedersen was born and raised in New York City and was for many years a professional-track scholarship student with the Joffrey Ballet. She gave up the dance to attend Princeton University, where she eventually majored in English and Theater and won the Frances LeMoyne Paige Prize at graduation for both theater and dance. She spent 10 years on and off in Tokyo, Japan, where she did professional voice-over work, ran Tokyo Theater for Children, was actor, director and board member for Tokyo International Players and wrote several commissioned pieces for Earth Day and other special events. She also taught English at several Tokyo colleges and worked with a group using drama to teach language skills, as well as doing a stint at Temple University as a theater teacher. Next came a brief 18 months in Los Angeles, where she was involved in the Asian Theater Lab and acted in the premiere performance of Widescreen Version of the World by Han Ong, as well as working with the Los Angeles Shakespeare Festival.

When she relocated to Charlottesville in 1995, Boomie became involved at Live Arts both as an actor (Scrooge, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Assassins, Edward the II, Copenhagen, Noises Off, Old Times) and a director (Three Tall Women, Buried Child, Play About the Baby, The Underpants, Glengarry Glen Ross). She also worked with the Nelson County Drama Foundation and mounted an outdoor production of Earl Hamner's The Conflict at Mountain Cove Vineyard in 1998 and 1999. She has worked with Offstage Theater, Four County Players, Piedmont Virginia Community College, UVA's Drama Department, Heritage Rep and Wintergreen Performing Arts. She taught theater at Renaissance School in Charlottesville for four years, served as an adjunct theater teacher at the Governor's School in Fishersville and was adjunct professor of Acting and Directing at Randolph College in Lynchburg.

Boomie lives in Crozet with three of her six children, a husband/theater collaborator and several cats and dogs. She has been Co-Artistic Director of the Hamner Theater with Peter Coy since the theater opened in 2005 and has directed and produced over a dozen productions there. She served as Artistic Director for the Earl Hamner Playwrights Conference (now the Virginia Playwrights' Initiative) in 2006 and 2007 and continues in that capacity for the Virginia Playwrights and Screenwriters Initiative. She recently saw her long-time vision of theater collaboration come to fruition with the founding of the Central Virginia Theatre Alliance (CVTA) of which the Hamner is a founding member.

John A. Hancock, Visual Arts Advisor

John A. Hancock has over 30 years experience teaching a broad range of painting, watercolor, drawing, and design to adults, college students, and teens. As an artist, he has exhibited his work in competitive exhibitions and solo shows around the country and in England.
Click to read John A. Hancock's full bio.