Staff & Board
Executive Director
Curtis Scott Dunn joined Washington Revels as its Executive Director in October 2024. Mr. Dunn has over thirty years of experience in administration for both arts organizations and educational institutions. He has toured nationally and internationally with Movement Theater International, Chamber Theater, Eos Orchestra, and Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. While with the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College, he was responsible for production operations for a four-theater, 700+ event presentation season. His tenure at Eos Orchestra included the development and premiere of numerous new works, including five full-length opera productions and a world premiere co-production between the orchestra and puppeteer Basil Twist, based on the legend of Don Quixote, at the Society for Ethical Culture auditorium in NYC. Curtis served eight seasons as Director of Production for the renown Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, where he led design teams and production staff in the realization of three new evening-length ballets, numerous premieres of smaller works, and was instrumental in the establishment of a completely new arts festival for the city of Pittsburgh, as a way to reintroduce audiences to live arts following the COVID pandemic. While serving as administrator of the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University, he collaborated with faculty to create six new graduate centers and programs stemming from the work done at the Center, including the Rutgers English Diversity Institute.
In addition to his work in arts and education, Curtis was a founding board member of La Strada Ensemble Theatre Company in Asbury Park NJ. In his free time, Curtis is a photographer, playwright, and occasional performer. He lives with his wife, Nadine, in Hyattsville MD.
Artistic Director
Roberta Gasbarre is artistic director for Washington Revels as well as stage director for the annual Christmas Revels. A recognized leader in arts-based learning; her primary interests are in mixed forms, new works, large community celebrations, chamber musicals, theatre for social change, heritage arts, and theatre for young audiences. Since 1999, Roberta also serves as a Museum Specialist in theater and the Director for Smithsonian Institution’s Discovery Theater, writing, directing and producing over 350 performances for 50,000 people each year; touring shows, school residencies, and shows on the National Mall.
Her professional credits include work at most Washington DC-area theaters including five years respectively at Arena Stage’s outreach company Living Stage (Production Coordination) and The Shakespeare Theater (choreography and movement.) Her work has been Helen Hayes nominated numerous times and two of her productions have earned Helen Hayes awards: A Dance Against Darkness: Living with Aids (Co-director) & Quilters (Assoc. Director/Choreographer.) Roberta’s choreography, movement work and directing were seen at such venues as Roundhouse Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, and the Washington Jewish Theatre. Fluent in sign language, she also served on the faculty at Gallaudet University and was on the leadership team for the historic world conference and festival, Deaf Way I.
Roberta has taught acting, movement and period style in workshops or classes at such institutions as American University, UMD College Park & Baltimore, Wolf Trap and through Kaiser Permanente’s AIDS and health education initiative. She loves working with young performers and has done so at George Washington University (Hair & Pippin) and at Montgomery College Rockville and their Summer Dinner Theatre program since 1991 on shows from Candide to The Who’s Tommy. In 1999, Roberta became a Museum Specialist in theatrte and the Director for Smithsonian Institution’s Discovery Theater, writing, directing and producing over 350 performances for 50,000 people each year; touring shows, school residencies, and shows on the National Mall.
Roberta received her BA from the Catholic University of America and MFA from Towson University, specializing in interdisciplinary world theatre. She lives in Silver Spring, MD. Son Jamie is a musician and also works in video, photography and sound; and daughter, Caelyn is in the video game industry, writing, coding and performing interactive media in Boston.
Associate Artistic Director
Since 1993, Andrea Jones Blackford has been affiliated with Washington Revels in many roles — chorus member; Board member; as founder and music director of the Washington Revels Jubilee Voices; and, since 2021, as Associate Artistic Director. Under her leadership since launching in 2010, the Jubilee Voices ensemble has made appearances at historic sites, community events and concert stages throughout the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, including the National Archives; the Benjamin Banneker Colonial Market Fair; Arlington House; the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site; Hampton National Historic Site; and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Jubilee Voices has been featured on the PBS show Time Team America and CNN’s Situation Room, and music from the ensemble was also featured in the finale of the PBS Civil War drama, Mercy Street.
Blackford was associate music director for the 2011 Washington Revels Recording Hard Times Come Again No More: American Music of the Civil War Era, and the soundtrack for the Heritage Montgomery documentary, Life in a War Zone: Montgomery County During the Civil War. She is also co-music director for the Washington Revels Heritage Voices.
Before founding Jubilee Voices, Andrea served as unit director for the 2006 American Christmas Revels, for the production’s African-American “Jonkonnu” sequence; portrayed educator Nannie Helen Burroughs in the Washington Revels/Library of Congress presentation, Discovering Hidden Washington; and was assistant director and performer for the initial production of Bridges of Song, Washington Revels’ collaboration with THEARC and Allen Chapel AME Church in Southeast Washington.
In addition to her work with Washington Revels she was music director for The Joyful Noise, a women’s quintet devoted to performance of early American sacred music she founded at the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection (Alexandria, VA). She spent six seasons as a member of the Capriccio Catch Club, a musical troupe at the Maryland Renaissance Festival. Andrea was a member of Foundry United Methodist Choir of Washington D.C. She has also sung with the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection Choir; St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church Gospel Choir and Chorale (Washington, D.C); and the Nevilla Ottley Singers (Silver Spring, MD).
Music Director
Elizabeth (Betsy) Fulford has performed with Washington Revels since 1993 and has served as its overall music director since 2004. In that capacity, she provides musical direction for the annual Winter Revels production, Spring Revels, and the year-round performing ensembles Gallery Voices and Heritage Voices. In 2017 her work with the Washington Revels choruses was honored when Washington Revels received the Ovation Award for Choral Excellence from the Choralis Foundation in the “Outstanding Specialty or Show Chorus” category. Betsy has produced three recordings for Washington Revels: Sing & Rejoice (2013; winner of the 2014 Best Classical Recording “Wammie” from the Washington Area Music Association); Hard Times Come Again No More: American Music of the Civil War Era (2011); and Le temps des Fetes: French Canadian Music & Dance in Celebration of the Winter Solstice (2010).
Betsy is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music (BM ’80 and MM ’82) where she performed roles in many operas, oratorios, and chamber works. She was awarded three separate fellowships to attend the Aspen Music Festival and School in the areas of choral music, vocal chamber music, and opera theater. An active professional musician in the D.C. area, Betsy led Washington Revels Heritage Voices collaboration with the Capitol Hill Chorale in a concert featuring the music of the Shakers in June 2024. She has also sung with many local groups, including the Wolf Trap Chamber Singers, Washington Bach Consort, Washington Master Chorale, Washington National Opera Chorus, and The Choral Arts Society of Washington. After retiring from the Library of Congress as a librarian and webmaster in 2023, Betsy continues to support the Library’s Veterans History Project and serves as director of music for Augustana Lutheran Church in Washington, D.C.
