Middle and High School students are invited to join Soul Rep Theatre Company for a two-week, full-day summer camp focused on media production, performance, and creative liberation. Students will explore acting for the camera, voice acting, screenwriting, filmmaking, and collaborative storytelling—guided by professional teaching artists and guest creators.
The experience culminates in a student film showcase and screening for family and friends, with a virtual viewing option available.
Tonya Holloway is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, director, and actor with over 20 years of experience in the film, commercial, and theatre industries. A passionate storyteller and mentor, she has made significant contributions to independent cinema and stage, both nationally and internationally.
Holloway is a Co-Founder of Soul Rep Theatre Company, Dallas’s longest-running Black theatre company (voted 2025 Best Theatre Company - D Magazine), where she has nurtured diverse narratives and emerging talent. She has also worked extensively as a public school educator across the U.S. and abroad during her husband’s military service overseas, bringing a global perspective to her creative work.
In television, Holloway served as Writing Consultant and Casting Director for Season Two of the Amazon Prime series #Washed. Her stage adaptation of Virginia Hamilton’s Her Stories was produced in Dallas and Stuttgart, Germany, earning five nominations at the prestigious Toppers Awards, including Best Play and a Special Judges’ Choice Award for Best Original Music, which she composed.
Holloway’s work continues to gain recognition in the independent film circuit. She was awarded the 2024 Women In Film (Dallas) Suzanne Cooley Scholarship for her MFA studies in Cinematic Arts at the University of Texas at Arlington. Most recently, she won the 2025 Denton Black Film Festival Short Screenplay Competition, 2025 Asian Film Festival - Dallas, finalist in the 2025 Oak Cliff Film Festival and received DBFF’s Viewer’s Choice Award for Best Music Video Competition.
Tonya Holloway is a committed artist, mentor, and advocate for diverse storytelling. She is a wife and mother of four based in Dallas, Texas.
Guinea Bennett-Price is a Dallas born actor, director, playwright and Theatre Conservatory Director of Booker T. Washington High School for Performing and Visual Arts. She holds a Masters in Theater from Texas A&M Commerce and a BFA in Theater from Howard University in Washington D.C. She is a founding member and Co-Artistic Director of Soul Rep Theatre Company. Recent acting credits include the role of Ravinia Whitfield with Kitchen Dog Theater and opposite her son Esau in The Water Gun Song for the Dallas Children’s Theater. Favorite roles have been the Blues Speak Woman in Spunk and Storyteller in Herstories. She directed The Freedman's, Soul Rep’s ongoing signature production, featured in the 2018 Elevator Project. Other directing credits include Snowy Day (Soul Rep/ Dallas Children’s Theater), My Red Hand My Black Hand, Black Nativity (Jubilee Theatre), In The Blood (Soul Rep/Undermain), For Colored Girls…Cara Mía/Soul Rep) Once On This Island and Dreamgirls (Soul Rep/TFM Productions). Diary Of Anne Frank, Rhyme Deferred, Blues For Mister Charlie, Death and the King’s Horseman, Love|Sick and Big Love (Booker T. Washington HSPVA)
Lisa Cotie is thrilled to work with SoulRep this summer! She has taught with the company in Dallas and at the Quartz Mountain Oklahoma Arts Camp, and has worked on multiple productions. Most recently, Lisa has been nominated for a Broadway Dallas Award and an Irma P Hall Award for directing The African Company Present Richard III at SoulRep last January. She is Assistant Theatre Conservatory Director at Booker T Washington HSPVA. She loves to guide young actors and artists to make discoveries and grow. “Giving students the tools to realize their own potential is one of the most rewarding things I can do.” Lisa has a M.Ed in Theatre Pedagogy and Curriculum from SouthEastern Oklahoma University. She has been a prominent director and acting coach in the Dallas community for many years. She was adjunct faculty at the Dallas Theatre Center, then a founding member and resident acting coach for Cry Havoc Theatre Company. In her spare time, she loves to spend time in Colorado and New Mexico, go to concerts, ride roller coasters, and most of all, she is an avid Dallas Stars hockey fan.
Jemal McNeil grew up in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. And was a part of August Wilson’s theater company, Kuntu Repertory Theater, as a child. He has enjoyed directing for the past 25 years, and believes that it is an artists responsibility to affect and change the world with their art. Some of his theatre credits are Corpus Christi, Fences, Born Losers, Conboyz, Petrified Forest, Blacker the Berry, Aboriginal Treatment Center, Eye Mouth Grafitti, his original thriller What's Done in the Dark, Hurt Village in Dallas (Soul Rep Theater, and his last directed piece was FLOAT, a one woman show with May May Ali in Chicago.
He trained at Howard University and Shakespeare Theater at the Folger. He is a 2001 NAACP Theater Award-nominee for Best Director for his work on Steel Magnolias, which Maryum ‘May May’ Ali was also nominated for best actress.
As an acting coach, Jemal has worked with artist such as: Octavia Spencer, Taraji P Henson, Janelle Monae(HIDDEN FIGURES), Yara Shahidi, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar, A$AP Rocky, K-Pop’s Eric Nam and various others.
As an actor, Jemal McNeil has done such notable theater as Othello with Avery Brooks and Andre Brauer, Red Badge of Courage with Richard Thomas, and King Lear and Macbeth with Charles Dutton, Snow Angel at the Elephant Theatre, Lesson and Sessions of a Madman's Confessions is his original one man show, which ran for 16 weeks in Los Angeles, The ArtShare Los Angeles in Aboriginal Treatment Center, in which he was actor/director and got recommended by the L.A. Times and L.A. Weekly. He was last seen in the 2025 release of CUTTER’S CLUB with Tony Todd. Also various television and film productions… Cold Case, The Shield, Fuitvale Station, Community, and BMF.
He would like to thank Soul Rep. and Bishop Arts for their support and artistic integrity. And he also thanks the cast and crew for all their time work and love.
Breathe in the artist and breathe out the civilian, baby.” ~JemalMcNeil
For More Information vist https://jemalmcneil.com/
