Tee Quillin is a classically trained professional actor & Associate Professor of Theatre. He holds his Bachelors of Arts in Theatre from the University of Alabama and his Masters of Fine Arts in Acting from the Meadows School for the Arts at Southern Methodist University.
Tee started out by working his way through his undergraduate program as on-air talent for several professional and public radio stations. During his time at the University of Alabama, he co-founded Guerilla Theatre, an evening of scenes, monologues, and one-act plays. Conceived as an arena for students to fully explore their potential and experiment with various theatrical form, it was and still is managed completely by students, including conception, production, direction, house management, and publicity. Guerilla Theatre is still an active part of campus life at the University of Alabama today.
While at Southern Methodist University, Tee organized professional auditions and showcases that were held in New York City and Los Angeles. It was during his time at SMU that his passion for Shakespeare ignited.
His professional on-stage credits include performances with the Dallas Theater Center, Kitchen Dog Theatre, WaterTower Theatre, as well as the Utah Shakespearean Festival. Tee has also stared in various national television commercials, (7-Eleven, Krystal, Tn. Lottery, & CMT to name a few) and voice-over spots including audiobooks for Audible.com. Tee has had the pleasure of working with Barbara Somerville, Ben Furey, Cecil O’Neal, Michael Connolly, and Patsy Rodenburg. While working with the Utah Shakespearean Festival, Tee taught acting workshops and during his tenure with the Tennessee Shakespeare Festival, he served as Director of Education working in partnership with television star, Lane Davies.
Tee has been an active member of the Southeastern Theatre Conference by participating on various discussion panels and conducting workshops. He has also participated as a production respondent for Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival (KC/ACTF). Tee was actively involved with the Tennessee Governors School for the Arts as Auditions Coordinator, Adjudicator and Interviewer.
Tee was co-founder and co-host of the weekly theatre podcast, The Inexplicable Dumb Show. He has also been an invited guest of The Humana Festival of New American Plays (2008-2010) at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in Louisville, KY where he has been a part of interviewing playwrights and professional actors for this weekly podcast. Tee also begun a partnership with Shakespeare Monologues, where he created and hosts scansion-ready, printable PDF files of all of the major monologues from the Shakespearean canon.
Recently, Tee was invited to present a paper at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (MLA) Conference. He presented his paper, “Some Things Never Change: Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and American Politics in the 21st Century.†Tee is a member of the Actors Equity Association and has been recognized by the Society of American Fight Directors as an Actor Combatant on multiple occasions.
Tee was instrumental in the foundation and organizational structure of Western Playhouse on the campus of Missouri Western State University, serving as the Artistic Director of the company for the first two years of it’s existence. Western Playhouse was conceived as an Actor’s Equity Association affiliated professional summerstock theatre company housed on campus that would produce quality theatre productions, thereby providing the opportunity for theatre students throughout the region to work alongside professional actors and other industry professionals.
Among the productions Tee has starred in, he counts Hamlet in Hamlet, Decius Brutus in Julius Caesar, Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, George Tessman in Hedda Gabler, Peter in Company, as well as Billy Crocker in Anything Goes among his most memorable. His favorite productions directed include, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, Twelfth Night, Oliver!, Sweeney Todd, Urinetown, Miss Saigon, Arsenic & Old Lace, Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Phantom.
Tee has been playing the banjo and other instruments since he was 6 years old. He is also an avid hiker and geocacher. In his spare time, Tee is also an amateur radio operator and storm spotter.