Who We Are

Meet the board of directors behind SOCAA, Southern Oregon's newest not-for-profit.

SOCAA is a nonprofit organization in Southern Oregon that collaborates with cultural arts organizations to develop and strengthen accessibility programs, so that everyone can participate in all that the Rogue Valley has to offer.

Valerie has shoulder length dark blonde hair and purple tinted frames on her glasses. She wears a scoop neck maroon shirt.

Valerie Rachelle

President
Valerie Rachelle has been a professional Director and Choreographer for the past 28 years. She has her BFA in Acting from California Institute of the Arts and her MFA in Directing from University of California Irving. She was a founding member of Lucid By Proxy in Los Angeles, a not-for-profit theater dedicated to producing new works. Valerie worked at PCPA Theaterfest (www.pcpa.org) as a Casting Director, Resident Director and Choreographer, and taught Movement, Mask, and Audition Skills in their professional acting conservatory. She also taught in the Theater Department at the University of Southern California. Valerie has worked at theaters around the country including: Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Utah Shakespeare Festival, New York University, Syracuse Opera, Fresno Grand Opera, Sierra Repertory Theatre, PCPA Theaterfest, Glendale Center Theater, Performance Riverside, Lucid By Proxy, Oregon Cabaret Theater, Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theater, University of Las Vegas Nevada, Southern Utah State, Southern Oregon University, El Camino College, Summer Repertory Theater, and many others. Valerie has been the Artistic Director of the Oregon Cabaret Theatre in Ashland, OR for the past 11 years while continuing to be a freelance Director/Choreographer. She is currently Oregon Cabaret Theatre’s Executive Producer and the Associate Artistic Director of Stages in Houston.
Julie Simon is a white female with shoulder length brown hair and dark-rimmed glasses. She is wearing a royal blue blouse and is standing in front of a green ivy-covered wall.

Julie Simon

Vice President & Secretary
Julie Simon, Ph.D., RID CI & CT is an Accessibility consultant, educator, and interpreter, She has had a lengthy career as an ASL/English Interpreter in post-secondary, and conference settings. For the past 15 years, she has worked in performing arts settings, including 12 seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as Lead Interpreter, Access Services Coordinator, and IDEA Manager, and 3 years at the Oregon Cabaret Theatre as the Box Office and Accessibility Manager. She is Co-Founder and Board Vice President & Secretary of the Southern Oregon Consortium for Accessibility in the Arts (SOCAA), and has been involved with the Kennedy Center Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disabilities (LEAD) Conference as a member of the Program Committee, as a Presenter and as a Session Facilitator. As a life-long theater-goer, Julie is working to ensure arts environments are accessible to working professionals and to patrons.
Gary is an older male with a beard. He is smiling.

Gary Herman

Treasurer
Gary is a 30+ year veteran of the telecommunications and computer industries. Over his career, he acquired a broad base of technical/management experience spanning most aspects of complex information systems, applications, and operations, including user/customer, business, organizational, and leadership issues. He has managed efforts involving hardware, software, system architecture, network analysis and simulation, user interface design, user studies, and design research, and his responsibilities have included initiatives in the United States, the United Kingdom, and India. Fascinated since high school by the audience experience of live theatre, he became an OSF member and moved to Ashland in 2016. Like the majority of people over age 70, Gary suffers from sensorineural hearing loss (his is moderate-to-severe); his personal passion is audio-assistive technologies to preserve and enhance the live theatre experience.
Michael is a light skinned man with long flowing white hair and a long beard, his face is freckled, and he is wearing round thin rimmed glasses and a dark shirt.

Michael Maag

Member of the Board
Michael Maag is the Resident Lighting Designer and Production Manager at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Scenographer, Lighting and Projection Artist for Kinetic Light, a Disability Arts Ensemble. Maag is an award-winning designer of lighting, video, and projection for theatre, dance, musicals, opera, and planetariums. He sculpts with light and shadow to create lighting environments that tell a story, believing that lighting in support of the performance is the key to unlocking audiences’ emotions. His designs have been seen on OSF’s stages for the last 25 years, as well as at theatres across the country. Maag has built custom optics for projections in theaters, museums, and planetariums; he also designs and builds electronics and lighting for costumes and scenery. His lighting and projection design for Kinetic Light’s Descent was chosen to represent the United States at the Prague Quadrennial in 2019. Recently their work Wired premiered at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and played at the Shed in NYC. Maag is passionate about bringing the perspective of a disabled artist to technical theatre and design. He has spoken at several theatre and architecture conferences on the importance of access for the disabled artist in technical theatre.
Headshot of an older woman with long straight silver hair, smiling warmly at the camera, centered against a softly blurred outdoor background.

Narcissa Vanderlip

Member of the Board
Narcissa Vanderlip served as Producing Executive Director of ETC Theatre Company, a performing arts nonprofit she co-founded in 2000. She has produced youth and professional musicals, Shakespeare in the Gardens, Boom Kat Dance Theatre and ETC Community Tours to children’s agencies, homeless shelters, rehab programs and senior care centers across Los Angeles County. Boom Kat productions garnered six Ovation nominations and won Best Score of a New Musical for “STATIONS”. Narcissa worked in film production on locations from Buffalo to Budapest, with filmmakers Sam Peckinpah, Woody Allen, James Caan, Roger and Julie Corman, and Claude Lelouch. She has a French Baccalauréat, a Cornell B.A. in Philosophy and a Wisc. Masters in Communication Arts. She attended trainings at the L.A. Center for Nonprofit Management, the Long Beach Nonprofit Partnership and the Annenberg Foundation. She has written articles, screenplays, translations in four languages, and is working on an historical dual biography. She and her husband, composer Parmer Fuller, are launching the album for “MIRABEL,” a musical based on their shared experience at the same strict Swiss boarding school for children in the 60’s. Narcissa divides her time between Ashland and her native L.A.