Professor Emeritus
Retired Professor of Theater for Youth
Retired Director of Youth Theatre Graduate Program
Children’s Theatre, Creative Drama, Mask Making, Puppetry
Dr. Tamara Montgomery studied theatre at Arizona State University and then went to the University of Southern California to earn her doctorate in Communications, with a minor in Early Childhood Education. She was later invited to the University of Hawaiʻi to teach courses in Creative Drama, Mask Making, Children’s Theatre, and Puppetry. She taught five different puppetry courses with dual focus educational application and performance techniques: Puppetry for Young Children, Beginning Puppetry, Masks & Giant Puppets, Advanced Puppetry and Asian Puppetry. She was a professor at UHM for 40 years and became the Director of the Youth Theatre Graduate Program.
During her time at UHM she also directed the annual family theatre play that was a part of the Mainstage season. From year to year the type of production would vary to accommodate the interests and talents of the students enrolled in the graduate program one example would be D-FORCE, an original play about divorce that used masks and giant puppets to recreate the illusion of a video game on stage. As the Director of the Youth Theatre program she encouraged students to mount plays and puppet shows to tour them to local schools. She believed that seeing Hawaiian legends, traditional folk tales, and Asian influenced puppet shows could be an exciting venue for students learning to be professional puppeteers. She was active with guest lecturing at international venues and universities. In 2003 she taught in American Samoa and Singapore. She has written several books on educational puppetry that teachers around the world use in their classrooms.