10 Faculty and 7 Counselors
All our teachers and staff are C.O.R.I. & S.O R.I checked, we look at their work history and 3 references from unrelated parties are requested. Also, our head Counselors are college students trained in First aid.

Catalina Arrubla
Director

Catalina is the executive director of Multi Arts. She is a well-known chamber music coach and oboe teacher. She has taught and directed several music programs at UMass, Northampton, Brattleboro and Springfield Music Schools. She is the co-founder of the Syrinx Ensemble, which performs chamber music throughout the New England area. Catalina is also an economist and has worked as director of a main branch of the Minister of Culture in Colombia, her home country. Catalina is a member of the Massachusetts Cultural Council's select list of creative teaching partners.

Titus Neijens
Arts

Titus was born and grew up in Holland. He studied art at the Royal Academy of Art in Amsterdam. Titus is a professional illustrator whose work has appeared in several European magazines as well as in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker . A co-founder of Claroscuro Productions, Titus has extensive experience with theater and film artistic design.

Ilana Meredith
Drama

Ilana graduated from N.Y.U., Tisch School of the Arts' B.F.A. drama program, where she studied at the CAP21 Musical Theatre Program, as well as the Experimental Theatre Wing. She spent several years performing throughout the country in musical theatre productions, including work with various children's theatre companies. She has also done professional voice-over work and appeared in the award winning independent film, Let Them Chirp Awhile. Since 2004, she has been performing in children's educational shows at the N.Y. Hall of Science in Queens. Ilana has taught improv at the Gifted Child Society in N.J., as well as at the P.S. 166 After-School Enrichment Program in NYC. She has also worked as a "Playlab" teacher at A-Ha!, a developmental learning center in NYC. Currently, she plans to begin graduate school this fall to obtain her masters' degree in childhood education. For more info., please visit her website at www.IlanaMeredith.com.

Inés Arrubla
Dance

Inés is a contemporary Flamenco dancer who has performed, taught, and choreographed extensively throughout Europe and the United States. She is the founder of the Flamenco Dance Theater and has created five major theater-dance productions to date. Her work as a performer and choreographer has been produced to great acclaim, earning her a reputation as one of the nation's premier Flamenco performers. Inés is a member of the Massachusetts Cultural Council's select list of creative teaching partners.

Jules Belmont
Music 

Jules has been a musician for longer than he can remember. Jules began performing at age 12 with a small jazz group, and has not stopped since. At age 13, Jules picked up his fathers’ guitar for the first time, and within months owned a guitar, and had a band. Jules has been blessed to attend PVPA, where his passions have truly been realized. Jules’s drive for learning new music brought him to Granada, Spain to study Flamenco guitar, in the summer of 2008. He has learned from, and shared the stage with musicians, such as Lupe Fiasco, Girl Talk, Mitch Chakour, Average White Band, Christian McBride, Gary Smulyan, Rahul Roy, among others.

Gian Didonna
Playwriting & Drama.

Gian DiDonna is a playwright and a college teacher. Two of his plays have been presented by the LAByrinth Theater Company in NYC at the Public Theater. He has received grants and won awards for his work, whose subjects vary and include historical themes, as well as Italian American themes and ethnic social conflict. Gian was trained as a classical actor in London England and appeared in several major motion pictures. He received his MFA from Goddard College and thinks the world of Multi-Arts, his wife Jennifer and his two beautiful children, Emilio and Olivia. His newest plays are entitled, ONLY SO FAR PUNISHED and COLUMBUS DAY.

Nicole McClure
Playwriting.

Nicole has taught at Multi Arts for two years, leading classes in Playwriting, Drama, Music, and Circus Arts. She is a student at Hampshire College where she will complete her senior thesis in Painting next year. Originally from Seattle WA, She has studied and taught writing and performance with various performing groups on both the east and west coasts, including Youth Speaks Seattle, The Free Box Circus, Tacoma Teen Council Theater of the Oppressed, and Clowns Unlimited. Nicole also performs locally with her band Didi Loves Gogo. She is excited to join us for a third awesome year!

Josh Gold
Dance and Drama. All workshops.

Josh Gold (G~LoX) is a self taught Teacher, Director, Choreographer and Performer from PVPA who specializes in Funk Dance, Mime, Blacklight Theater, and Costumes. G~LoX has danced many places including Tokyo, NewYork, Czech Republic, and Amsterdam. His Teaching experience is over a decade strong spanning from Springfield to the Berkshires, and everywhere in between. Josh's students are usually between the ages of preschool-college, but occasionally Adults join in on the fun too! "I'm a Multi-Artist, and U CAN TOO!"

Catherine Stryker
Film Teacher.

Catherine’s years of experience in publishing and writing gave her a head start in the world of documentary production. She went back to school to study video and film, graduating from Hampshire College in 2006. Catherine is passionate about video journalism, documentaries and storytelling. She runs a web video production company, is a regular producer for ACTV and loves to introduce people to the creative possibilities of the medium.

Sonia Arrubla
Artistic Director

Sonia holds an undergraduate and Masters degree in film and television from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. At NYU, Arrubla wrote and directed several short films, including “Sobrevivir,” winner of the 1999 Warner Brothers’ Award. Since 2002, Sonia has been the Artistic Director of Multi-Arts. She has produced and directed twelve plays, working with more than 600 children ages 6 through 14. In the summer of 2007, Arrubla filmed the feature film “Bubble Trubble”, which features an all-child cast, 80 percent of them drawn from her students at Multi-Arts.

Caroline Romedenne
Photographer, Web designer.

Caroline Romedenne was born and raised in Belgium. She studied Art Photography at the ‘Beaux-Arts of St-Luc’, in Liege. Caroline has worked as a professional photographer between Brussels and Paris in both fashion and portrait. As she travels, Navajo Land becomes home, moved on to Colorado where she trades her 35mm for digital media. Old passion rise and graphic design emerge… She works today as a professional graphic designer in both web and print publishing blending photography and design. See some of her work here

Our Conselors...



Abolee Montanari
Abolee grew up in Amherst Massachusettes and is currently a student at Ithaca college in a sociology and social worker program. She has been studing classical Indian dance, Odissi style for the past 15 years from Ranjanaa Devi. She has been in many shows, taught classes, and workshops all around the area. Over the years Abolee has also studyed a number of other dance styles including ballet, jazz, hip-hop, modern, tap, and flamanco to not only bradon her knowlege of dance but to also increase her ability to teach and relate to other dancers. !

Caitlyn Squires
Caitlyn is a student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where she has recently been accepted into the Secondary Teacher Education Program with a concentration in English. Caitlyn has a variety of teaching experience; she spent three years as choreographer to the Hanson Middle School Show Choir and taught religious education at Saint Joseph the Worker Parish in Hanson, Massachusetts, her hometown. In addition to working with youth, Caitlyn enjoys singing, dancing, acting and writing. Her specialty is musical theatre; she was most recently on stage with the UMass Theatre Guild. As an artist of multiple trades and a future teacher, Caitlyn believes in the incredible benefits of creative arts for children of all ages.

Corrine Byrne
Corrine is a singer songwriter from Marshfield, MA currently studying music and opera at Umass Amherst. She plays guitar and banjo, sings with Umass Opera Workshop, Chamber Choir, Arcadia Players Baroque Ensemble, and she is the music director of the award-winning Umass Dynamics A Cappella. She also loves photography, art, and movies!

Lena Eckert-Erdheim
Lena is originally from Durham, North Carolina and is now a rising junior at Smith College where she is majoring in the Study of Women and Gender. She worked for several years as a radio producer at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and recently taught radio production workshops in Nicaragua. She loves to write, and is also studying poetry at Smith. Lena enjoys playing with food, words, and sounds, and firmly believes in the power of telling stories.

Ceilidh Galloway-Kane
Ceilidh is a sophomore at Smith College studying Art History and Museum Studies. She is originally from Vermont. At Smith College Ceilidh works with children at the Art Museum and Botanic Gardens, leading tours and assisting with family days.

Eve Marie Mugar
Eve is originally from Durham, NH and is now at Smith College where she is majoring in Theatre with a minor in Linguistics. She has been acting since the age of seven, and will be studying at the British American Drama Academy in London next year. Other than acting her greatest passions are playing piano, singing, and photography.