Nancy Hoffmann Gerber - Executive Director of The School of Creative Arts

Nancy loves teaching children and adults. Her students range in age from 8-68.

Her experience in the performing arts spans over 40 years. Her students have been accepted at Tisch School of Creative Arts (NYU), Marymount Manhattan College, Milliken University (the alma mater of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Jodi Benson and Sierra Boggess), Chapman University in California, Boston Conservatory, Emerson College, Yale University and The Walnut Hill High School. Many of her students are working singers/actors in the New England area.

She created the role of “Nancy Nervosamente” in the world premiere of Suite Dreams! with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Robert Spano. Solo performances include Boston Civic Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, New England Conservatory Orchestra, Lexington Symphony, Wellesley Symphony, Georgetown (DC) Symphony and the Charlotte Symphony where she premiered another new work entitled What If? Her most recent appearance with the Boston Symphony was as narrator for Gregory Smith’s Orchestra Games. She has enjoyed the privilege of working with Maestro Max Hobart many times.

Her television appearances include ABC’s One Life To Live and Ryan’s Hope. On stage she portrayed Monica in I Love My Wife at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park with Scott Bakula, and toured in the title role of The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Regional credits include the roles of Desiree in A Little Night Music, Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, Velma in Chicago, Petra in A Little Night Music and Polly in The Boyfriend. In New York, Nancy has performed Off-Broadway in cabaret and in the premiere of A Family By Any Other Name written by her husband, Stephen Gerber, and in The Best of Broadway at Caroline’s with Lee Roy Reams, Maureen Brennan and Jim Walton. She has directed and choreographed for cabaret and Cable TV in New York, and was choreographer for Cruise International. She has appeared in numerous commercials and has done radio voice over commercials. Locally, she has directed and choreographed the Acts From The Heart production of the musical Suddenly On Christmas Eve, (written by her husband, Stephen Gerber), in which she also created the role of Johanna Andersen. She was a member of the Boston cast of Forbidden Broadway and appeared at the Charles Playhouse as Rhetta Cupp in Pump Boys and Dinettes and was featured in the Rodgers and Hammerstein revue Some Enchanted Evening at the Firehouse Theater in Newburyport.

Nancy made her acting debut at the age of four in her native Savannah, Georgia as the “I Love Milk” spokeschild on Romper Room. Since graduating from Romper Room, Nancy received her B.A. in Musical Theatre from the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music and has studied with many renowned teachers including Uta Hagen, Gene Lasko, Word Baker, Oscar Kosarin and Lehman Engel, Worth Gardner, and David Rubens.

Along with her professional performing career, Nancy has directed numerous plays around the New England area and is much in demand as a teacher of singing and acting. She is a member of the Actor’s Equity association.

Benedict Petrucci, Woodwinds, studied arranging-composing and instrumental performance at the Berklee School of Music. He studied privately with many notable musicians including Mr. James Forte, noted contemporary classical composer; Mr. Atilio Poto, clarinetist and conductor with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the BSO, as well as faculty member of the Boston Conservatory of Music; and Mr. Joseph Viola, chairman of the woodwind department of Berklee. A member of the American Federation of Musicians, he has performed nationally and internationally with such notable acts as Peaches and Herb, The Drifters, and The Shirelles and was associated with “Steve Colt and the Forty-Fives,” an RCA music recording group. He was the featured soloist on tenor sax with “The Hal MacIntire Jr. Orchestra”; arranger and featured soloist on clarinet with the “Gene Krupa Orchestra”; arranged music for Henny Youngman which was performed on the “Jerry Lewis Telethon”; and was lead alto saxophone and clarinet soloist with the Continental Swing Band. In 2001 Petrucci Music Service was written up in the Henry Mancini Gala Musicale Journal in Hollywood. A professional musician for 47 years, Mr. Petrucci’s teaching career spans over 45 years and includes many Massachusetts public schools and private institutions including Lexington Christian Academy. He is currently a faculty member of SCA and is with The Evangelical Baptist Church of Newton (MA) Music Ministry.

Sara Wyse-Wenger, Mezzo-soprano/Kindermusik, holds a Master of Music in Vocal Performance from New England Conservatory. She has taught voice for many years and performed many solo recitals and oratorios. She has appeared on SCA faculty recitals, and was soloist for Acts from the Heart production of Suddenly On Christmas Eve at the Eleanor Welch Casey Theatre at Regis College. Sara's professional opera roles include Nicholas in Tales of Hoffman and Orpheus in Gluck's Orpheus and Euridice. She is currently soloist/section leader at Payson Park United Church of Christ in Belmont, and has also sung professionally in other church choirs such as Old South Church in Copley Square, Church of the Redeemer in Chestnut Hill, and 1st and 2nd Church Unitarian in Back Bay. From 1993 to 2008 Sara was accompanist and then director of a large children's chorus at the Joyce Kilmer Elementary School in West Roxbury. Since 1993 she has been a member of the Cantata Singers, a premier Boston chorus, singing under director David Hoose and composer/director John Harbison. She appears frequently as soloist in the Cantata Singers Chamber Series. Since 1997 she has been a Teaching Artist for Cantata Singers' educational program "Classroom Cantatas," a song-writing and singing program in Boston Public Schools in Roxbury, serving also as Program Manager from 1997-2010. Sara has taught Kindermusik since 1997 with the School of Creative Arts, and has been Coordinator of its Kindermusik program since 2003. She teaches traditional classroom Kindermusik and has also developed ongoing multi-generational Kindermusik classes in healthcare facilities and retirement homes.

Acts from the Heart is a company of actors and musicians from professional and community theatre backgrounds who are dedicated to presenting heartfelt, entertaining, humorous, and
inspirational plays, musicals, and revues.