Frank Mihelich is a Chattanooga-based actor, director, producer, playwright, and theatre educator with an extensive career spanning Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and regional theatre. Recent acting credits include Samuel Gentle in An Almost Holy Picture (New Threads), the Father in Eurydice (BIOLA Theatre 21), Don in American Buffalo (The Gestalt Theatre Project), and Lee in True West (New Threads/Gestalt co-production). As a director, Frank’s work includes She Loves Me, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The Nether, Much Ado About Nothing, Normal?: The Musical, Silent Sky, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Babette’s Feast, Lost in Yonkers, and Peter and the Starcatcher just to name a few.
Frank is a founding member of Magis Theatre Company (NYC) and served as a founding Producing Director for The Courtyard Shakespeare Festival in Riverside, CA. He holds a BA in Communication Arts and a BA in Philosophy from California Baptist University and earned his MFA in Acting from Columbia University NYC.As the founding Artistic Director of New Threads Theatre Company, Frank is committed to producing stories that spark truly inclusive conversations and foster community engagement.
Christy Grauley is an educator and philanthropist who seeks to pursue shalom on earth, as it is in heaven, at the intersection of education, theology, and the arts. The Being Human initiative she started at Covenant College in 2022 exists to encourage and expand inter-disciplinary academic work based on a liberal arts tradition while being highly influenced by the creative arts. Christy is currently a Praxis Capital Fellow, and Artery is the first program of Being Human not focused on the Covenant campus.
Christy has a double major in Early Childhood Education and Religion from Emory University, and an MA in Christian and Classical Studies from Knox Seminary. At two points in her career she has worked as a classroom teacher, and she also turned her passion for education to home-schooling her five children, who are now adults. Christy is deeply invested in Covenant College as a Trustee Advisor to the Board of Trustees.
Luann Jennings is a recent transplant to Chattanooga from Waco, Texas, where she served as the Project Manager for Artist Professional Development for the local arts agency for five years. Soon after the pandemic, Luann resigned from Creative Waco to begin work on a career preparation book for college and high school students who are Christians, and want to become professional visual and performing artists. For nearly a decade, Luann has been deeply involved with the Artists Thrive initiative of the Tremaine Foundation, the largest private funder in the country of artist professional development, and she works as the Administrative Coordinator for their annual Summit. Currently Luann is co-teaching Entrepreneurship at Covenant College, and will join the Theatre department in the fall.
Luann’s arts background is as a theatre director, actor, and acting teacher. She has an MFA from the University of Tennessee and a BFA from Baylor University, and worked professionally in Atlanta for a dozen years before relocating to New York City, where she mostly worked in ministry to artists and education with college students.