(NEWTON, NJ) -- The newly established Alpha Arts Institute at Sussex County Community College will hold its inaugural Artist Lecture Series as part of its interdisciplinary initiative, featuring professional artists in the visual, performing and literary arts. The Alpha Arts Institute welcomes Broadway actress Charissa Bertels, who will share her experiences as a professional artist.  

Professor James Jeffreys, Coordinator for the Alpha Arts Lecture Series, will host the lecture series that will feature a Q & A session following the lecture. The event is free and open to the public. The lecture will be held on Monday, December 5 at 12:30pm, at the college's Performing Arts Center, located at One College Hill Road in Newton, New Jersey. A Master Class will be held at 10:30am prior to the lecture. To attend the Master Class or for further inquiries about the lecture series, please contact Jeffreys at jjeffreys@sussex.edu.

Charissa Bertels is a Broadway actress and champion of new musicals. She has performed on Broadway and at Madison Square Garden in A Christmas Story and toured the country in the first national tour of If/Then, starring Idina Menzel, La Chanze, and Anthony Rapp. As a member of the singing ensemble for New York City Center Encores' productions of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Lady Be Good, her work can be heard on the subsequent cast recordings, featuring Megan Hilty and the legendary Tommy Tune.  Charissa received rave reviews for starring in her original one-woman musical, My 80-Year-Old Boyfriend, at Merrimack Repertory Theatre (IRNE award for Best Solo Performance), Arizona Theatre Company, and the Human Race Theatre Company (Best Leading Actress in a Musical). 

Bertels' newest collaboration, The Uncivil Ones, features unheard female, non-binary, and BIPOC voices from the American Civil War and garnered the 2019 Special Mention for the Women in Arts & Media Coalition Collaboration Award. In addition to her own writing and producing projects, she is currently a professor at New York Film Academy’s Professional Conservatory of Musical Theatre, a recent MFA recipient from the University of Idaho, and a proud member of Actors’ Equity and SAG-AFTRA.  

“The Alpha Arts Institute at Sussex County Community College is a new vision taking shape with plans to host artists and scholars in residence, along with strengthening our theater arts and gallery exhibitions, hosting an artist lecture series, and launching an annual film festival and an annual arts festival,” remarked Daniel Cosentino, Assistant Professor and Coordinator for the Visual and Performing Arts at SCCC, and Director of the Alpha Arts Institute.