Faculty Summer Series: Michelle Bombe

We our proud of our faculty working professionally during their summers. In this series we meet the faculty and hear about their work!

Walking into her new office, you are greeted with an eclectic, ceramic puppet tauntingly hung with strings from the wall. Colors dance around the room and Hope’s very own Director of Theatre sits behind her desk.

Michelle Bombe, Professor of Theatre, Director of Theatre, and Resident Costume Designer (Whoa titles!) obviously wears many hats in the Department. Her hard work and dedication to the craft of theatre is what keeps the spark alive and possible for many of her students. Along with her roles during the school year, Michelle has had an active professional career with 10 summers at Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, 1 summer at Theatre at Monmouth and a total of 18 summer seasons at Hope Summer Repertory Theatre. HSRT is a professional theatre company right here on Hope’s campus. This past season, she designed the costumes for Working.

Michelle enjoyed designing a production sharing “real stories that opened up different and diverse ways of thinking” for Holland Michigan.

What made season 46 unique for Michelle was the fact that her son was offered an acting internship at HSRT just like she had been 33 years prior for season 13 at HSRT. Griffin is a senior theatre major at Hope College this year and thought it was “cool to be in a theatre [he] had looked up to [his] whole life.”

Michelle fell in love with Holland and theatre at HSRT.  She has been on the faculty at Hope since 1991. What keeps her grounded in theatre is the fact she is “in love with the idea that, as a designer, [she] is creat[ing] the world of a play.” Griffin fell hard for theatre as well, with the help of his mother, by exposing him to varieties of productions of different genres. He pursues theatre because he “loves bringing stories to life and inspiring others to tell their stories.”

We are so glad the two of them share such a deep love and passion for the arts!