Amy Pugh Patel
​Artistic Director

Amy Pugh Patel is the founding director of James Clemens Theatre. She taught Theatre for 14 years at Butler High School, her alma mater, and completed a year-long sabbatical doing independent research in theatre curriculum and various acting/directing methods and traveling to schools across the U.S. to observe productions and classes.  
She has directed over 75 productions, several of which earned recognition at statewide festivals, the International Thespian Festival (2007) and Southeastern Theatre Conference (2016, 2017, 2020). Recently, she directed Cyrano de Bergerac and Scenes from Metamorphoses which featured a pool of water onstage. Other memorable productions include Shuddersome: Tales of Poe which incorporated ASL shadow signing, Urinetown: The Musical, The Wiz, Booby Trap, Peter Pan, In the Blood, For Colored Girls...,  Alabama Rain, The Miracle Worker, Little Shop of Horrors, Phobiology (a unique site specific production at Lowe Mill), Metamorphoses, Disney's Beauty & the Beast, Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Em--.  She directed Silenced on Barbour Street, The Jungle Book, and The Dentist, all of which represented Alabama at SETC.
She has performed in numerous shows, including Macbeth, Where the Great Ones Run (UAH), Shakespeare on the Mountain and The Laramie Project. While in The Parkbench and Dinner with Friends, she competed in the SETC Community Theatre Festival.  She earned a Wings Award for Best Lead Actress for her role as Becca in Rabbit Hole and was nominated for her performance as Little Becky Two Shoes in Urinetown: The Musical.
She is a National Board Certified teacher, a Fund for Teachers Fellow, and a recipient of two grants to research Deaf-inclusive theatre from the Ramsden Project and Alabama State Council on the Arts. She was named the Alabama Theatre TOTY (2013),  James Clemens TOTY (2016) and was a Finalist for the Jacksonville State University Secondary Teacher Hall of Fame (2016).  
Amy and her husband Sandy have two sons, Kieran and Connery, who both graduated from James Clemens! They were named Madison Family of the Year in 2018. Amy grew up in Huntsville and has lived in Madison since 2000.

Bryan Comer
​Technical Director

Bryan Comer is the Technical Director for James Clemens theatre. Bryan obtained his BFA in directing and performance at the University of Montevallo in 1994 and went "home" to Atlanta to work as a Crew Chief for the Alliance Theatre and later Tech Director for The Westminster Schools. Bryan then moved to Huntsville in 2001 and began working with Theatrical Lighting Systems as a Rental and Sales Project Manager. While there, he was on the design team for the Theatre at James Clemens as well as other schools in the area. Bryan became Director of Technical Theatre at Lee High School in 2015. Today, he is proud to be a Jet, where he has been Technical Director for James Clemens High School since 2023. He lives in Huntsville with is wife and 2 youngest sons, one of whom is in the Advanced Production class at James Clemens. He can't believe that his oldest is grown and living in Huntsville like a real adult. 
​"I'm always told I need to include a fun fact, so here's one. In my youth, 100 years ago, I was the Joker's Understudy at "The Batman Stunt Show" and Six Flags over Georgia, where, somedays, I would get paid to be beaten up by Batman 6 times a day...in 100 degree heat...wearing a mask and wool jacket... with live pyro and fire all around."