Southwestern Michigan College recently hired Paul Mow as its new theater director. Mow, who resides in St. Joseph, will also teach theater classes, as well as voice.

Mow will direct the college’s fall play, “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde, which will run Oct. 19-21. The play is about two friends who use the same pseudonym, Ernest, for their on-the-sly activities. The audition process for the play begins from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and will also take place Wednesday in Room 136 of the Dale A. Lyons Building on the Dowagiac campus. Auditions are open to the public. Rehearsals are slated for Monday through Thursday evenings until production week.

Mow will also direct the winter musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Mow has a master’s degree in music-voice performance from the University of Illinois-Champaign and two bachelor’s degrees from the University of Michigan in music and the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

In addition to teaching at SMC, he teaches voice at Lake Michigan College and the Citadel Dance and Music Center in Benton Harbor, where he was the director of development from 2009-2011.

Mow’s background includes being on the roster of the New York City Opera for five years, performing both leading and secondary roles in a multitude of productions; and several engagements at Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. He also has performed dozens of other leading tenor roles in the operatic repertoire.

In addition to the New York City Opera, he has performed with Opera Orchestra of New York, Glimmerglass Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Bard Summerscape, Berkshire Opera, Brooklyn Opera, Opera Company of North Carolina, Anchorage Opera, Tulsa Opera, Utah Festival Opera, Summer Opera of Washington, D.C., Lyric Opera Colorado, as well as with the Folkstheater Rostock in Germany.

Mow won the George London Award for the Kirstin Flagstad Memorial Prize and the Eastern Regional of the Metropolitan Opera Competition in New York City.

Mow’s debut album “Brahms’ — Die Schone Magelone” was recorded in New York City’s historic Town Hall and was released on the Lyrichord Classic Record label and is available on iTunes.

Since returning to Southwest Michigan in 2009, he has directed several productions, including “Spring Awakening,” “The Secret Garden,” “The Diary Of Anne Frank,” “Carousel,” “The Last 5 Years,” “Amahl and The Night Visitors” and “Stone Soup: A Children’s Opera.”

He also co-founded the B.E.S.T. Musical Theatre Workshop.