About Me

I am a professor of drama and head of the Dramaturgy Option in the School of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University, where I teach courses in dramaturgy, theatre history, dramatic literature, and writing.  I am the author of Performance and Femininity in Eighteenth-Century German Women’s Writing: The Impossible Act (2006) as well as numerous articles in journals & anthologies.  With Theresa J. May, I co-edited Readings in Performance and Ecology (2012) and co-wrote the chapter “Ecodramaturgy in/and Contemporary Women’s Playwriting” in Contemporary Women Playwrights:  Into the 21st Century (ed. Penelope Farfan and Lesley Ferris, 2013).  I have translated several plays from German into English, including Brecht’s Good Person of Sezuan for an adaptation by Tony Kushner. I am on the editorial boards of Theatre Topics and Theatre Annual.  From 2008-2011 I was the Secretary of the American Society for Theatre Research.  I also have advanced to the ranks of Yondan and Shidoin in Aikido, although I have not done much with them in the past few years.  I have two kids, a dog, a home under renovation, and a serious aversion to brown marmorated stink bugs.

In addition to this blog, I have a number of projects recently completed or in the works, including:

-Dramaturg on Camino, a new play by Anya Martin (Hiawatha Project, Pittsburgh, fall 2011)

-Text consultant on The Good Person of Sezuan, directed by Peter Kleinert (CMU, fall 2011)

-Translator of Lessing’s Hamburg Dramaturgy, with Sara Figal, and with editorial notes and apparatus by myself, Natalya Baldyga, Michael Chemers, and Sara Figal (ongoing).

-Curator and Artistic Director for the third “Earth Matters on Stage” Festival and Symposium (CMU, spring 2012)

-Script consultant and member of the creative team for the play in progress “JH: Mechanics of a Legend” by Anya Martin (Hiawatha Project, Pittsburgh; workshop production March 2015)

-Co-editor of an anthology of eco-drama, with Theresa J. May and Nelson Gray (in progress).