I teach, research, and write about modern and contemporary drama, theater, performance art, and media in Europe, the UK, and the US. My first book, Beyond Text: Theater and Performance in Print after 1900 (University of Michigan Press, 2019) details the complex relationship between text and performance in the twentieth-century European and American avant-gardes. I show that while the avant-gardes may have dismissed the dramatic author, they fiercely embraced the page, altering the status, form, and function of the text in ways that continue to impact both the performing and the graphic arts. In my second book manuscript, Act without Words: Speechless Performance on the Modern Stage, I examine why and how the concept of a “language” of gesture has attracted theater artists, writers, and theorists disenchanted with the capacity of spoken and written language to represent human experience.

I have published essays on topics ranging from Bernard Shaw’s 1890s plays to Forced Entertainment’s digital performances.

Undergraduate courses:

Reading and Writing about Drama

Modern British Drama

Selected British Authors after 1900

American Drama after 1900

Graduate courses:

English: Seminar in Performance Theory: Writing Theater

Nonfiction Writing Program: Performance, Criticism, and the Essay

Theatre Arts: Modern Drama