Associate Professor of Theater
Department Chair
Biography
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
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"Stanislavsky, Rose McClendon and Reparations: Whiteness, Professionalization and Reframing Amateurism in the Theater of the United States," in Stanislavsky and Race: Questioning the "System" in the 21st Century, forthcoming September 2023.
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“Moving Forward, Living Backward, or Just Standing Still?: Newspaper Theatre, Critical Race Theory, and Commemorating the Wade-Braden Trial in Louisville, Kentucky,” Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed Journal
- “Whiteness, Patriarchy, and Resistance in Actor Training Texts: Reframing Acting Students as Embodied Critical Thinkers,” Howlround
- "Paradoxical Sleep and Flights of Imagination: Sleep Rock Thy Brain and the Performance of Research," Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism
Amy Steiger is a native of Louisville, KY, and holds a PhD in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas at Austin (2006). She is a theater artist and scholar who has a particular interest in community-engaged processes and performance as research. Dr. Steiger studied at the Cornerstone Theater Company Summer Institute in Los Angeles in 2010. At St. Mary's College of Maryland, she has encouraged the development of new student-generated work and has directed The Only Lasting Truth: Short Plays About Change, Humanizing Histories: Seven Short Plays About Resistance, Beyond the Sunset, a student devised adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, and Checking In, a community-based, student-written Zoom play about the covid pandemic, health, and healing. She has also directed plays by established playwrights, including Airness by Chelsea Marcantel, Lost Girl by Kimberly Belflower, a site-specific, traveling production of Shakespeare's Macbeth at Historic St. Mary's City, Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, and Machinal by Sophie Treadwell.
Profile photo is of Dr. Steiger directing Macbeth at Historic St. Mary's City in 2019, with Jeanette Warren (Macbeth) and Brian Bates (Banquo). Photo credit: Chloe Colvin, 2021 graduate of the SMCM Theater Film and Media Studies Program.
Areas of Research Specialization
- Community Based Theater and Performance
- Acting and Directing
- Performance Theory, Critical Theory, and Performance Based Research in the classroom
- Playwriting and Dramaturgy
Areas of Teaching Specialization
- Theater History, Literature and Theory
- Theater practice - Acting, Directing, Playwriting and Community Based and Ensemble Performance
- Performance theory and critical theory (specifically feminist, gender and queer theory, postcolonial theory and globalization, and materialist theory)
Internal Affiliations
Education
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B.A. in Dramatic Arts and English at Macalester College, 1993
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M.A. in Theatre History, Criticism, Theory and Text at University of Texas at Austin, 2001
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Ph.D. in Performance as Public Practice at University of Texas at Austin, 2006