Theatre Professors to Present at National Conferences

Theatre professor Jeanmarie Higgins will present “The (Un)spectacular Domestic Spaces of Annie Baker’s Nocturama” at this year’s Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Conference in Dramaturgies of Silence and Stillness: Contemporary American Women Playwrights Refigure Spectacle, a panel commissioned by the American Theatre and Drama Society. Addressing the conference theme of “Spectacle,” the panel asks whether stillness and silence can can effect spectacular emotional responses in audiences.

Higgins is joined by Lisa Jackson-Schebetta and Sarah Marsh Krauter. Dr. Jackson-Schebetta, the author of Traveler, there is no road: Theatre, the Spanish Civil War and the Decolonial Imagination in the Americas (University of Iowa Press 2017), will present on works by Kia Corthorn and Marisela Treviño Orta; Marsh Krauter, PhD Candidate at the University of Washington, will present on Jennifer Haley’s play, The Nether. The ATHE Conference takes place in August in Las Vegas.

Theatre professors Robin Witt and Jeanmarie Higgins will each present at this spring’s Comparative Drama Conference, taking place from April 6-8 in Orlando, Florida. Higgins’s paper, “Disappeared Children in Simon Stephens’s Wastwater” is a performance analysis of Witt’s recent Chicago storefront production at Steep Theatre. Witt’s paper, “John Van Druten’s London Wall: ‘Sexism Writ Large’ Then and Now” examines her 2016 Griffin Theatre production, identifying the challenges of resurrecting lost or forgotten plays from the early 20th century, including a discussion of research, gender, and dramaturgical practice. In 2016, Witt won the Joseph Jefferson (Jeff) Award, honoring non-Equity Chicago theatre, in the category of “Best Director (Play)” for her role in directing London Wall.