This year we seek nominations and self-nominations for the following positions:

●      Graduate Student Liaison (two-year term, Graduate Liaison Track, elected by graduate student members only)

●      External Communications Officer (two-year term, Non-sequential Organizational Leadership)

●      Internal Communications Officer (one-year term to fill vacancy, Non-sequential Organizational Leadership)

●      Junior co-chairs for the following symposia (two-year term): 

○      Theatre History

○      Pedagogy

○      Practice/Production

○      Playwriting

○      Emerging Scholars

○      Articles-in-Progress / Pitch Your Book

Elections will be held at the business meeting on Saturday, March 11, from 2:00-3:00 pm in the Ballroom. Have questions? Want to learn more? Email vicepresident@matc.us or talk to a current MATC officer or symposia chair (all listed below). 

MATC 2023 Conference Sponsors

($300+ donors)

Ann Haugo

Travis Stern

Arthur Ballet, 1988

Jed Davis, 1988

Patricia Mcllrath, 1988

Charles Shattuck, 1990

Ron Engle, 1993

Burnet Hobgood, 1994

Glen Q. Pierce, 1997

Julia Curtis, 1999

Tice Miller, 2001

Felicia Londre, 2002

Robert Schanke, 2002

Weldon Durham, 2003

Fergus Currie, 2005

Billy J. Harbin, 2006

Kent Neely, 2006

Judith Zivanovic, 2006

John Poole, 2009

Bill Jenkins, 2010

Rosemarie K. Bank, 2012

Dorothy Chansky, 2015

Cheryl Black, 2015

Rhona Justice-Malloy, 2015

Jon Herbert, 2015

Anne Fletcher, 2015

Mark E. Mallett, 2017

Stuart Hecht, 2022

Ann Haugo, 2023

President:

Cason Murphy, Iowa State University
president@matc.us

Vice President:

Open

vicepresident@matc.us

Conference Coordinators:

Jeanmarie Higgins, University of Texas at Arlington

Jen Plants, University of Wisconsin, Madison
planner@matc.us

Associate Conference Coordinator:

Brandon LaReau, Florida State University
associate_planner@matc.us

External Communications Officer:

Macy Jones, University of the Ozarks
webmaster@matc.us

Internal Communications Officer:

Julie Burrell, Cleveland State University
internalcomm@matc.us
secretary@matc.us

Treasurer:

Tony Gunn, Brigham Young University
treasurer@matc.us

Accessibility Officer:

Catherine (Katya) Vrtis, Independent Scholar
access@matc.us

Graduate Student Representatives:

Tyler Everett Adams, Ohio University
Alivia Cross, The Pennsylvania State University
grad_rep@matc.us

Immediate Past President:

Shawna Mefferd Kelty, SUNY Plattsburgh

past_president@matc.us

Theatre History Symposium (theatre_history@matc.us)

Allison Gibbes, Utah Tech University

Dennis Sloan, DePauw University

Playwriting Symposium (playwriting@matc.us)

Nathan Bowman, Benedictine College
Bella Poynton, Medaille University

Graduate Liaison: Lucas Skjaret, Baylor University

Practice/Production Symposium (practice_production@matc.us)

Karen M. Dabney, Independent Scholar

Kassy Skoretz, Anoka-Ramsey Community College

Pedagogy Symposium (pedagogy@matc.us)

Collin Vorbeck, Blackburn College
Slade Billew, Stephen F. Austin State University

Emerging Scholars Panel (emerging_scholars@matc.us)

Julia Moriarty, Millikin University
Rachel Bauer, Sacred Heart University

Graduate Student Coordinators (grad_rep@matc.us)

Tyler Everett Adams, Ohio University
Alivia Cross, The Pennsylvania State University

Articles-in-Progress and Pitch-Your-Book (article_session@matc.us & book_pitch@matc.us)

Julie Burrell, Cleveland State University
Weston Twardowski, Rice University

Theatre History Symposium Respondents

Paola S. Hernández, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Josephine Lee, University of Minnesota

Playwriting Symposium Respondent

Karen Saari, Madison College

Pedagogy Respondent

Jane Barnette, University of Kansas

Articles-in-Progress and Pitch-Your-Book Respondents

Peter Reed, University of Mississippi
Karin Waidley, University of Michigan
Shannon Walsh, Louisiana State University
Laura Hussey, Routledge
Claire Margerison, Routledge

Accessibility and Theatre/Practice

T.S. Banks, Loud 'N' Unchained Theatre Company (Madison WI)

2024 Respondent Bios

Paola S. Hernández, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Paola S. Hernández is Mellon-Morgridge Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she specializes in contemporary Latin American theatre and performance as well as Latinx Studies. She has published numerous articles on Southern Cone theatre, US-Mexico border performance and memory politics, sites of memory, human rights, and documentary theatre. She is the author of Staging Lives in Latin American Theater: Bodies-Objects-Archives (Northwestern UP, 2021), where she examines the role of the "real" in theatre and visual arts with an emphasis on contemporary documentary theatre in Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. She has also authored El teatro de Argentina y Chile: Globalización, resistencia y desencanto (Corregidor, 2009), and is co-editor (with Analola Santana) of Fifty Key Figures in Latinx and Latin American Theatre (Routledge, 2022), as well as (with Pamela Brownell) of Biodrama/Proyecto Archivos: seis documentales escénicos by Vivi Tellas (Papeles Teatrales, Universidad de Córdoba, 2017), and of Imagining Human Rights in Twenty-First-Century Theater: Global Perspectives (with Brenda Werth and Florian Becker, Palgrave, 2013). Hernández is currently Director of Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies.

Josephine Lee, University of Minnesota

Josephine Lee is a professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota and the editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture. Her books include Race in American Musical Theater; Oriental, Black, and White: The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater; The Japan of Pure Invention: Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado; and Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage.

Karen Saari, Madison College

Karen Saari’s plays have been produced at Flint Repertory Theatre, Magnetic Theatre Company, Music Theatre of Madison, Acadiana Rep, Stray Dog Theatre and beyond. She is a three-time semi-finalist for the O’Neill NPC, two-time Princess Grace Fellowship semi-finalist and two-time finalist for the ATHE Excellence in Playwriting Award. Her work includes ‘Rain on Fire, developed with NYC’s Broad Horizons Theatre Co, Flint Rep’s 2022 New Works Festival, L.A.’s Blank Theatre and through Renaissance Theaterworks’ 2019 Br!nk Festival. It also won the 2020 Talk Back Theatre Playwriting Award. Her latest, Tragedy Sound, was a 2023 semi-finalist for the Playwrights Realm Scratchpad Series, will receive a workshop reading with NYC’s The Bechdel Group in March 2024 and is included in the 2024 Renaissance Theaterworks Br!nk Festival (Milwaukee). Saari was commissioned by Music Theatre of Madison to co-write a musical (book and co-lyrics)—Ten Days in Madhouse—which premiered in August 2022. Her comedy Bad in Bed (A Fairy Tale)enjoyed a sold-out world premiere run in March 2023 (Madison, WI) as part of World Premiere Wisconsin. This followed its 2018 developmental premiere with Acadiana Rep of Lafayette, LA. In a Clearing premiered with Asheville’s Magnetic Theatre Company in 2018, was a 2015 Wisconsin Wrights New Play Festival winner, and was a PlayLab awardee at the 2017 Last Frontier Theatre Conference, among other honors. Mornings with June received a staged reading with Vintage Theatre Company (Aurora, CO) in June 2022 and received Honorable Mention from Panndora Production’s 2022 New Works Festival (Long Beach, CA). Her one-acts, most notably Joyland and Gun Story, have been performed around the country. She was a 2022 William Inge Festival New Play Lab Playwright. Karen belongs to Dramatists Guild, Playwrights Center and holds an MFA in playwriting from Augsburg University. She is a full-time Communication and Performing Arts faculty member at Madison College. 

Jane Barnette, University of Kansas

Jane Barnette is a theatre historian and dramaturg who specializes in literary adaptation and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Barnette's production work includes dramaturgy, acting, and directing for original adaptations of literature, classic and contemporary plays, and musical theatre. She produced an original adaptation of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, co-created with Michael Haverty, for Kennesaw State University and 7 Stages Theatre in Atlanta. Her book, Adapturgy: The Dramaturg's Art and Theatrical Adaptation, published with Southern Illinois University Press (Theater in the Americas series) in 2018, is the first of its kind to address the theory and practice of adaptation dramaturgy. Her work on adapturgy can also be seen in recent collections on theatrical adaptation ("The Spirit of the Source: Adaptation Dramaturgy and Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, in Kara Reilly's Contemporary Approaches to Adaptation in Theatre) and journals dedicated to adaptation ("How to Do Things with Birds" in The Journal of Adaptation in Theatre & Performance). Additionally, Barnette is the author of "The Matinee Audience in Peril: The Syndicate's Mr. Bluebeard and the Iroquois Theatre Fire" and "Rail-izing the Nation Along Lake Michigan: The Wheels a-Rolling Pageant," both of which appeared in Theatre Symposium and stem from her research interests in the intersections of popular culture and the railroad business. Barnette's articles and reviews have also appeared in Theatre Topics, Text and Performance Quarterly, Theatre InSight, and Theatre Journal. A recipient of the 2012 Distinguished Teaching Award for the College of the Arts at Kennesaw State University, Barnette explored the intersection of yoga/yogic philosophy and pedagogy from 2012-14 as coordinator of and participant in a Faculty Learning Community. She serves as a board member of the Friends of the Theatre (FROTH) and on the advisory board of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at KU, is a Regional Vice President for the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, a member of the Pedagogy Subcommittee within the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and was the Associate Editor for Theatre Symposium from 2012-14.

Peter Reed, University of Mississippi

Karin Waidley, University of Michigan

Shannon Walsh, Louisiana State University

Laura Hussey, Routledge

Claire Margerison, Routledge

T.S. Banks, Loud 'N' Unchained Theatre Company (Madison WI)

T. S. Banks (he/him) is a Black & QTDisabled, non-binary
teaching artist, poet, and playwright from Madison, WI. He is the Founder of Loud ‘N UnChained Theater Co and LNU Publishing House, which is home to Black mad-Krip, neurodivergent, and chronically ill authors and teaching-artists. His work addresses visioning for Black Liberation, a critique of the medical system, radical care + access, madness, QT Mad-Krip Liberation, disability justice, & abolition. T's chapbooks "Call Me ill" , "Left" & "SPLIT" can all be found at LnuTheaterCo.com. Follow him @LnuTheaterCo on IG or @Call_Me_ill on “X”.

All Conference

Jeanmarie Higgins, Co-Chair, Conference Planner

Jen Plants, Co-Chair, Conference Planner

Brandon LaReau, Associate Conference Planner

Frederick D. Miller
Tony Gunn, ex officio

Accessibility

Catherine (Katya) Vrtis, Chair, Accessibility Officer

Kara Raphaeli, Co-Chair

Suzi Elnaggar

Deborah Kochman

Anthony Trujillo

Cassandra White

Tyler Everett Adams, ex officio

Anti-Racism 

Dennis Sloan, Senior Co-Chair

Karen M. Dabney, Junior Co-Chair

Dave Peterson, Junior Co-Chair
Nayib Jean Baptiste
Nathan Bowman
Dan Cullen

Yuko Kurahashi

Joe Stollenwerk

Cason Murphy, ex officio

Bylaws Ad Hoc Committee

Julie M. Burrell, Chair, Internal Communication Officer
Mackenzie Bounds
Sarah Campbell
Shelby Lunderman

Land Acknowledgement

Christiana Molldrem Harkulich, Chair

Shannon Epplett

Emily Goodell

Ann Haugo

Heidi Nees

Greg Romero

Shawna Mefferd Kelty, ex officio

Mission Statement Re-write Ad Hoc Committee

Sarah Campbell
Dan Cullen
Jeanmarie Higgins
Shelby Lunderman

Theatre History Studies, the Journal of the Mid-America Theatre Conference

Editor:

Jocelyn Buckner, Chapman University
ths.editor@matc.us

Book Review Editor:

Kellen Hoxworth, University at Buffalo - SUNY
ths.book.editor@matc.us

Theatre/Practice: The Online Journal of the Practice/Production Symposium of MATC

Editor (Outgoing): 

Dan Smith, Michigan State University

Editor (Incoming): 

Karin Waidley, University of Michigan
thr.practice.editor@matc.us