Susan Russell (Artistic Director) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Theatre at The Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA. She received her PhD in Theatre Studies from Florida State University’s School of Theatre in 2007, her Master of Arts degree from Florida State University in 2003, and her BA in Theatre from St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, NC in 1979. Between her education pursuits, she experienced a twenty-five year career as a professional actor on and off-Broadway as well as a career in regional theatre and opera companies across the country. While performing for five years in Phantom of the Opera, she was an artist/teacher for New York Offstage where she created, developed, and implemented workshops in musical theatre performance and acting for high-school and university students, and was a curriculum creator for New York City Opera, where she created and developed arts based education program designed to meet the specific needs of selected elementary, middle, and high school programs. As a playwright, her works Olympia (1998) and Present Perfect (1999) have been produced at the Shurin Theatre in New York City, and in 2000, Lincoln Center selected Present Perfect for its Millennium Living Room Festival at the HERE Theatre in Soho. Her play Severe Clear was a semi-finalist in the 2006 O’Neill Theatre Center Playwriting Competition, and it is currently in pre-production in New York City.

At Penn State, Susan teaches a myriad of graduate and undergraduate theatre studies courses as well as performance classes for the Musical Theatre Program. Susan has reinstated the playwriting program at PSU, and in the spring of 2007 she created Cultural Conversations: A New Works Festival at PSU, which is devoted to promoting and fostering works dealing with topics of global and local diversity. Susan has been published by Studies in Musical Theatre, and has begun teaching her performance methodology in the U.K..

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