BTA Officers

President
Melinda D. Wilson—California State University, Sacramento
mwilson@csus.edu
Melinda D. Wilson is an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at California State University, Sacramento and a 2005 graduate of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama program at Northwestern University. Her research examines the construction of youth identity in African American dramas from the civil rights movement and Black Power era. Her directing credits include Day of Absence, The Colored Museum, Blues for an Alabama Sky, and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. In addition to serving as the faculty advisor for Sons/Ancestors Players, a student organization dedicated to producing works by African Americans and about Black experiences, Melinda teaches African American theatre, multicultural theatre, theatre history, script analysis, and introductory graduate courses.

 

Conference Planner
Soyica Diggs—Dartmouth College
soyica.diggs.colbert@dartmouth.edu

Soyica Diggs Colbert is an Assistant Professor of English at Dartmouth College; however, she teaches classes in the English and Theatre Departments and the African and African American Studies Program. Colbert recieved her doctorate from the Literatures in English Department at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her interests include: African American drama, literature, performance, and culture, women’s and gender studies. Currently, Colbert is working on a book entitled, From Repetition to Reproduction: African American Performance, Drama and History. Colbert’s writing appears in collections on performance and African American drama such as Sonic Interventions(edited by Sylvia Mieszkowski, Joy Smith, and Marijke de Valck) and Contemporary African American Women Playwrights: A Casebook(edited by Philip Kolin).

 

Secretary
Beth Schachter—Muhlenberg College
bschacht@muhlenberg.edu

Beth Schachter is an Associate Professor of Theatre & Dance and Director of Women’s Studies at Muhlenberg College. She completed her M.F.A. in Directing at USCD and he Ph.D. on contemporary American avant-garde theatre from GCUNY. Her scholarship and directing have focused on writers such as Suzan-Lori Parks, Wallace Shawn and Mac Wellman. She has directed premiers for New York and regional theatres: The New Victory, Second Stage, McCarter, Long Wharf, Adirondack Theatre Festival and Cincinnati Playhouse among others. Her interests studies and representation inform her work in the classroom and on stage.

 

Member at Large
David Catanzarite – College of the Desert
dcantanzarite@collegeofthedesert.edu
David Catanzarite was recently appointed head of the Theatre Arts program at College of the Desert (Palm Springs, California). He has directed and performed professionally on both coasts and is presently a resident director for Watts Village Theater Company in Los Angeles. In summer 2008 he directed At Risk, a new play commissioned by the Los Angeles Edge of the World Festival. In 2007 directed Watts Village Theater Company’s contribution to the 365 Days, 365 Plays project, a touring production of seven world premieres that started at 12:01 AM January 1 and culminated with a matinee at the Watts Towers. Other notable directing credits include Shakespeare Festival/LA, the Mark Taper Forum, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Stella Adler Theatre, and La Mama Etc. In 1998 Catanzarite was Artistic Director of the West Coast Bertolt Brecht Centennial Festival, the largest celebration of Brecht’s work outside Germany.

Member at Large
Donna J. Edmond—Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
dedmond@iupui.edu

Donna J. Edmond is Coordinator of the Certificate in Theatre and Performance Studies Program and Adjunct Professor in the African and African-American Studies Department at IUPUI. She also works as an artist-educator with the Indiana Repertory Theatre, teaching acting as well as voice and diction classes. She is Co-Founder of Good Company, an African-American theatre company based in Atlanta Georgia. She has worked as an actor and educator in several theatres, including The Alliance Theatre, Georgia Shakespeare Company, Seven Stages, Horizion Theatre, and Synchronicity Performance Group. Some of her acting credits include Harriet Tubman, Zora, A Raisin in the Sun, Twelfth Night, and 6 Characters in Search of an Author. Her directing credits include The Importance of Being Earnest, Godspell, and Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope. She earned her B.S. in Communication Studies from Georgia Southern University and her M.F.A. in Acting from The Ohio State University.

Graduate Student Representative
Douglas A. Jones, Jr.—Stanford University
dajones@stanford.edu

Douglas A. Jones, Jr. researches nineteenth-century theatre and performance with particular emphasis on antebellum culture and politics, abolitionism, and historiography. His Masters Thesis, “Thinking, Scripting, and Performing: Constructing and Playing the Racial Synecdoche in the Antebellum North” explored the Negro Convention Movement of the 1830s and 40s and the ways in which they functioned as ritualistic sites where leaders and delegates consciously attempted to construct a (free) black identity “to play” as a means of combating the rise of scientific racism. In 2006, he was a winner of the Sixth Annual BTA Debut Panel Competition at ATHE where he presented his paper: “The Willing Suspension of Anti-Theatricalism: Integrationist Abolitionism, Testifying, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin at A.H. Purdy’s National Theatre.” Currently a first-year doctoral student at Stanford University he holds a Master’s degree from University of Maryland, College Park in Theatre History and Criticism and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (With Honors) in Theatre from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts.