Maya E. Roth is an Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance Studies at Georgetown. She was the Davis Center’s first Artistic Director, launching its theme-based home seasons, emphasis on interdisciplinary engagement, relationship with Arena Stage, and creative residencies for new work development that place guest artists in collaboration with student and faculty artists. During her four-year service as Director of the Theater Program, she successfully launched the new major in Theater and Performance Studies that emphasizes the intersection of critical and creative inquiries, shepherded dramatic growth of the tenure track faculty and production staff as well as degree students, and accented an ethic of collaboration. Her areas of scholarly specialization include civic theater, feminist performance, modern drama, and space-based criticism. Currently she is editing the anthology International Dramaturgy: Translations and Transformations in the Theatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker (forthcoming 2008, PIE-Peter Lang Press), continuing her stage and scholarly expertise in that international playwright hosted by Georgetown College for a Davis Professor residency, active in the Gonda Theatre and classrooms, in 2005-06. A dramaturg-director and performer with an extensive background in ensemble theater, she has developed a special focus in feminist performance, new work development and dance theater, and has performed in premieres of works by Joe Goode, Kazimierz Braun, Darko Tresnjak and Megan Terry, among others, as well as in her own solo works. Favorite directing projects include the West Coast premiere of The Years, the West Coast premiere of David’s Red-Haired Death, the world premiere of the dance opera A Still Small Voice, Adrienne Kennedy’s She Talks to Beethoven, Beckett’s Rockaby, a multidisciplinary staged reading of The Trestle at Pope Lick in its first West Coast foray, and, here at GU, Our Country’s Good, a workshop reading of Wertenbaker’s Galileo’s Daughter in its first American foray, Twelfth Night, and Vinegar Tom. She loves her teaching, which includes courses such as Ensemble Theater, World Theater History, Minor's Colloquium, Contemporary American Women Playwrights, Modern Drama and Acting. A frequent post-show respondent to DC theatre, Roth also coordinates the international Jane Chambers Playwriting Contest for feminist playwrights, a joint project of WTP and ATHE, which helps to promote outstanding new works by women playwrights. She received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley with honors, where she was active as both artist and scholar. Maya feels honored to work with students as talented, smart, generous, and diverse as those at Georgetown and is continually inspired by her exceptional colleagues.
Professor Roth is on a junior faculty research leave 2007-08.