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Bess Rowen
Bess Rowen is an assistant professor of theatre at Villanova University and a theatre theorist, historian and practitioner. Her work focuses on what she terms ‘affective stage directions’, which are stage directions written in ways that engage the physical and emotional responses of future theatre-makers. Her first book, The Lines between the Lines: How Stage Directions Affect Embodiment, was published by University of Michigan Press in October 2021. Her next book project focuses on representations of teenage girls onstage. She is also co-editor of a forthcoming volume that pulls together work from the transfeminisms working group at the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), where she and her collaborators take up important issues of trans and non-binary representation in theatre and performance. In addition, Bess serves as co-editor of The Journal of American Drama and Theatre and the performance review editor of The Eugene O’Neill Review. She is the representative for the LGBTQ Focus Group at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE). Recent articles can be found in Modern Drama, Theatre Topics, the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism and The Eugene O’Neill Review, among others.
Contact: The John and Joan Mullen Center for the Performing Arts, 800 E Lancaster Avenue, Villanova, PA 19085, USA.