Bess Rowen

From the minute I was cast as Fairy #4 in A Midsummer Night's Dream my freshman year at Lehigh University, I knew that I would always be a performer. i believed my place was on stage, and I thought of myself as an actor, yet I never really enjoyed the performances as much as the rehearsals. I knew I didn't want the life of an actor, but the theatre was what I knew and loved. An older professor saw me struggling with figuring out my next step as I entered my senior year, and he mentioned that there was a program where I could study all kinds of performance, and where my knowledge base could be useful for something other than acting. I was intrigued, and looked up this "performance studies."

From the minute I saw the website, I knew that I wanted to be there. I wanted to get out of rural Pennsylvania into New York City, to be surrounded by art forms I had never encountered before, and to meet people from all types of intellectual backgrounds. I already knew I loved literary theory, and the opportunity to use those techniques on objects other than just published texts was incredibly exciting. When I went to the open house, I heard people like Richard Schechner, Ann Pellegrini, and Barbara Browning speak, and I made appointments to meet with them one-on-one and talk more about what I was interested in learning. In a few short minutes, these people managed to show me new ways of using my brain and inspired me to expand what I quickly realized had been a limited frame of reference in terms of performance.

• B.A., Theatre & English, minor in Psychology, Lehigh University

• Assistant Professor, Villanova University
• Performance Review Editor, The Eugene O'Neill Review
• Co-convener/co-founder, Transfeminisms working group at the American Society for Theatre Research
• Intimacy Choreographer, freelance 

• The Lines Between the Lines: How Stage Directions Affect Embodiment (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021). DOI: 10.3998/mpub.11413048.
• co-editor of Theatre Scandals: Social Dynamics of Turbulent Theatrical Events. Edited by Vicki-Ann Cremona, Henri Shocenmakers, Bess Rowen, and Anneli Saro. (Leiden: Brill/Rodopi, 2020). DOI: 10.1163/9789004433984.
• “Leigh Silverman.” In 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre, edited by Jimmy Noriega and Jordan Schildcrout. London: Routledge, 215-218. DOI: 10.4324/9781003203896-45. 
• “Moisés Kaufman.” In 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre, edited by Jimmy Noriega and Jordan Schildcrout. London: Routledge, 113-117. DOI: 10.4324/9781003203896-23. 
• “Ruhls of the House: Surreal Spaces for Queer Homes in the Plays of Sarah Ruhl.” Modern Drama 63, no. 3 (2020): 330-353. DOI: 10.3138/md.63.3.1012.
• “Against Chronology: Intergenerational Pedagogical Approaches to Queer Theatre and Performance Histories.” Theatre Topics 30, no. 2 (2020): 69-83. DOI: 10.1353/tt.2020.0030. (co-written by Benjamin Gillespie).
• “Burning the Bridge While Bridging the Gap: Riotous Pedagogy in The Plough and the Stars riot of 1926.” InTheatre Scandals: Social Dynamics of Turbulent Theatrical Events, edited by Vicki-Ann Cremona, Henri Schoenmakers, Bess Rowen, and Anneli Saro, 84-100. Leiden: Brill/Rodopi, 2020. DOI: 10.1163/9789004433984.
• “People Come to the Theatre to Feel Something Old: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Theatre History.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 33, no. 2 (2019): 81-94. DOI: 10.1353/dtc.2019.0005.
•  “Crushing Her with the Weight of His Eloquence: Reconsidering the Theatricality of Eugene O’Neill’s Stage Directions.” The Eugene O’Neill Review 39, no. 2 (2019): 294-312. DOI: 10.5325/eugeoneirevi.39.2.0294.
• “Undigested Reading: Rethinking Stage Directions through Affect.” Theatre Journal 70, no. 3 (2018): 309- 329. DOI: 10.1353/tj.2018.0057.
• “Completing the Sentence with a Gesture: The Deconstructed Dialogue – Stage Direction Binary in the Work of Tennessee Williams.” The Tennessee Williams Annual Review 15 (2016): 127-145.
• “Nobler Womanhood: An Exploration of Sororities and Scripted Femininity.” Emerging Theatre Research 1 (2013): 21-53. DOI: 10.12675/etr.2013.1121.

• Former Arts & Culture blogger for The Huffington Post
• Graduate Center Dissertation Fellow, 2016-2017
• Andrew W. Mellon Center for the Humanities Digital Fellow 2014-2016, The Graduate Center, CUNY