ABOUT THE AUTHORS

About the Authors: translation

James Fisheris professor and head of the department of theater at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Before that, he was a professor at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where he was named McLain-McTurnan-Arnold Research Scholar in 1999-2000 and 1987-1988 and LaFollette Lecturer in 1992-1993. In 2007, Jim was awarded the Betty Jean Jones Award for Excellence in the Teaching of American Theatre from the American Theatre and Drama Society. In 1997, he was awarded the Indiana Theater Person of the Year Award for 1996 by the Indiana Theater Association. He joined the Wabash College faculty in 1978 and served as department chair for 13 years.

Jim received a BA in drama and speech from Monmouth College (New Jersey) in 1973 and an MFA in acting/directing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1976. He is the author of several books, includingThe Theater of Tony Kushner:Living Past Hope(New York: Routledge, 2001), bio-bibliographies of Al Jolson (1994), Spencer Tracy (1994), and Eddie Cantor (1997) for Greenwood (Westport, Conn.), andThe Theater of Yesterday and Tomorrow:Com-media dell'arte on the Modern Stage(Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen, 1992). Jim has editedTony Kushner:New Essays on the Art and Politics of the Plays(Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2006) and the forthcoming "We Will Be Citizens":Gay and Lesbian Drama:New Essays(Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2008), as well as six volumes ofThe Puppetry Yearbook.

Jim served as book review editor for theJournal of Dramatic Theory and Criticismfor 15 years and currently edits book reviews forBroadside, the publication of the Theater Library Association. He has published on theatre and film in a wide variety of publications. Also a stage director and actor, Jim is the author of two plays,The Bogus Bride, which was produced off-Broadway in 2000, andThe Braggart Soldier, a free adaptation of Plautus'sMiles Gloriosus. He is also at work onContemporary, as a companion to the modernism volume.

Felicia Hardison Londréis curators' professor of theatre at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where she has taught theatre history since 1978, originally specializing in French, Spanish, and Russian/Soviet theatre of the 19th and 20th centuries, but recently focusing more on turn-of-the-century American theatre. From 1978 to 2000, she served as dramaturg for Missouri Repertory Theatre under the successive artistic directorships of Dr. Patricia McIlrath and George Keathley. She is honorary cofounder of the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival and dramaturg for the Nebraska Shakespeare Festival.

Felicia earned her BA (High Honors) in French at the University of Montana, then spent a year at the Université de Caen on a Fulbright study grant. After completing her MA in Romance Languages at the University of Washington, Seattle, she switched over to theatre for her PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She taught at the University of Wisconsin-Rock County, the University of Texas at Dallas, and has held visiting professorships at Hosei University in Tokyo and at Marquette University in Milwaukee. She has given her lecture on the Shakespeare authorship question in London, Tokyo, Beijing, and on a lecture tour of Hungary, and she was called to Houston in 2004 as an expert witness for Edward DeVere in a suit against William Shakspere. She gave invited lectures on Tennessee Williams at three French universities, including the Sorbonne in Paris. In 2005, she was the Geske lecturer at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Books by Felicia Londré includeThe Enchanted Years of the Stage:Kansas City at the Crossroads of American Theater, 1870-1930(2007),Words at Play:Creative Writing and Dramaturgy(2005),The History of North American Theater:The United States, Canada, and Mexico from Pre-Colombian Times to the Present(with Daniel J. Watermeier, 1998),Love's Labour's Lost:Critical Essays(1997),The History of World Theater:From the English Restoration to the Present(1991), andFederico Garcia Lorca(1984). In 2001, she received ATHE's award for Outstanding Teacher of Theatre in Higher Education, and in 2006, her university's Inspirational UMKC Faculty Award. She was given a University of Montana Distinguished Alumna Award in 1998, inducted as a Fellow of the American Theatre at the Kennedy Center in 1999, and elected to the National Theatre Conference in 2001.