Cornelia Ellen Mease

Ellen directs and teaches European dramatic literature, criticism, theory, and theatre history from the Greeks to Beckett and Stoppard. She also teaches interdisciplinary Humanities classes on ancient Greece (HUM 101), Roman and early Christian culture (HUM 102), and medieval/Renaissance culture (HUM 140). On Grinnell's London program in 2003 she taught courses on English comedy, Samuel Beckett, and the 19th c. "Age of Revolution." In Florence 2006-07 she taught courses on Dante's Divine Comedy and the Florentine Golden Age/Italian Renaissance. During the Beckett centenary in 2006, she served as festival dramaturg for Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre's BeckettFest, when she also directed Krapp's Last Tape, A Piece of Monologue, Play and That Time. In 2008 she was the dramaturg for PICT's complete cycle of the plays of John Millington Synge, when she also directed his last play, Deirdre of the Sorrows. Directing credits also include Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Arcadia, Travesties; Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard; Peer Gynt, Doll's House, Lady from the Sea; 12th Night, Measure for Measure, Macbeth, and Hamlet. She directed Brecht's Galileo in spring 2009, for the 400th anniversary of Galileo's sighting of the moons of Jupiter. She will direct Shakespeare's pastoral comedy As You Like at Grinnell in November 2009. B.A., Drama, Vassar; M.A. Drama, U. Va.; Ph.D., Drama and Humanities, Stanford.