Melissa Sturges

Melissa Lin Sturges is a 3rd year doctoral student in Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies. She has published academic performance reviews in Theatre Journal, Ecumenica, Shakespeare Bulletin (forthcoming) and PARTake (forthcoming) as well as non-scholarly reviews in Howlround and DCTrending. She has forthcoming peer-reviewed articles in Contemporary Theatre Review, New England Theatre Journal, and Alluvium. Her professional affiliations include LMDA, ATDS, ATHE, ASTR and she was the recipient of the 2022 ATDS Emerging Scholars Award. 

She is so happy to also be a D.C. Teaching Artist and Arts Administrator. Likewise, to be on the Steering Committee for the American Theater Archives Project, Graduate Rep to the LGBTQ+ Focus Group at ATHE, VP for Conference Planning for the ASTR GSC, to have worked as a consultant with Spiderwoman Theatre, and to have been a dramaturg for Villanova Theatre. She is excited about her upcoming dramaturgy work for The Eagle Theatre’s production of Wild Party in the Spring of 2023. 

Her research interests surround modernist to contemporary drama in Europe and the United States. As well as Queer Theory with an emphasis on erratic temporalities, endurance, and performance as a radical act. Her dissertation topic will center narratives of addiction in modernist plays and their contemporary adaptations. 

(She also enjoys writing on other topics such as pop music, rollerskating, and queer romantic comedies.)