Ellen Margolis

Associate Professor, Theatre

503-352-2752

margolis@pacificu.edu

UC Box: A131

Office: Warner Hall 25

Ellen Margolis (Instructor: Acting, Playwriting) holds an M.F.A. in Acting from the University of California at Davis and a Ph.D. in Theatre History from the University of California at Santa Barbara. An Associate Professor of Theatre, she serves as Chair of Theatre and Dance at Pacific University.

Ellen is an award-winning actor and playwright. Her plays, which have been produced throughout the United States, include Trying Not to Stare, Calumnies, American Soil, What We Thought, and A Little Chatter, which appears in a collection of baseball plays from Playscripts, Inc. 

As a playwright, Ellen has received commissions from Mile Square Theatre and the Susan G. Komen Foundation. She is a founding member of Playwrights West, Portland’s new-work theatre, and a member of the Dramatists Guild. Excerpts from her plays can be seen in the Audition Arsenal series, published by Smith & Kraus, and she is editor of Singular Voices, a book of monologues from the International Centre for Women Playwrights. 

Ellen’s research areas include theatre pedagogy, the theory and history of acting, and Applied Theatre. She is co-editor of The Politics of American Actor Training (Routledge, 2010).  She also continues to work professionally as a director, dialect coach, and voiceover artist. 

Her students have gone on to work on- and off-Broadway, in television and film, in regional theatre, and in national tours; to manage theatre companies; and to teach. 

In her free time, Ellen enjoys reading, traveling, and hiking with her family.