Dr. Ellen Margolis
Ellen Margolis 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 & Dance and Director of Theatre at Pacific.
Dr. Margolis is an award-winning actor and playwright. Her plays, which have been produced throughout the United States, include How to Draw Mystical Creatures, Picking Up the Baby, Late, American Soil, and A Little Chatter, which is forthcoming in a collection of baseball plays from Playscripts, Inc.
As a playwright, she has received commissions from Mile Square Theatre and the Susan G. Komen Foundation. She is a member of PlayGroup, Portland Center Stage’s professional playwrights' circle, and 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.
Dr. Margolis’s research areas include theatre pedagogy and the theory and history of acting. Her current project, which she is co-editing with Lissa Tyler Renaud, is a book entitled The Politics of American Actor Training.
She continues to work professionally as a director, dialect coach, and voiceover artist. Her former students have gone on to work on and off Broadway, in televisin and film, in regional theatre, and in national tours; to manage theatre companies; and to teach.