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 . She has received commissions from Mile Square Theatre and Portland Center Stage. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the International Center for Women Playwrights, and Portland Center Stage’s professional playwrights circle. 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 most recent article appears in the book Radical Acts: Theatre and Feminist Pedagogies of Change, edited by Ann-Elizabeth Armstrong and Kathleen Juhl, and she is currently co-editing a book with Lissa Tyler Renaud on the politics of American Actor Training.
She continues to work professionally as a director, dialect coach, and voiceover artist.