Introduction
Teaching Interests
Research Interests
Educational Background
Schedule

Susan Mason
Professor

Office: MUS 238
Phone: 323 343-4113
FAX: 323 343-5567
Email: smason@calstatela.edu

INTRODUCTION

Prior to CSLA I worked at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, Playwrights' Horizons, and Yale Repertory Theatre in dramaturgy/literary. I taught at California State Universities Sacramento and Northridge, Reed College, and Yale University. PhD is from University of Oregon (1980) with a dissertation on Ibsen. At CSLA since 1989.

TEACHING INTERESTS

Director of Graduate Studies for Theatre Arts. Classes: primarily dramatic literature, performance criticism, and theatre history on BA and MA levels. Directed: Woyzeck, The Government Inspector, Etta Jenks, and Ubu Roi. I brought French director Pascal Rambert to CSLA to direct Race with CSLA students and actors from the LA Poverty Department. My academic interests include Theatre of the Oppressed (Boal), political theatre & guerrilla theatre, dramaturgy, theatre history, and international theatre. My goals at CSLA: to bring a global perspective to the MA program, to increase placement of MA students in PhD programs, to help students learn to think critically about the responsibility of art in society and to understand that all art is political.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Fulbright lecturer in American Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands (1993). Honorary Fellow in Film and Theatre at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand (1995). AHA International Programs Lecturer in Siena, Italy (2005). Freeman Institute: Japan Studies (2006). Dramaturg and Literary in Los Angeles, New York, New Haven, Seattle, Portland, and Utrecht, Netherlands. Editorial staff of Theater (1983-84) and was Performance Review Editor for Theatre Journal (1993-96).  Board member of The Actors' Gang (1997-2001). Member: American and International Theatre Critics Association, Ibsen Society, International Brecht Society, American Society for Theatre Research, Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies. Published over 20 articles, mainly performance criticism, in major theatre journals and essays in five books. Book: The San Francisco Mime Troupe Reader (Univ of Michigan Press, 2005). Current research: book interviewing actresses who have played Nora in A Doll House in thirty countries.

Recent Professional Activities

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

PhD Theatre 1980
University of Oregon