Theatre, Brief: 2026 Release

MICHELLE LIU CARRIGER is an assistant professor of Theater and Performance Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she teaches classes on global theatre history and contemporary issues of diversity and performance. As a scholar, Carriger has published award-winning articles on cultural appropriation and clothing and nineteenth-century cross-dressing scandals in TRI: Theatre Research International and TDR: The Drama Review. Additional topics of teaching and research include the Japanese Way of Tea (“tea ceremony”), cheerleaders in twenty-first century drama, historical reenactment, Japanese youth street fashion, performance theory and theatricality, and pedagogy. Her pre-academia theatre work primarily consisted of backstage work like building sets and costumes, stage managing, and running crew. She completed a Ph.D. at Brown University and a Master’s Degree at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she also worked with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival as a publicity assistant, a casting assistant, and an assistant director.

Donovan Sherman is an associate professor of English at Seton Hall University. His research focuses on the drama and performance of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, as well as theatre history, philosophy, and critical theory. Scholarly works include the book Second Death: Theatricalities of the Soul in Shakespeare’s Drama, published in 2016 by Edinburgh University Press, along with essays on Shakespeare, performance studies, film, and early modern religion and philosophy in Shakespeare Quarterly, The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Literature/ Film Quarterly, English Literary Renaissance, Upstart, and Theatre Journal. Currently, he is working on a book about portrayals of ancient philosophy in early modern drama. As a theatre artist, Sherman has performed with the Actors Theatre of Louisville, the SITI Company, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and several other regional theatres in the United States. Donovan received his doctoral degree from the Joint Program of Theatre and Drama at the University of California, Irvine, and the University of California, San Diego.