Beth Homan, Ph.D.

(She/Her)

• B.F.A., University of Florida
• M.A., Miami University of Ohio
• Ph.D., University of Missouri - Columbia

Since coming to Catawba in 2003, Dr. Elizabeth "Beth" Homan has been lucky enough to teach everything from theatre history and dramatic literature to acting, directing, period performance, and Shakespeare. Though she is proud to be a true theatre generalist, she is particularly interested in devised and collaborative theatre, focusing on Anne Bogart's Viewpoints and the performance techniques of the Tectonic Theatre Project (“Moment Work”).

Beth is also a veteran director. She is interested in (re)visioning the classics but particularly enjoys working on new works and devised pieces. Her favorite playwrights include Tennessee Williams, Harold Pinter, Christopher Durang, Tom Stoppard, and Sarah Ruhl. Some of her favorite directing projects include Songs for a New World, The Pirates of Penzance, Twilight Los Angeles, The Dining Room,  The Curious Case of the Watson Intelligence, The Tempest, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In 2006, she and a company of Catawba students premiered Machine Play, an original experimental opera by Catawba Writer-in-Residence (emeritus) Janice Moore Fuller, at the Polli Talu Arts Center in Estonia (Baltics). Her most fulfilling directing experience to date, however, was her second collaboration with Fuller: a fully devised stage adaptation of William Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying (Premiered Catawba College, Sept. 2011).

Beth has attended the La Mama Umbria International Directors' Symposium outside of Spoleto, Italy, where she worked with international artists such as Senegalese choreographer Patrick Acogny, Columbian Puppet Master Federico Restrepo, and Tectonic Theatre Company founding member Leigh Fondakowski.  She has presented papers and workshops at both regional and national theatre conferences and has published several articles and book chapters. She is a proud member of Catawba’s Honors Board and regularly teaches Honors and First Year Seminar courses. Her scholarly, theoretical, and practical interests include feminist pedagogy, acting, directing, and movement pedagogy, performance theory, and gender studies. She lives in Salisbury with her husband Sean (a free-lance photographer); her beautiful daughter, Emmaline; and a veritable menagerie of family pets.