Steve Burch – Professor of Theatre History, Playwriting, UA Dept of Theatre and Dance

Professor Burch joined the department in 2002 after spending many years as an actor/director/playwright. Among his awards are a Playwriting Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and two Critics’ Choice awards from the Samuel French Short Play Festivals. He has published articles and reviews in Theatre History Studies, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Theatre Symposium, Southern Theatre, David Mamet Review, Theatre Journal, Prospects, the Oxford Companion to United States History, Holocaust Literature, and Reference Guide to Holocaust Literature. He directs free Shakespeare plays in the park each summer in Tuscaloosa for The Rude Mechanicals and is the Chair of the Playwriting Committee for SETC. 
View Steve’s CV.

PRODUCTIONS

Steve has been a part of many productions! Most recently are productions with The University of Alabama’s Department of Theatre and Dance, The Rude Mechanicals, Tuscaloosa’s free Shakespeare in the Park company, and Improbable Fictions, a Shakespearean staged reading series. Visit the Production Highlights page for more details.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

New Book Release: Stanislavski in Ireland: Focus at Fifty

An American girl, Deirdre O’Connell, is the heroine of this unusual history of a Dublin theatre. Born and raised in the Bronx, of Irish immigrant parents, O’Connell studied acting at the New York Dramatic Workshop and then with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. 

NEWS & EVENTS

Steve presented his two books on Dublin’s Focus Theatre to President Michael D. Higgins and First Lady Sabina Coyne Higgins at a reception held for Steve and his co-editor Brian McAvera at the Aras an Uachtarain (president’s mansion) in Dublin, Ireland.  The books were published simultaneously by Carysfort Press.