Maya E. Roth was founding Artistic Director of the Davis Performing Arts Center. An artist-scholar, she specializes in feminist plays and criticism, cross-cultural adaptations of classics, and new work development. Maya brings critical and creative expertise to the plays of Timberlake Wertenbaker, exemplified by numerous essays, productions and her co-edited volume International Dramaturgy (2011). Recent research includes her adaptation of Aphra Behn’s The Rover (2020) and her multi-year developmental dramaturgy for Iraqi-American Playwright Heather Raffo on Noura (Shakespeare Theatre Co world premiere, Playwrights Horizon NY premiere 2018) and Fallujah (Vancouver City Opera 2012). Since 2007, she has stewarded the Jane Chambers Prize for Feminist Playwriting, sponsored by WTP and ATHE. Her co-edited volume, Lesbian & Queer Plays from the Jane Chambers Prize (NoPassport Press 2019) features a cadre of winning plays and original interviews, in addition to curation. Maya’s early collaborations with Megan Terry and Joe Goode shape her commitment to interdisciplinary performance and pluralism, whether via artistic direction, incubation of new theater (e.g. by L Feldman and Christine Evans) or her direction of classics, such as by Wertenbaker, Shakespeare, Adrienne Kennedy and Caryl Churchill. Her critical writing appears in playbills, scholarly journals and edited volumes, such as Feminist Theatrical Revisions of Classic Works,Theatre of War and Exile, and Dramatic Revisions of Myths, Fairytales and Legends. She is honored to have won the College Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award (2014), in addition to WTP’s Career Achievement Award in Service to the Field (2018). She previously served as Chair of the Department of Performing Arts at Georgetown. While Program Director for TPST, she stewarded the development of the major. Her greatest joys include teaching, creative collaboration, the ocean, and her sassy son.
At Georgetown, Maya teaches classes such as an Ignatian Seminar (Plays with Stakes in the Past), Contemporary Women Playwrights, World Theater History, Play Analysis, Ensemble, New Work Development, Macbeth: Witches, War & Performance, and Adaptation. Often, her classes are cross-listed with CULP, Comp Lit, WGST and count towards HALC and Diversity requirements.
See a conversation between Maya and GU President DeGioia here .