Dana Edell
Assistant Professor, School of Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies
Dr. Dana Edell (she/her) is an activist-scholar-artist-educator who has produced and co-directed 80-plus original plays and seven albums of music written and performed by teenagers addressing social and racial justice issues. She has worked as a theater teaching artist in public and private elementary, middle, and high schools; adult prisons; and youth correctional institutions in Rhode Island, California, Delaware, and New York.
Dr. Edell is the director of The ART (Anti-Racism Theater) Project, where she collaborates with multiracial groups of teenage girls and nonbinary youth in Wilmington, Del., to write and perform activist theater. She is also the director of EmersonTHEATRE, a free afterschool theater and social justice program for Boston teenagers. She was co-founder and executive director (2002-2012) of the award-winning, Brooklyn-based viBe Theater Experience, and co-chair of the Girls’ Participation Task Force at the United Nations, where she directed annual theater productions written by girls from more than 20 countries.
She often adapts and devises ancient texts through contemporary justice lenses, including recent projects directing Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen and the Farce of Democracy, and We Are the Korai: Stories of Girls from Ancient Greece and Today, both at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
She has published chapters and articles in more than a dozen academic books and journals, and currently serves as co-editor of Youth Theatre Journal. Her first book, Girls, Performance and Activism: Demanding to Be Heard was published by Routledge in 2022. She has taught at New York University, the City University of New York, The New School, and with the Bard Prison Initiative at Bayview Women’s Prison.
Courses
- Qualitative Research in Theatre Education and Applied Theatre
- Sp Topics in Theatre Education
- Topics in Theater Performance and Dance Studies
- Creative Civic Engagement
- Theatre Ed Capstone Project
- Master's Thesis
- Engagement Lab: Civic Design in Practice
- Applied Theatre 2: On The Page and On Our Feet
- Directed Study
- EmersonTHEATRE
- Thesis Preparation
- Special Topics in Theatre Education & Applied Theatre
- Advanced Acting: Special Topics
- Master of Fine Arts Thesis
- Master's Thesis Project
Academic Work
- 2022, Girls, Performance, and Activism: Demanding to Be Heard. New York and London: Routledge
- 2025, “ART Built on Trust and Solidarity: Creating Original Theater with Girls and Gender Nonconforming Teens,” with Oates, K. and Botram, K. in Applied Theatre: Gender and Justice. Lisa S. Brenner, Chris Ceraso and Evelyn Diaz Cruz (Eds.). Routledge: New York and London
- 2023, “Writing for Change: Guiding Activist Playwrights in Classrooms and Communities,” in Embodied Playwriting. Bucs, H. & Menefee, C. (Eds.). New York & London: Routledge
- 2022, “SPARK Movement,” with Montaño, C., in Encyclopedia of Sexuality Education. Fahs, B. (Ed.). New York & London: Palgrave
- 2021, “Listen to Us!: Teenage Girls Creating Theatre for Social Change,” with Allicock, K. and Duran L., in Applied Theatre with Youth: Education, Engagement, Activism. Lisa S. Brenner, Chris Ceraso and Evelyn Diaz Cruz, (Eds.). Routledge: New York and London
- 2021, “‘We Don’t Come from the Same Background… But I Get You’: Performing Our Common Humanity by Creating Original Theater with Girls” in The Crisis of Connection: Roots, Consequences, and Solutions. Niobe Way, Alisha Ali, Carol Gilligan and Pedro Noguera (Eds.). New York: New York University Press
- 2018, “‘This Is Not a Safe Space’: SPARKing Change through Activist Theater,” with Christophe, N. and Shawlin, T., in Youth Sexualities: Public Feelings and Contemporary Cultural Politics. Susan Talburt (Ed.) ABC-CLIO, Inc.
- 2018“Theater and Girls’ Resistance” in Gender: Space. Aimee Meredith Cox (Ed.) Part of the Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Gender series. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA
Creative Work
- 2024-present, emersonTHEATER, Boston, MA, In collaboration with an ensemble of 15-20 Boston-area teenagers, Edell co-devises, produces and directs an annual, original activist theater production, written and performed by a gender and racially diverse group of young people at Emerson College.
- 2023-present, Immersive Museum Theatre at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, In collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Edell creates an annual immersive performance piece with undergraduate Emerson College Performing Arts students reimagining ancient text and art through a contemporary feminist, anti-racist lens.
- 2020-present,The ART (Anti-Racism Theater) Project, Wilmington, Del., Co-Founder/Director. Edell co-created and directs an arts-based antiracist summer theater program for a multiracial ensemble of girls and nonbinary teenagers, in partnership with the Siegel JCC, the Christina Cultural Arts Center and viBe Theater Experience.
