Misty Krueger
PhD
Readers Theater
I have directed students in a readers theater performance at the University of Maine at Farmington. In the spring of 2013, I directed Lovers’ Vows with my Jane Austen senior seminar students. In the Spring 2015 semester I directed a Bold Stroke for a Wife with my Restoration and early 18th-century drama senior seminar students.
I have performed in readers theater performances at the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference with a group called The SEASECS Players. I have played parts in a few 18th-century comedies, including most recently The Male Coquette, or Seven Hundred Fifty-Seven, Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, and Elizabeth Inchbald's Animal Magnetism. I have acted in a private entertainment, too, in Susanna Centlivre’s The Wonder as a maid, but apparently cross-dressed roles suit me well. I usually end up playing male parts, including the roles of servant, butler, or bookie. Outside of 18th-century parts, I performed in a university readers theater production of the Sirens episode from James Joyce's Ulysses as one of the bar maids.
From a dramaturgical perspective, my role as director (rather than actor) relies on my ability to edit a play text and make a play “stageable” for an hour-and-a-half, the time frame of my classes. This process involves selecting which words, lines, and stage directions need to be cut, and in most cases which stage directions need to be added to help students enter and exit the acting space and to find their places on our makeshift stage. To read more about this process, check out my pedagogical essay on readers theatre featured in ABO: Interacitve Journal for Women in the Arts 1640-1830.
In Spring 2016 I also co-organized a small-scale academic version of a Con at my university. The event was title "Adaptacon" due to its focus on adaptation. Along with students, I dressed in character and attended the event. (I even won second place for best costume!) As you can see in the photo, I am a pirate--Anne Bonney or Mary Read, actually. I teach the tales of these two cross-dressing 18th-century pirates in my transatlantic course.
Cosplay
University Culture
In the spring of 2017, I became the faculty sponsor for Sigma Tau Delta, The International English Honor Society. UMF has started a new chapter, and we will induct our first groups of members this year!
I am also the chair of the University Culture Committee. We are responsible for organizing the university's one-day student research extravaganza called Symposium Day.
