June 4, 2025
This spring, Theatre Professor Megan Alrutz was inducted into the UT Austin Academy of Distinguished Teachers, a program established in 2012 to recognize outstanding educators across the UT System’s academic institutions.
“Professor Alrutz is an excellent teacher whose nationally renowned research and creative practice develops and theorizes new methods to more effectively engage youth in theatre making and spectating,” said Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, dean of the College of Fine Arts. “Student comments, peer observations and letters of support consistently find her to be successful at creating an intimate learning community, engaging both theory and practice, and flexible, adaptable and responsive to feedback while advancing the public good.”
Alrutz joined the faculty in the Department of Theatre and Dance in 2009, and she teaches in the Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities / Theatre Education programs. Her research and practice focus on creating new and interdisciplinary performance for stage and screen, storytelling (live and digital) and drama-based pedagogy. She teaches courses in applied theatre, theatre for youth and theatre for the very young, new play dramaturgy, devising and movement-based performance and research methods.
Alrutz has mentored many students in the creation of new works. One example was her work with then-undergraduates Guinevere “Gwenny” Govea and Anna Pickett as they wrote Spells of the Sea, a podcast musical that debuted at the 2021 Cohen New Works Festival. Alrutz continued working with the students to develop their show into a live theatre script, and it has since been performed at the Metro Theatre and the Kennedy Center, with plans for a future production off-Broadway. Alrutz’s play Gimme Please! was co-created with UT alumna Samantha Provenzano (M.F.A., Theatre, 2018) and has been performed at the Alliance Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music and Lincoln Center.
Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities alumni Claire Derriennic (M.F.A. Theatre, 2024) and Xinyue Zhang (M.F.A., Theatre, 2024) and UT Live Design and Production alum Sarah Jean Elliott (M.F.A., Theatre, 2024) also worked with Alrutz while they were students to develop Fishing for Stars, which is headed to the Kennedy Center in 2026.
“I have had the privilege of working with Dr. Alrutz on a new play for young audiences since 2022,” Derriennic said. “Unsurprisingly, the play originated in one of Dr. Alrutz’s classes. When multiple students expressed interest in developing the piece, she proposed a collaborative creation model. For the past three years, she has pushed us toward artistic excellence, all while empowering us as emerging artists.”
In a nomination letter, Theatre Associate Professor Katie Dawson noted how Alrutz’s transformative pedagogical initiatives are designed with students and led by students. For example, when a team of undergraduates wanted a global arts research experience, Alrutz offered 18 months of instructional mentorship that resulted in the students designing a UT-funded, award-winning creative research project in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Professor Megan Alrutz continually works to build teaching spaces and places where every individual can imagine and practice just and loving ways to learn and create in community,” Dawson said. “Her impact is often most felt when things get difficult, when the vision of community feels impossible to grasp. It is these moments when she reminds her communities to lean toward the ideals they want to enact. Time and again, I’ve seen her ask, ‘How do we want to spend this time together? How can we build the “gathering” that brought each of us to this time and place together?’”
A graduate of Arizona State University and Rutgers University, Alrutz works nationally and internationally as a director, theatre-maker, dramaturg and producer for theatre and film/TV. She creates visually dynamic and poetic theatre for the very young and is the dramaturg for award-winning author/illustrator, playwright and screenwriter Mo Willems. Alrutz’s theatre work has premiered at the Alliance Theatre, Arts on the Horizon, Metro Theatre, Orlando Family Stage (previously: Orlando Repertory Theater), The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and presenting houses throughout the United States.
As a thought leader in applied theatre with/for young people, Alrutz also leads interactive workshops and trainings in K-12 schools and higher education; as well as with organizations focused on gender and racial justice, community engagement, digital storytelling and curriculum innovation. She is a co-founder of the Center for Imagining and Performing Justice and co-directs long-term applied theatre programs, such as Patchwork Stories and the Performing Justice Project. She dramaturgs projects across multiple mediums and is the creative producer for interactive museum exhibits, including Mo Willems Presents: Opposites Abstract (touring nationally).
Alrutz is the author or co-author of four books: We are in an ACT-ivity Book!: An Elephant & Piggie Theatrical Event (2024); Devising Critically Engaged Theatre with Youth: The Performing Justice Project (Routledge, 2020); Digital Storytelling, Applied Theatre & Youth: Performing Possibility (Routledge, 2015) and Playing with Theory in Theatre Practice (Palgrave, 2010). Her scholarship has also been featured in several edited collections, as well as Research in Drama Education, Youth Theatre Journal, Teaching Artist Journal and Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship.
Members of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers serve as the system-level advisor and advocacy group dedicated to fostering classroom innovation, promoting interdisciplinary educational perspectives and catalyzing the sharing of best practices across campuses in the UT System. The six inductees were nominated by their deans and selected through a rigorous evaluation process that included supporting letters from students and faculty. The selection process is led by a committee comprised of current members of the academy, faculty peers, students and administrators.
Alrutz is the fifth faculty member from the Department of Theatre and Dance to be inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers. Emeriti members from the department include Oscar G. Brockett, Franchelle S. Dorn and Susan Zeder, and Jill Dolan is a former member.