Megan Alrutz

Dr. Megan Alrutz is full professor and Associate Chair for the Department of Theatre and Dance, where she teaches in the Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities / UTeach Theatre 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.

A graduate of Arizona State University and Rutgers University, Alrutz works nationally and internationally as a director, theatre-maker and dramaturg 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 U.S.

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 three books: 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.