Jaime Leigh Gray | Music and Theater | SIU

Jaime Leigh Gray earned a PhD in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies from the University of California Santa Barbara and an MFA in Dramaturgy from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her teaching and areas of expertise include feminism and gender in performance; digital theater and media in performance; social activism and protest cultures; ethnography; and theater historiography.

 

In Los Angeles, Jaime collaborated on productions at the Odyssey Theatre, LA Women's Shakespeare Company, the Blank Theatre, the Colony Theatre, and the Walt Disney Company. As the Literary Manager at the Attic Theatre and Film Center, Jaime produced the annual Denise Ragan Wiesenmeyer One-Act Play Festival that premiered works by Lee Blessing and Wendy MacLeod. Additional dramaturgy credits include Critical Action Theater Co. (LA), New WORLD Theater’s Summer Playlabs (Amherst, MA), and UC Santa Barbara's Launch Pad, including the world premieres of We Want the Funk: a rustbelt lullaby on the one! by Idris Goodwin and Bernhard by Lynn Rosen.

Her current book project, Repealing Mary: A Performance Historiography of Ireland's Campaign for Abortion Rights, investigates feminist body politics and religious syncretism in the digital era. She is a contributor to the anthology Abortion in Popular Culture: A Call to Action (Lexington Books). Jaime has presented her research at conferences in Europe and the United States, including at the Humanities Institute at University College Dublin, the American Society for Theater Research, and the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

Jaime has previously taught in the departments of Theater and Dance and Asian American Studies at UC Santa Barbara and in the graduate program at UCLA School of Theater. Additionally, she has taught in the Department of Theater Arts at Loyola Marymount University, and in the Critical Studies department at AMDA College of the Performing Arts.