Biography of Jeffery Scott Elwell

Jeffery Scott Elwell is Professor and Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication at East Carolina University. Previously, he was Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Executive Artistic Director of the Nebraska Repertory Theatre from 1999-2004. He served as Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre and Director of the Joan C. Edwards Performing Arts Center at Marshall University (1996-99), and Professor and Director of Theatre at Mississippi State University (1989-96). He received his Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University in 1986 and has a Mississippi Arts Commission Playwriting Fellowship, a Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artists Fellowship, a Tennessee Williams Scholarship, and an NEH Summer Seminar Fellowship. He has received $655,000 in grants and fellowships. Professional theatres in Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis, New Orleans, and New York as well as Australia, Canada, Poland, and Sweden have produced his plays. In the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) he has served as the Conference Planner (1999, Toronto), on Conference Planning Committees, and as Chair of the ATHE Playwrights Program. He is currently a member of the board of directors of the National Association of Schools of Theatre (NAST) and served on the Nominations Committee. In the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival (KC/ACTF) he has served as Region IV Playwriting Awards Committee Chair, Vice-Chair, and a member of the Executive Committee. In the Southeastern Theatre Conference he served as Chair and Vice-Chair of the SETC Playwriting Committee, of the SETC New Play Project, and as a member of the Editorial Board of Southern Theatre. Since 1994, 21 of his plays have been produced in New York. The Art of Dating was a winner in the 1995 Off-Off-Broadway Original Short Play Festival, andEvening Education was a winner in 2000. Both are published by Samuel French. First Date was performed in the 2002 Festival and his plays Dinnertime and The Confirmation (a finalist) were produced in the 2003 Festival. His monologues are published in Monologues for Men, Vol. 2and Baseball Monologues (Heinemann). His adaptation of Dickens' A Christmas Carolpremiered at the Lied Center for the Performing Arts in 2000, and is published by Playscripts, Inc. His play Intimate Secretswas recently given a staged reading in Russian at the Schepkin School of Theatre in Moscow. He has directed more than fifty-five plays, including The Guys, Proof, Othello, and American Buffalo. He served as the Producer and Director of the Nebraska Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Signature Event, one of fifteen events held nationally celebrating the Corps of Discovery.