Lisa Gaye Dixon
Lisa Gaye Dixon is a proud Professor Emerita of the Theatre and Dance departments at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She has served as chair of the acting area, resident director, and producer for Illinois Theatre. She has worked professionally across the country and around the globe, beginning her career at the renowned Steppenwolf Theatre of Chicago, and has performed on the stages of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the New Globe Theatre in London. Regional US theatres include Attic Theatre (Detroit), Performance Network (Ann Arbor), Lost Nation Theatre (Vermont), The Kitchen Theatre and GEVA Center (NY), Illinois Shakespeare Festival, Milwaukee Shakespeare, and The Goodman Theatre of Chicago. She is also a poet, essayist, playwright, choreographer, and devisor, and film credits include The Trouble with Men and Women (BBC/IFC), Leading Ladies, USING, and Ruby Love. Professional directing credits include Clarence Brown Theatre (TN), Milwaukee Shakespeare in the Park, New Canon Theatre (Monterey, CA), Illinois Shakespeare Festival, and others.
At the University of Illinois, Lisa has directed several successful productions for the Department of Theatre, all dealing with a range of ‘heavy’ social and political issues that address and reveal the common threads of our humanity and the universality of human experience across race, culture, class, economic, gender, and sexual lines, all whilst always ‘keeping the passion,’ and ‘finding the funny.’
