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Theatre Department Distinguished Professor of Humanities M.F.A., Brandeis University Fields: Acting & Voice

Biography

Lynn teaches acting, voice, and performance traditions of Asia at the ��������.  Her productions have been performed at the Miller Theater Sonic Boom Festival in New York City; the Walker Art Center and Fringe Festival in Minneapolis; the Tsai Performance Center and Boston Center for the Arts in Boston; the Cambridge Multicultural Center; the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.; and in venues in Fort Worth, Chicago, Ireland, and Bali, Indonesia.  Her visual pieces are informed by the theatre and dance traditions of India and Indonesia, where she has traveled and lived extensively.

An innovative director, My Life with Albertine, was the winner of the New England Theatre Conference Moss Hart Award for best production in the college division in 2008.  Two of her devised theatre pieces, Mimpi and Shackled Spirits (in collaboration with internationally renowned Indonesian artists I Nyoman Catra, Desak Made Suarti Laksmi, Made Wianta, Made Bandem, and Suasthi Bandem), premiered at �������� and toured with students to perform in Bali at the Bali Arts Festival and GEOK theatre.  In 2009, The Jakarta Post wrote of Mimpi “It was a sight to see: The GEOKS’ stage transformed into a dreamscape of moving visual and sound narratives…”  The dance/drama Shackled Spirits was called a “tour de force” and the “best performance of the year” by The Jakarta Post in 2013.

Other productions directed at �������� include Yerma, Buried Child, Great Expectations, The Firebugs, and a series of devised, original music-theatre pieces written in collaboration with Professor Shirish Korde of the Department of Music:  Rasa, Bhima's Journey, The Conquistadors, Chitra, and Phoolan Devi: The Bandit Queen, and A Separate Prison.  Several music-theatre pieces toured.  Lynn was director-librettist for Coyote Dreams and director-adaptor for Neil Gaiman's Coraline. 

Her training, particularly in Bali, is what prompted The Fort Worth Star (TX) to call her direction “complex and compelling.” Bhima’s Journey was described in The Worcester Phoenix  (MA) as a “most startling, imaginative, and visually astonishing piece of theatre...the audience seemed dazed when it was over.” Critic Marcia B. Segal’s response to Chitra in The Boston Phoenix was equally congratulatory:  “I wish it had run for weeks. I could absorb its many elements only in one syncretic glimpse, and I grasped the music mainly as a vibrant backdrop...there was so much to see – puppets, moving screens, a stylized mountain backdrop with another screen behind it, the actors and musicians in gorgeous intense colors, the instruments themselves. The whole panoply deserved to be spread out in a space big enough to match its expansive concept.”

Lynn has been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts’ Opera Program, The New England Foundation for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Commission, the Worcester Arts Lottery, the LEF Foundation, the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center and The ��������. The New England Theatre Conference gave her a Special Award for Outstanding Achievement on a National Level. While living in Micronesia, she produced and directed a video program on the chant/dance traditions of Palau through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts’ Dance Program.  She is currently the Rev. John E. Brooks, S.J., Chair in the Humanities and Director of Arts Transcending Borders, a new initiative funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  Lynn received her B.A. and B.F.A. from the University of Minnesota and her M.F.A. from Brandeis University. She lives in Princeton, MA, with her husband and daughter.

Courses

• Basic Acting
• Voice in Acting
• Scene Study
• Directing
• Kamikaze Acting
• CreateLab