Joseph R. Roach

Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut ~Sterling Professor of Theater and English. Specialist in drama and theater history from the early modern period to the present. Leading theorist and practitioner of performance studies, the cross-disciplinary study of ritual and aesthetic actions embodied in a social present. Approach emphasizes the strong influence of cultural tradition and the literary-historical past on kinds of performance ranging from theater, dance, and music to public ceremony and popular entertainment. Books include The Player's Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (1985), which received the Barnard Hewitt Award; Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (1996), which received the James Russell Lowell Award from the Modern Language Association; and It (2007), a study of charismatic performers and performances from the Restoration to the present. Creator of the Yale World Performance Project, a multiyear investigation combining contemporary varieties of performance from around the world with lectures, publications, and postdoctoral fellowships. Received the Lifetime Distinguished Scholar Award from the Society for Theatre Research (2004) and the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award (2006-2009).~~