Academics

Richard Pettengill > Biographical Sketch

Richard Pettengill, a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, earned his B.A. from Bates College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago. While a graduate student, he was offered a job as dramaturg at Chicago’s Court Theater, where he did research on plays, collaborated with directors, actors, and designers, and created educational programs for teachers and students in the Chicago Public Schools. He then went on to become Director of Arts in Education at the Goodman Theater from 1988-2000, where he collaborated as dramaturg with such directors as Robert Falls, Frank Galati, and Peter Sellars. He began teaching at Lake Forest College in 2003 in a joint appointment in English and Theater, and is now an Associate Professor and Chair/ Director of the Theater Department. His essays on dramaturgy and education have appeared in the journals Voies De La Creation Theatrale, Performance Research, Theater Research International, Academic Exchange Quarterly, English Journal, and in the book The Theater of Teaching and the Lessons of Theater (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005).  He is currently co-editing (with musicologist Nicholas Cook of Cambridge University) a volume of essays called New Perspectives on Performance Studies: Music Across the Disciplines for the University of Michigan Press.  In Fall 2008, he directed Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Lake Forest College.