Marcia Ferguson received her Ph.D. in theatre from the City University of New York Graduate Center and has an MFA in acting and a BA in English. She has taught, acted and directed professionally in theatre, film and television in Philadelphia, New York, Rome and Tokyo, and in Philadelphia has taught at Temple University, Swarthmore College, and Penn. Areas of specialization include cultural studies and intercultural theatre, performance studies, Commedia dell'arte, movement for actors, and improvisation. She has published essays and criticism in journals and newspapers including Theatre Journal, Western European Stages, The Christian Science Monitor, and Slavic and Eastern European Performance. At Penn she has taught Acting, Directing, Dark Comedy in Theatre and Film, Backstage Drama, Introduction to Theatre, Western Drama, the Edinburgh Project, and Renaissance to Realism. She has conducted movement workshops at various schools and universities, and has studied voice and movement under Meredith Monk in New York. In Rome, Italy she directed Ionesco's Man with Bags and Dacia Maraini's Dialogue with a Prostitute, and in Tokyo, Japan (where she acted in various soap operas and variety shows, such as Kato-chan Ken-chan), she directed Lone Star, Laundry and Bourbon, and The Good Doctor. For Penn's Theatre Arts Program she has directed Cloud Nine, Fringe Inge (The Tiny Closet and The Rainy Afternoon), Quake, The Trojan Women: A Love Story (with colleague James Schlatter), and Pride's Crossing, for which she composed the original music. She has published two books, Writing About Theatre (Longman's, 2008), and Blanka and Jiri Zizka at The Wilma Theater: From the Underground to the Avenue (VDM, 2009).
Theatre and Cinema
University of Pennsylvania