Lesley Ferris
Principal Investigator
Theatre

Lesley Ferris, an Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of Theatreat Ohio State University, currently serves as the Director of OSU/Royal Shakespeare Company Programs. Her research interests are focused on gender and performance, carnival, and the use of masks. Her books include Acting Women: Images of Women in Theatre and Crossing theStage: Controversies on Cross Dressing. She has published numerous essays two of the most recent being "Lear's Sons and Daughters:Twisting the Canonical Landscape" in Feminist Theatrical Revisions of Classic Works (McFarland, 2009) and "Incremental Art: Negotiating the Route of London's Notting Hill Carnival" in Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture (July 2010). She is currently the guest co-editor (with Penny Farfan, University of Calgary) for a special issue of Theatre Journal entitled "Contemporary Women Playwrights" (Johns Hopkins University Press, Dec. 2010). Ferris has directed more than 50 productions both in Britain, South Africa and the U.S.A, including Sophie Treadwell's Machinal, and Pearl Cleage's A Song for Coretta. She co-curated (with Adela Ruth Tompsett,) an exhibition entitled Midnight Robbers: The Artists of Notting Hill Carnival (London2007), which was the inaugural exhibition at the OSU Urban Art Space inspring 2008 and was awarded the Artistic Excellent Award by the Greater Columbus Arts Council. The exhibition was recently seen at the Art Museum at the University of Memphis (July-September 2010). With Mary Tarantino, she is principal investigator of The Camouflage Project and will be co-directing The Camouflage Project.