Who I Am

Lance Mekeel is a theatre teacher and artist originally from the Susquehanna Valley in Pennsylvania. His undergraduate training is a B.A. in Theatre Performance at Susquehanna University (2006). His M.A. is in Theatre with an emphasis in Directing from Villanova University (2008). After a year spent as production manager and technical director for a small professional theatre company outside of Philadelphia, Act II Playhouse, and as a part-time elementary school drama teacher, Lance returned to graduate school at Bowling Green State University in 2009,  where he received his PhD in Theatre in the summer of 2013. From fall 2013 to spring 2015, Lance served as an adjunct professor at BGSU, Ohio Northern University, and Defiance College, teaching courses in performance studies, public speaking, composition, and dramatic literature. During that time he also directed plays and taught acting workshops for students grades 4-12 at Ottawa Hills Local School District, outside of Toledo. In fall 2015, he moved to Chillicothe, Ohio to teach theatre and communications and direct the Theater Program at Ohio University's Chillicothe campus. In Fall of 2021, Lance moved to the Southern Alleghenies, where he began working as Assistant Professor of Theatre at Saint Francis University in Loretto, PA.

Lance's dissertation focused on the process by which French avant-gardist Alfred Jarry's play Ubu Roi (1896) went from shocking and offending legitimate institutions to being studied, celebrated, and performed by those same establishments. Lance is a Certified Teacher of the Michael Chekhov Technique of Acting through the National Michael Chekhov Association. Other research interests include 20th acting pedagogies, effigies in contemporary sport culture, ancient Roman theatre, identity negotiations in contemporary society, among other things. He has had book and performance reviews published in Theatre History Studies and Texas Theatre Journal.