COLETTE SEARLS
Associate Professor

Since joining the UMBC Theatre faculty in 2002, Prof. Searls has directed a mixture of classical and contemporary works, and created several original mixed-media puppet plays, including Fanto, a Mysterious Vaudeville and BURIED (National Finalist -- Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival). Other directing credits include Noah Haidle’s Vigils at The Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (four Helen Hayes Award nominations), Fixed Boundary at San Francisco’s Exit Theatre (“Best of the San Francisco Fringe Festival”) and Maria Irene Fornés' Promenade (three Orange County Weekly Award nominations) at the University of California, Irvine. She has received grants from the Jim Henson Foundation and Puppeteers of America for her original works in found-object puppetry aimed at adult audiences, and consulted for professional theatre companies on the incorporation of puppetry in performance. She has published articles in Puppetry International and Puppetry Journal and served on the UNIMA-USA board of directors. Prof. Searls has a background combining arts with human services; she has organized inmate arts programs and produced and performed in plays inside juvenile detention centers and California state prisons.

B.A. English, University of California, Berkeley
M.F.A. Directing, University of California, Irvine

Contact: csearls@umbc.edu