Bess Rowen

I came to Lehigh in Pre-Med, auditioned for A Midsummer Night’s Dream and got cast as Fairy #4. Through that experience and my first year seminar with Kashi Johnson, I was drawn into the theatre community, and I immediately declared a theatre major. I’m currently a PhD Candidate in Theatre at The Graduate Center, CUNY and I lecture at Purchase College. Lehigh’s Department of Theatre was where I first learned theatre vocabulary, discovered my theatrical taste, and began to think of myself as an artist. Recently, I was telling my students in “Women in Performance” about Bryony Lavery’s play Frozen, and the excellent production of it at Lehigh. I’m proud that my first article was published in the Tennessee Williams Annual Review, and that I also have gotten to know some of the playwrights whose work I was first exposed to at Lehigh, (Sarah Ruhl called me on the phone this year.) In a world increasingly defined by digital interactions, learning – or perhaps remembering – how to engage with other human beings in real time and space is more important than ever.