Rosalie Purvis
Libra Assistant Professor of Theatre and English
Class of 1944 Hall
University of Maine
Orono, Maine 04469
rosalie.purvis@maine.edu
Office Hours – by appointment
Education:
MFA in Theatre Directing, Brooklyn College
PhD in Performing and Media Arts, Cornell University
Ever since choosing her college double major in literature and dance, Rosalie’s work as
artist, researcher and educator has found intersections between literature and performance. After
pursuing her MFA in theatre directing, she specialized in new play development, New York
City, where her projects have been featured at, among others, the Atlantic Theatre’s Second
Stage, Dixon Place, Teatro la Teo, La Mama etc, the Culture Project, 59 East 59, and Dance New
Amsterdam. Using co-intentional methods, she has devised/directed new plays, movement,
multimedia and site specific projects around the U.S. and her other native city of Amsterdam, the
Netherlands. In 2017, she joined Kolkata-based international performing arts collective Chaepani
and together they have performed around the world at national borders such as El Paso (Texas),
Akwesasne (Mohawk Nation near the U.S.A.-Canada border) and Malda (near the border of
Bangladesh). At Cornell University, she pursued her Phd in the Performing and Media Arts
Department, with a minor in Latino Studies. Her research focuses on border studies, staging
fiction and poetry, intercultural and multi-lingual literature and performance, translation theory,
praxis as research, transgressive cross-embodiment, and international/intersectional queer
performance.
Rosalie’s teaching has taken her to diverse, multilingual communities around the world.
She has taught playwriting, poetry, creative nonfiction, movement, mask-work, acting, academic
writing, literature of migration, literary translation, undercover journalism, border studies, and all
levels of ESOL.
Theatre/Performance Website: https://rosaliepurvis.wixsite.com/rosaliepurvis-1
Conference Papers/Presentations:
The Many Truths of Food, Flowers and Fabrics: Intimate Acts of Sharing (A Colloquy of Innovative, Ethnographic Performance), Department of Humanities and Social Sciences IIT Kharaghpur, India (global online), October, 2020
The Magical Compass; layers of translation in Chaepani’s cross-cultural play adaptations – Worldmaking on Stage and the Work of Theatre Translation Beyond the Stage as part of the Out of the Wings Festival and Conference , King’s College, London, July, 2019
Tea and Water at the Border; Chaepani’s Methods of Cross-cultural Performance – Portland Community College, Portland, OR, May, 2019
The Imitation of the Rose; Cross-cultural Collaborative Creative Writing Master Class – Portland Community College, Portland, OR, May, 2019
Now that Separateness is Unassailable; introducing a cross-cultural performance exploration – Presidency College Performing Arts Department, Kolkata, West Bengal, India, November, 2018
Unsettling Cross-border Collaboration Workshop; the NYU Hemispheric Institute Convergence, Toronto, Ontario, October, 2017
Root Map; an Interlingual Theatre Piece about National Borders, “Neither Grapes Nor Lettuce” Symposium in honor of Cesar Chavez Day, Columbia University, New York, NY, March, 2017
When I Heard My Child Cry in Babel’s Rubble, Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture Conference, Minneapolis, MN, October 2016
Migration and Adoption; Artist Scholar Presentation, Performance Studies US and India Conference, January, 2017, University of Jadavpur, Kolkata, India
Publications:
Narrating The Moment of Transmission, New World Order, Jadavpur University, Forthcoming, Fall 2021
When I Lost my Child in Babel’s Rubble; an annotated performance text on cross-cultural adoption. Kinship and Adoption Narratives Anthology, Palgrave MacMillan, Forthcoming Fall, 2021.
Courses taught:
THE 269 Theatre Practicum in Acting
