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Elliot Wasserman

Mr. Elliot H. Wasserman

Professor Emeritus of Theatre

Performing Arts Department

Chair Emeritus of Performing Arts

Performing Arts Department

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Bio

Elliot H. Wasserman, department chair and professor of theatre at the University of Southern Indiana, teaches courses in acting, directing, and playwriting. Since 2011, he has served as Producing Artistic Director of New Harmony Theatre. A member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, the professional union for directorial stage artists, Wasserman has directed major musicals at venues around the country, including such favorites as Guys and DollsThe Sound of MusicCabaretGigi, Man of La Mancha,  and I Do! I Do! During this career he has directed such Broadway stars as Kay McClelland, Tony award nominee Mark Baker, and Tony Award winner for Best Actress in a Musical Donna McKechnie.  In June 2007, he directed a production of A Few Good Men starring film actor Lou Diamond Phillips (La Bamba, Young Guns) and television star Jensen Ackles (Supernatural, Dark Angel, Smallville), and in 2008, he directed a production of Damn Yankees starring Richard Kind. Most recently, he directed a production of Anything Goes at Kansas City Starlight Theatre starring Rachel York.  From 1992-2005 he served as artistic director of the Lincoln Amphitheatre.

Wasserman's University directing credits are diverse, ranging from Shakespeare and Chekhov to such contemporary playwrights as Samuel Beckett and Christopher Durang. He is an occasional actor, having performed such roles as Frank Butler in Annie Get Your Gun! and Joe Keller in All My Sons. In 2007, he appeared on the New Harmony Theatre stage in The Importance of Being Earnest.

A writer, Wasserman has created a translation/adaptation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, and his short play Outlaws received a New York premiere in 2003, after earlier productions in Los Angeles and at the Actors Theatre of Louisville.

In April of 2005, he was selected as one of eight theatre educators nationally as a Directing Fellow of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in Washington, and in January of 2006 he was awarded the KCACTF Gold Medallion Award for Excellence in Theatre Education.