Michael Swanson

Michael Swanson is director of theatre and dance and associate professor of theatre at Elizabethtown. Swanson’s teaching career includes stints at Western Illinois University, Fresno City College, the University of Arizona, and Franklin College, where he was director of theatre and first chair of the fine arts department.

Michael earned a Ph. D. at The Ohio State University, an MFA in directing at Wayne State University, and a BA from Hamline University. His OSU dissertation was on the plays of John O’Keeffe, the most produced playwright on the London stage in the last quarter of the eighteenth century -- author of comedies, one-act curtain raisers, short and long musicals, and, most famously, of Wild Oats (1791). Frequently staged since its 1976 revival at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the play depicts a traveling player whose wit and goodness, combined, bring him from near-ruin to a happy family.

Swanson is an associate member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, and is intensely involved in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF), a national organization of college and university theatre programs.