Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures

Valleri Robinson  is Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Illinois. Her courses include 20th Century Russian Theatre, Historiography and the Actress, Contemporary Theatrical Forms, Dramaturg’s Workshop, and Script Analysis. Professor Robinson’s areas of research include Russian-American cultural exchange, Cold War performances, transnational theatre historiography, and Chekhov in translation and adaptation. Her book,Russian Culture and Theatrical Performance in America, 1891-1933(Palgrave Macmillan 2011) examines the influences of Russian performance styles on modern American theatrical production. Her articles and reviews appear inContemporary Theatre Review, Slavic and East European Journal, Theatre History Studies, Theatre Journal, Contemporary Drama,  and The Journal of American Drama and Theatre. Recent essays also appear ‘To Have or To Have Not’: New Essays on Commerce and Capital in Modernist Theatre, edited by James Fisher (2011), and The Routledge Companion to Stanislavsky, edited by R. Andrew White (2013). Dr. Robinson has been featured as the Keynote Speaker at theatre conferences at the University of Madison-Wisconsin (lecture entitled, “The Cold War, Whispering Campaigns, Office Bombs and the Theatre Historian,” 2012) and The Ohio State University (lecture entitled, “Chekhov the Russian Export: Russian Productions of Chekhov in the U.S.” 2010). She received the 2012 American Theatre and Drama Society Faculty Research Travel Award for work on her current manuscript,Cold War Performances: Soviet Performances in America after Stalin. She received a Fulbright award to work with Nikolai Kolyada at the Kolyada Theatre in Ekaterinburg, Russia in 2014. In addition to her research, she has worked as a professional dramaturg with many companies and playwrights in the U.S. Dr. Robinson is an affiliate faculty member of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center.