Susan Thompson

Susan Thompson is an associate professor of theater. She has performed, directed, and taught in Europe and Latin America and across the United States.

Thompson graduated from Jacques Lecoq’s International School in Paris and completed her Ph.D. in theater history at Tufts University. She performed for five years with Flemish movement innovator Frederik Vanmelle's company, based in Mexico City. Thompson has been a core member of Pilgrim Theatre Research and Performance Collaborative since 1990, performing at La MaMa (New York), Ko Festival (Amherst), Malta Festival (Poland), Yuyachkani (Peru), the National Mall (Washington, D.C.), and, locally, at the Boston Center for the Arts, among other venues.

Thompson's original plays include Missing Persons, Panic, The Wild Place (co-authored with Jon Lipsky), Anam Cara (co-authored with Anne Gottlieb and Judi Wilson), Boundless as the Sea, Haunted by Waters, and, most recently, Unforgettable: Letters from Korea, which is based on love letters written by her parents during the Korean War. She has been a visiting artist/teacher/director at numerous area schools, including Boston College, Emerson, Tufts University, UMass Amherst, and MIT. Her areas of specialty include ensemble work, Lecoq training and styles work (clown, buffoon, commedia dell'arte, band mime, tragic and comic chorus), and dreamwork. Her work is noted in Jon Lipsky’s Dreaming Together, Susan Letzer Cole’s Playwrights in Rehearsal, and The Plays of Jon Lipsky, Vol. 2. Her recent publications include a chapter on Lecoq’s work in the 2013 book Encountering Ensemble (Bloomsbury).