Charissa Menefee (Director, New Play Lab plays)

Charissa Menefee

Charissa Menefee, she/her is the founder and artistic director of The EcoTheatre Lab. She has been an EST/Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project Commission recipient, a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a finalist for the Julie Harris Playwright Award, and a writer-in-residence with the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s New American Playwrights Project and Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts. She co-directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment at Iowa State University, where she teaches courses in drama, poetry, performance, and eco-theatre. Some favorite directing projects: The Skin of Our Teeth (Wilder), Towards Zero (Christie), A Lie of the Mind (Shepard), The Phantom Tollbooth (Nanus), Oedipus the King (Sophocles), Androcles and the Lion (Harris), Earthlings (Barton/Bond), her own Meet Me Halfway, and, most recently, Climate Change Theatre Action 2021.