Dr. Rob Shimko became the Head of the Theatre & Dance Program at the University of Vermont in 2023. He also serves as the Associate Director for Operations in the UVM School of the Arts. Before joining the UVM faculty, Rob served as the Director of the School of Theatre & Dance at the University of Houston and the Executive Director of the Houston Shakespeare Festival. Rob joined the University of Houston faculty in 2006 where he created and served as Head of the BFA Program in Playwriting & Dramaturgy. From 2010 to 2023, Rob was the Company Dramaturg for the Catastrophic Theatre, Houston’s leading avant-garde theatre troupe. Rob has over seventy-five professional dramaturgy credits including several productions at the Alley Theatre, as well as the Guthrie Theater, the Acting Company (NYC), Stages Repertory Theatre, Harlem Stage (NYC), 4th Wall Theatre, and the Classical Theatre Company, among others. Rob is a proud recipient of the University of Houston Teaching Excellence Award.
Rob is the author of the book Alley Theatre: 75 Years (2022) which chronicles the history of one of America’s oldest and most significant regional theatres. He is also co-editor, with Sara Freeman, of the book Public Theatres and Theatre Publics (2012). Rob is a former Book Review Editor for the journal Theatre History Studies and a recipient of the Robert A. Schanke Theatre History Research Award from the Mid-America Theatre Conference. Rob’s scholarly writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Theatre Journal, Theatre History Studies, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Theatre Topics, Theatre Historiography: Critical Interventions, The Encyclopedia of Modern Theatre, The Wiley Encyclopedia of British Literature 1660-1789, and Querying Difference in Theatre History. Favorite productions as a director include Wallace Shawn’s Evening at the Talk House for the Catastrophic Theatre and the premieres of UH student-written plays The Narrator, Brick Wall, The End of Side A, Cuckoo, Thicker than Honey, Winners, and The Debasers. He is the author of the play Specks, available through Concord Theatricals. He holds a Ph.D. in Theatre History from the University of Minnesota.
