Dr. Felicia Hardison Londré (Curators' Professor of Theatre)
email: londref@umkc.edu
campus phone: (816) 235-2781
 
Dr. Londré is a theatre historian specializing in American, French, and Russian theatre plus Shakespeare. She is Honorary Co-Founder of the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival and dramaturg for Nebraska Shakespeare Festival. In 2006 she received the Inspirational UMKC Faculty award. In 1998 she received a University of Montana Distinguished Alumna Award, having earned her B.A. in French there. She earned her M.A. at the University of Washington, and her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin. In 1999 she was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and has served as secretary of the board. In 2001 she was elected to the National Theatre Conference. That year she also received the Association for Theatre in Higher Education's national award for 2001 as Outstanding Teacher of Theatre in Higher Education. She was the founding secretary of the Shakespeare Theatre Association of America, and has served as president of the American Theatre and Drama Society. Dr. Londré has held visiting professorships at Hosei University in Tokyo and at Marquette University in Milwaukee. She has lectured internationally, including Beijing, Nanjing, Tokyo, Osaka, Venice, Rouen, Caen, Paris (Sorbonne), Brussels, Moscow, and a lecture tour of Hungary. For 22 years (1978-2000), she was dramaturg for Missouri Repertory Theatre. Of her fourteen books, her favorite is the twelfth one, The Enchanted Years of the Stage: Kansas City at the Crossroads of American Theatre, 1870-1930, which won the George Freedley Memorial Book Award presented by the Theatre Library Association in 2008.