Rebecca Daniels

Background

Rebecca Daniels was born on March 17, 1949, in Washington, United States, to Harold A. and Mary P. Daniels.

Education

Daniels received a bachelor's degree from Stanford University in 1971. Next year she attended Etienne DeCroux School of Mime in Paris. She became a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Portland in 1988, and, finally, she obtained her doctor's degree from the last university in 1992.

Career

Daniels worked at the organization National Onion Singing Telegram Service as a public relations manager and branch manager. She was a performer in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland from 1977 to 1979. For three years from 1979, she served as an executive recruiter at the management recruiters company named Murphy, Symonds & Stowell.

Daniels was a founder of the Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland in 1982, working also as a producing director and artistic director there from 1982 to 1988. For a year from that year, she held a position of a visiting assistant professor of communication arts at the Pacific Lutheran University. Daniels then moved to the University of Portland, becoming an adjunct instructor in theater there from 1989 to 1990. The next educational institution where she taught was St. Lawrence University, she was an assistant professor of speech and theater there from 1992, rising to a department head in 1997. Additionally, she was a visiting lecturer at Seattle Pacific University.

Daniels is now a Birdsong associate professor of theatre at Paris College of Art (PCA), serving a three-year term as an associate dean of the first year. (This means that while she is no longer teaching theatre/performance courses in PCA, she will be teaching her regular First Year Seminar (FYS) called Performing Diversity each spring.) She also began team-teaching a performance/communication-oriented First-Year Program (FYP) college with associate professor of communication studies, Traci Fordham.

Currently, Daniels is working collaboratively with Dr. Richard Carp of Appalachia State University, on a new play, titled Weaving Penelope, based on the legendary wife of Odysseus from Homer’s The Odyssey. Her other major research project in process is a memoir based on letters her father wrote and photos he took while stationed overseas during World War II, currently titled The War: A Love Story. She is the author of a book titled Women Stage Directors Speak: Exploring the Effects of Gender on Their Work.

Daniels is also a director of numerous stage productions at Portland-area theaters, including New Rose Theatre, Portland Civic Theatre, Portland Repertory Theatre, Musical Company-Theatre Workshop, Storefront Actors Theatre, Cygnet Productions and Laughing Horse Summer Theatre in Ellensburg. She performed in more than forty musicals, dramas, experimental multi-media performance pieces and children’s theater productions. She appeared in the television movie The Penalty Phase, as well as a lead singer for popular lounge bands in Portland and Palo Alto, and sound designer for theatrical productions.

Achievements

• Daniels is a winner of the Greasepaint Award for her work as a stage director from 1983 to 1988. The other award which she had is the 1988 Special Award from Willamette Week, for her sustained contribution to the theater in Portland.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Women Stage Directors Speak

    (Exploring the Influence of Gender on Their Work; In this ...)

    1996

Views

Quotations: “I write for comprehension and validation, whether it be of my emotions or of circumstances around me. It is a way for me to process information and to come to insights about both the information itself and the process of understanding it. I decided to write about women directors mostly because I was one myself, and I am now writing a play about a woman composer because the process of trying to balance creativity with ‘real life’ fascinates me.”

Membership

Daniels is a member of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.