Elyse S. Singer
Visiting Lecturer
Elyse Singer is a director/writer/producer and the Founding Artistic Director of the OBIE-winning theatre company Hourglass Group. Her play Frequency Hopping won the International STAGE Playwriting Competition, ran at 3LD, and was featured in Bombshell, the American Masters program about Hedy Lamarr. Off-Broadway directing credits include: Horseplay at LaMaMa; Trouble in Paradise; the first NYC revivals of Mae West's plays SEX and Pleasure Man; and Red Frogs at P.S. 122. Other original works include Love in the Void, Care-less: Eva Tanguay, and Private Property. Recent projects include Margaret Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure (with Taylor Mac), Derek Bermel and Nate Smith's Half & Half, and Shana Moulton and Nick Hallett's multimedia opera Whispering Pines 10 (featured on PBS's Art21). She has premiered new work by playwrights including Naomi Iizuka, Kirsten Greenidge, Carson Kreitzer, Ruth Margraff, and Jake-ann Jones at theatres including the Cherry Lane, the Public Theater, and BAM. As producer: Beebo Brinker Chronicles Off-Broadway, winner of the GLAAD Media Award. New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect, LPTW Member, Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, New Georges Affiliated Artist, and recipient of Yaddo and Huntington Fellowships. She is a proud member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.
Contact
Department(s)
Theater
Education
- Ph.D. The Graduate Center, City University of New York
- M.Phil. The Graduate Center, City University of New York
- M.A. Hunter College, City University of New York
- B.A. Yale College
Selected Publications
"All Fall Down: Fainting, Dying, and Mad Scenes on the Nineteenth-Century Stage." In Routledge Companion to Performance and Science, edited by Simon Parry et al. Routledge Press, Winter 2026 (forthcoming).
"Blood and Guts: Women's Bodies, Virality, and Madness in Early Medical Films." In Cinematic explorations of the mind: European film cultures in neurology and psychiatry, 1900-1970s, edited by Mireille Berton and & Julia B. Köhne. Manchester University Press, Winter 2026 (forthcoming).
"Methodologies for Madness: Instructions for Emotional Expression in Early Motion Picture Acting Manuals." In Crafts, Trades, and Techniques of Early Cinema, edited by Ian Christie, Priska Morrissey, Valentine Robert, Jean-Pierre Sirois-Trahan, and Tami Williams, 423–439. Michigan Press, 2024.
"Private Interactions: Intimacy and Visions of Technology in Early Cinema." In Mons Virtuals en el Cinema dels Orígines: Dispositius, Estètiques i Püblics, edited by Angel Quintana and Jordi Pons, 259–266. Girona: Fundació Museu del Cinema-Col·lecció Tomàs Mallol. Ajuntament de Girona, 2022.
"Mad Faces." In Faces on Screen: New Approaches, edited by Alice Maurice, 30–46. Edinburgh University Press, 2022.
"Strike a Pose." Feminist Media Histories: An International Journal 7.1 (Winter 2021), 147–171.
"Sequins and Spirits." PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 126 (September 2020), 90–94.
"'Water, water, everywhere': Spillage, Spectacle, and Aqua Drama in The Pirate's Signal." New England Theatre Journal (Winter 2018), 1–14.
"Flesh-colored Tights in Space: Intersections of Spectacular Corporeality and Visuality in The Seven Sisters." Studies in Musical Theatre 10.3 (Spring 2017), 317–329.
"Hanif Kureishi: A Londoner, But Not a Brit." In In the Vernacular; Interviews at Yale with Sculptors of Culture, edited by Melissa E. Biggs. McFarland, 1991: 103–109.
Speaking Engagements
"Sensate Specimens: Women Patients in Early Medical Films." Paper presented at the Women & Silent Screen XII Conference, Brussels, Belgium, June 2025.
"Too Much of a Good Thing?: Looking for Traces of Stage Performers Fanny Brice and Aida Overton Walker in Silent Cinema." Paper presented at the annual Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Chicago, April 2025.
"(Re)Dragging the Spectacle of the Aging Iconic Body in Mae West's Catherine Was Great." Paper and staging presented at the annual meeting for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Music Theatre/Dance Focus Group, Atlanta, August 2024.
"Human Flickers: Avant-Garde Gestures in Useful Early Medical Film." Paper presented at the bi-annual Domitor Silent Film Conference, Vienna, Austria, June 2024.
"Invisible Hands." Paper presented at the annual Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Boston, March 2024.
"Simulating UnReason in New Media." Working group convened, American Society for Theatre Research, Providence, December 2023.
"Look at the Camera." Paper presented at the Seminar on the History and Origins of Cinema: Visions of the Sick Body in Early Cinema, Museum of Cinema & University of Girona, Spain, November 2023.
"Extremely Hazardous." Paper presented at the annual Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Denver, April 2023.
"All Fall Down." Working group convened at the annual meeting for the American Society for Theatre Research, New Orleans, November 2022.
"Oy, Oy, Oy, Oy; Or, Speculation and Listening for Colliding Codes in 'Sadie Salome (Go Home)'." Paper presented at the annual meeting for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Music Theatre/Dance Focus Group, Detroit, August 2022.
"Disentangling from Capital-R-Reason: Meditations on Reparative, Intersectional, and Speculative Methodologies." Paper presented at the annual meeting for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Women in Theatre Program Focus Group, August 2022.
"Release Forms: Disability and Privacy Rights in Early Cinema." Paper presented at the bi-annual Domitor Silent Film Conference, November 2022.
"'Oy. Where is your clothes?': Salomé, Mobility, and Silent Cinema." Paper presented at Women & Silent Screen XI Conference, June 2022.