Ms. Ann Shanahan teaches Performance and Text Analysis courses. This season she will direct KATRINA: THE K WORD by Lisa Brenner and Suzanne Trauth, opening February 11, 2010 on Loyola’s Mainstage. 

Ms. Shanahan assisted in developing Loyola's unique Second Stage Program of student directed and designed productions and has mentored numerous student directors since joining the Loyola faculty in 2000.  Ms. Shanahan is a faculty associate with the Women’s Studies and Gender Studies Program and currently serves as Faculty At Large representative to the College of Arts and Sciences Academic Council.

Ms. Shanahan's areas of interest and teaching specialties include director training, women and theatre, and theatre as a means social change. She was awarded a Gannon Center for Women and Leadership Faculty Fellowship for 2009.  Her research project entitled A Room of One's Own: Women, Creative Leadership and Home, explores the role of home and houses in women's art and creative lives.  ROOM(S), Ms. Shanahan’s original adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s essays, was selected as part of Rivendell Theatre Ensemble’s Fresh Produce Festival 2009, in residence at University of Chicago.  The piece was presented in salon format at Piper Hall in August 2009. 

Ms. Shanahan, in 2009, served as dramaturge for Wendy Wasserstein’s THIRD at Appletree Theatre and for the remount of THE MISTRESS CYCLE at the Auditorium Theatre.  She presented two papers on director training The Association for Theatre in Higher Education Conference in New York.  These papers included research from Ms. Shanahan’s book length research project on Chicago Directors entitled Chicago Directs: Stories, Styles and Working Methods of Chicago Theatre Directors.  Ms. Shanahan was elected as the incoming conference planner and future focus group representative for ATHE’s Directing Focus Group.

Ms. Shanahan, prior to joining the Theatre program full time, worked for 10 years as a professional actor and director, and as a guest artist at several colleges and universities. She was an ensemble member of the Brecht Company in Ann Arbor, MI, and performed internationally in Stockholm and Prague with the American Drama Group and British Festival Theatre Company.  

Ms. Shanahan's professional directing credits include: THE VAGABOND and THE TURN OF THE SCREW for City Lit Theatre, LIES AND LEGENDS, WASP, WARRIOR, and THE LIVING for Buffalo Theatre Ensemble, where she will direct ON GOLDEN POND in Spring 2010.  Ms. Shanahan has directed numerous productions at the university level.  Favorites include Ibsen's GHOSTS and A DOLL'S HOUSE, Brecht's MOTHER COURAGE, an original adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's THE YELLOW WALLPAPER, LOVES LABOURS LOST, THE LARAMIE PROJECT, and Maria Irene Fornes' FEFU AND HER FRIENDS and ABINGDON SQUARE.  

Recipient:

·         2009 Gannon Center for Women and Leadership Faculty Fellowship

·         2006/08 Loyola Summer Research Awards for Chicago Directs

·         1996 Drama League of New York Directing Fellowship

·         1995 Chicago Drama League Travel Grant to the Royal Court Theatre, London

 Member:

·         Association for Theatre in Higher Education

Conference Planner Elect Directing Focus Group