Melanie Stewart (she/her)  creates darkly absurd movement-driven theatre focusing on the nuanced, weird, and vulnerable side of American culture. Stewart is a Professor of Theatre and Dance, and holds two degrees in dance, a BA in dance from Webster University and an MFA in Choreography and Performance from Temple University. From 1984 to 2014, served as the Artistic Director of Melanie Stewart Dance Theatre, producing over 50 original works of dance and movement-driven theatre for the concert stage, in dance/film/video, as well as in education, both nationally and internationally. Currently, she serves as the Artistic Producing Director of Blind Faith Theatre, and recently produced I SEE YOU WATCHING in Philadelphia, Kansas City, Newcastle upon Tyne, and at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The show was selected as a Merv Stutters “Pick of the Fringe” and described as an “emotional tour de force” (Joyce McMillian-The Scotsman). As a critically acclaimed director and choreographer, Stewart’s awards include numerous grants and fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, Dance Advance/Pew Charitable Trusts, The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the New Jersey Council on the Arts. She has also received a Leigh Gerdine Distinguished Alumna Award from Webster University. Her recent productions of original devised theatre dance productions and extant plays at Rowan University includes: Dracula, A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really, (2025). MONSTER, a frankenstein play (2024), Small Gifts (2020), In America, That is to Say No Where (2019), A Soldier’s Tale (2019), Credo in Us (2018).  In the Department of Theatre and Dance, Stewart teaches senior projects, physical theatre performance techniques, and at Rowan University Medical School, she teaches medical Improvisation.

www.blindfaiththeatre.com