Lindsey Mantoan is scholar-artist who teaches courses in theater, performance, and writing at Linfield College. She’s also directed over a dozen musicals, plays, and readings in the Bay Area. She holds a PhD in Theater and Performance Studies from Stanford University, an MA in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas at Austin, and an AB in Architecture from Princeton University. Her areas of academic expertise include: Theater History, Critical Theory, Performance Studies, LGBT Theater, Political and Activist Performance, American Drama, and Musical Theater.

She is the author of War as Performance: Conflicts in Iraq and Political Theatricality (Palgrave Macmillan 2018) and co-editor with Sara Brady of Performance in a Militarized Culture (Routledge 2017) and Vying for the Iron Throne: Essays on Power, Gender, Death, and Performance in Game of Thrones (McFarland). Her writing has appeared in Essays on Female Characters and the Science Fiction Frontier (McFarland), Imagining Human Rights in Twenty-First Century Theater (Palgrave Macmillan 2013), TDR, Performance Research, Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, and Dance Theatre Journal and she has presented work at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), the American Society for Theater Research (ASTR), Performance Studies international (PSi), and Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed (PTO).

Lindsey’s teaching focuses on performance as both an object of study and a mode of learning. She has taught courses on theater history, musical theater, theater of war, script analysis, Greek tragedy, and documentary theater. Students in these courses use discussion, activities, and performance to understand texts, theories, and conflicts, integrating their learning experience. She has taught diverse groups of students, including inmates at San Quentin Prison working toward their Associate’s degree through the Prison University Project.

Integrating scholarship, pedagogy, and artistic practice, Lindsey’s directing work tackles contemporary issues of politics and identity. She’s directed two documentary plays, one about  California’s gay marriage trial and one about US democracy, an original multimedia piece about the African diaspora that she co-created, and a series of musicals for Bay Area students.