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Dr. Robyn Lee is an Assistant Professor of Theatre and Fine Arts, with a focus on acting and directing, who has worked in professional theatre for over 25 years. As an actor, she performed in regional theatres across the country and in NYC, including at Lincoln Center and Broadway’s Shubert Theatre. She can be heard on the RCA cast recording of Children of Eden. In Buffalo, she has performed with Musical Fare, Shakespeare in Delaware Park, and Road Less Traveled Productions. She received an IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England) award nomination for playing Eliza Doolittle in the Greater Boston Stage Company production of My Fair Lady and a Buffalo Artie Award nomination for Adult Alison in Fun Home. She directs extensively in Buffalo theatre and has received three Artie Award nominations for Best Director, for Berserker and The Aleph Complex at Alleyway Theatre, as well as Sweet Charity at the Kavinoky Theatre. She served as Director of Development and then Managing Director at Alleyway Theatre, and trained as a dramaturge at Premiere Stages in New Jersey.
Robyn’s scholarly writing has been published in three edited collections, and she has presented research at MATC and ATHE conferences and was part of the “Theatre and Tourism” and “Right Wing Publics” working groups at ATSR conferences. She was selected for a year-long, funded working group, American Examples at the University of Alabama. She has served as the Assistant Editor of Theatre Journal. She was a Presidential Fellow at the University at Buffalo, where she received her Ph.D.
Robyn teaches the senior capstone class, Acting Synthesis and the Profession, the junior Directing class, and the sophomore class, Acting Shakespeare. She advises and produces the annual Short Play Festival, featuring student-directed plays, and directs and co-produces the senior BFA showcases for industry professionals, which take place in Buffalo and New York City.
At NU, she has directed productions of A Doll’s House Part 2, The Diary of Anne Frank, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley, and The Thanksgiving Play.
Robyn’s current research is on contemporary Christian theatre in the United States. Her dissertation, Road Tripping to New Jerusalem: Performing the Biblical Past and Eschatological Future, was published in 2025. Chapters in edited collections: “American Hells: Hell Houses, Abortion Frames, and Unsexed Women,” in Theatre and the Macabre, eds. Meredith Conti and Kevin J. Wetmore, University of Wales Press, 2022; “The Immersive Imaginary of Christian Theatre,” American Examples: New Conversations About Religion, Volume 5, University of Alabama Press, 2026, and “Performing Cohorts,” in Performance Pedagogy: Objects, Transfers, Formations, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2026, which was co-written with Eero Laine, Yao Kahlil Newkirk, Dahye Lee, Evan Moritz, and Bella Poynton. She has presented at ATHE, ASTR, and MATC conferences.
AEA – Actors’ Equity Association
ASTR – American Society for Theatre Research
ATHE – Association for Theatre in Higher Education.
Ph.D. – Theatre and Performance, The University at Buffalo, SUNY
M.A. – English Literature, Middlebury College Bread Loaf School of English
B.A. – Theatre with a post-baccalaureate teaching certification, Kean University
Additional theatre training at The William Esper Studio, Circle in the Square Theatre School, and The Boston Conservatory.