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Benjamin Gillespie

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Benjamin Gillespie

Assistant Professor

Benjamin Gillespie holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance from the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. He also holds M.A. and B.A. degrees in Theatre and English from York University in Toronto, Canada. In 2022, he received the Monette-Horwitz Prize for his dissertation documenting the work of the renowned New York-based performance troupe Split Britches. Prior to his role at SCU, he was a Doctoral Lecturer in Communication Studies and Theatre at Baruch College from 2022-2025.

His research focuses on LGBTQ+ performance, avant-garde theatre, the later work of Tennessee Williams, and the intersections of gender, sexuality, and aging on stage. He is co-editor of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre (JADT) and has published widely in scholarly anthologies and journals. He regularly contributes performance reviews from professional productions in New York and beyond. He is a member of the theatre wing of the Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics as well as the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), the American Theatre and Drama Society (ATDS), and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE). He is also on the board of the North American Network in Aging Studies (NANAS).

Select Scholarship

  • Late Stage: Theatrical Perspectives on Age and Aging (University of Michigan Press,
    Forthcoming Spring 2026)
  • Split Britches: Fifty Years On (University of Michigan Press, Forthcoming Spring 2027)
  • Routledge Companion to LGBTQ+ Theatre and Performance in North America (Routledge, Forthcoming Spring 2027)
  • “The Queer Avant-Garde,” Milestones in Queer US Theatre (Routledge, 2025)
    “Power to the Pause: A Pandemic Conversation with Jess Dobkin,” in Wetroperspective: The Performance Works of Jess Dobkin (Intellect, 2024)
  • “The Other Tennessee: Reclaiming LGBTQIA+ Public Space as Queer Counterpublic at the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 38.2 (2024)
  • “Making Lesbian-Feminist Theatre: Lois Weaver, Tammy WhyNot, and the Legacy of Split Britches,” Milestones in Staging Contemporary Genders and Sexualities (Routledge, 2024)
  • “Split Britches and the Camp Absurd,” Routledge Companion to Absurdist Literature
    (Routledge, 2024)
  • “Performing Dramaturgies of Care in Quarantine: Aging, Inclusivity, and Aesthetics in a Virtual World,” Pandemic Play: Community in Performance, Gaming, and the Arts (Springer, 2024)
  • “Lois Weaver,” The Routledge Anthology of Women’s Theatre Theory and Dramatic Criticism (Routledge, 2023)
  • “Split Britches: Peggy Shaw, Deb Margolin, and Lois Weaver,” 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre (Routledge, 2022)
  • “Queer Becomings: The Ridiculous Theatrical Company and Split Britches,” Analyzing Gender in Performance (Springer, 2022)
  • “Against Chronology: Intergenerational Pedagogical Approaches to Queer Theatre and Performance Histories,” Theatre Topics 30.2 (2020)
  • “Detonating Desire: Mining the Untapped Potential of Ageing in Split Britches’ Unexploded Ordnances (UXO),” Performance Research 27. 4, Special Issue “On Ageing and Beyond” (2018)

Other Writings

“Celebrating Legacy and Building Community at the Fornés Institute Symposium,” HowlRound, (July 2025)
“Life is Drag: Documenting Spectacle As Resistance - Interview with Rachel Rampleman,”
Journal of American Drama and Theatre 37.2 (Spring 2025)
“The LGBTQ+ Artists Archive Project: A Roundtable Conversation,” Journal of American
Drama and Theatre 37.2 (Spring 2025)
“Between Desire and Despair,” Interview with the director and cast of Orpheus Descending, Theatre for a New Audience, 360 Magazine (2023)

Scholarly Performance Reviews

Ibsen’s Ghost, by Charles Busch (59E59, March 2024)
Scene Partners, by John J. Caswell, Jr. (Vineyard Theatre, November 2023)
We’re Gonna Die, by Young Jean Lee (Second Stage Theatre; January 2020)
Mementos Mori, by Manual Cinema (BAM Next Wave Festival; October 2017)
Ruff by Peggy Shaw (La Mama, New York; April 2012)

Current Work

  • Two major anthologies forthcoming from University of Michigan Press:
    - Late Stage: Theatrical Perspectives on Age and Aging (2026) with Dr. Cindy Rosenthal.
    - Split Britches: Fifty Years On (2027)
  • Co-editor of the Routledge Companion to LGBTQ+ Theatre and Performance in North America with Dr. Bess Rowen.
  • Co-facilitator for the “Queer Legacies” Working Group at the American Society for Theatre Research with Dr. Sean Edgecomb.
  • Continuation in my role as co-editor of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, a leading peer-reviewed journal in the field of Theatre and Performance Studies.

As a new faculty member at SCU, I look forward to continuing my scholarly research while building engaging courses for students that connect theatre history with contemporary theory and practice. After 15 years in NYC, I’m looking forward to exploring the West Coast theatre scene.