ABOUT ME
DR. CHELSEA PHILLIPS is a professional dramaturg, theatre historian, and Associate Professor at Villanova University. Her research interests include women, Shakespeare, and the eighteenth-century theatre.
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She is the author of Carrying All Before Her: Celebrity Pregnancy and the London Stage, 1689-1800 (University of Delaware Press, 2022).
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Her work has also appeared in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Theatre Survey, Theatre Journal, Women's History, Shakespeare, and a variety of edited collections. Her article, "Bodies in Play: Maternity, Repertory, and the Rival Romeo and Juliets, 1748-1751" (Theatre Survey, May 2019) won the 2020 Gerald Kahan Scholar's Prize from the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR).
She is also an associate director for the international Perceptions of Pregnancy Researcher’s Network, and co-chair of the Theatre and Performance Studies Caucus for the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies.
As a dramaturg, she has worked with Pulitzer Prize winner Michael R. Jackson, New Dramatist resident writer C. Julian Jimenez, Manhattan Shakespeare Project, the for/word company, Uncut Pages Theatre, and artists from the Royal Shakespeare Company, Folger Shakespeare Theatre, and the American Shakespeare Center, among others. At Villanova, she has helped develop and produce new works by Owen McCafferty, Douglas Carter Beane, Kathryn Petersen, Julia Izumi, Michael Hollinger, and Pulitzer Prize winner James Ijames.
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Chelsea received her MFA in Dramaturgy from Mary Baldwin University/The American Shakespeare Center, and her doctorate from The Ohio State University.
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