Scholarship
Milbre Burch holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Missouri (MU). While a nontraditional graduate student at MU, she won recognition from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF) at the regional and national level. Her full-length play, Holding Up the Sky, was chosen as an invited production for the Region V KCACTF in 2010. At the Region V KCACTF in 2013, her original monodrama, Sometimes I Sing, won a Special Commendation for Achievement in Playwriting, while her Dramaturgy for Justice Served: Three Short Plays about Women Confronting Violence received Honorable Mention. Her ten-minute play Washing Up, received a staged reading at the same festival. That same year, Washing Up went on to be featured as one of four finalists in the National Ten-Minute Play Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.
As an independent artist/scholar, Milbre has served as Performance Review Editor for the peer-reviewed Story, Self, Society: an interdisciplinary journal of storytelling studies (2009-2012). She has also been a co-convener of the Storytelling Section of the American Folklore Society (2012-2016) and a co-convener of the Playwriting Symposium of the Mid-America Theatre Conference (2016-2018).
Milbre has contributed scholarship on early 20th century American playwright Susan Glaspell to the online Literary Encyclopedia and to “Ariel’s Corner” in Miranda, a Multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal on the English-speaking world as well as the anthology, On Susan Glaspell's Trifles and "A Jury of Her Peers" – Centennial Essays, Interviews and Adaptations, edited by Martha Carpentier and Emeline Jouve (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press, 2015). In 2019, she was invited to contribute a chapter on adaptations of Glaspell’s work to a forthcoming Literature in Context series volume on Glaspell for Cambridge University Press.
Milbre has published articles and reviews in the online, peer-reviewed International Journal on Conflict and Resolution and in these print journals: Storytelling, Self, Society; Theatre Journal and Ecumenica, a Journal on Theatre and Performance. In addition, she has published a chapter in Edward Albee as a Theatrical and Dramatic Innovator, edited by David A. Crespy and Lincoln Konkle (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2019). She published a chapter on fairy tale performance (co-written with Patricia Sawin) for the Routledge Companion to Fairy Tale Cultures and Media, edited by Pauline Greenhill, Jill Terry Rudy and Naomi Hamer (Abington-on-Thames, UK: Routledge, 2018).
In the US and abroad, she has presented performed research on the Muslim travel ban, the fluidity of gender identity, and domestic violence. Her archival digital collection, the Storytelling Project, (created with Berkley Hudson) is housed in the Cotsen Children’s Library, a special collection at Princeton University.
She has presented papers and convened panels and forums at the Performance Studies International Conference; the International Conference on American Drama and Theater (in Nancy, FRANCE and Seville, SPAIN); and a conference on “Thinking with Stories in Times of Conflict” at Wayne State University. In addition, she has presented at the International Conference on American Drama at Kean University and at the American Folklore Society; the American Literature Association; the Association for Theatre in Higher Education; the Mid-America Theatre Conference; the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association and the Central States Communication Association.
Selected Scholarship
Author, Chapter on “Adaptations of Susan Glaspell” in the Literature in Context series for Cambridge University Press (Forthcoming, 2020)
Author, “Theatrical Thanatology: Direct Address, Gestural Storytelling and the Triple Goddess in Three Plays about Dying by Edward Albee” in New Perspectives in Edward Albee Studies Vol. 3: Edward Albee as Dramatic and Theatrical Innovator, edited by David Crespy and Lincoln Konkle (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2019)
Author, “The Tales from Beyond the Ban Project: Using Oral Tradition Tales and Oral Histories to Resist Discrimination and Rebuild a Sense of Belonging on Campus and Beyond,” The International Journal of Conflict and Reconciliation, Fall 2108, Volume 3, Number 2
Author, “The Relevance of Susan Glaspell’s Inheritors in the 21st Century – Interview with Glaspell scholar Cheryl Black,” Ariell’s Corner/Theatre in Miranda, multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal on the English-speaking world, Issue 16, 2018
Co-Author (with Patricia Sawin), "Analytical Approaches: Fairy Tale Cultures, and Media and Performance" for the Routledge Companion to Fairy Tale Cultures and Media, edited by Pauline Greenhill, Jill Terry Rudy and Naomi Hamer, 2018
Convener, Playwriting Symposium, Mid-America Theatre Conference, 2016-2018
Convener, Storytelling Section, American Folklore Society, 2012-2016
Author, Sometimes I Sing, an original monodrama, along with an introductory essay, "Sometimes I Sing: Finding the Voice of Minnie Foster Wright in Susan Glaspell's Trifles" in On Susan Glaspell's Trifles and "A Jury of Her Peers" – Centennial Essays, Interviews and Adaptations, edited by Martha Carpentier and Emeline Jouve. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press, 2015
Finalist, National Ten-Minute Play Festival, Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, 2013
Author, "Learning to Listen to an All-Day Talker: First-, Second- and Third- Hand Hearing of an Oral Performance by Ray Hicks." Storytelling, Self, Society 9:1, Spring 2013
Performance Review Editor, Storytelling, Self, Society, 2009-2012
Author, “Trail of Blood: Celebration and Capitulation in Eve Ensler’s The Good Body and Elizabeth Ellis’s One Size Fits Some.” Storytelling, Self, Society 6:2, May-Aug 2010