Salem State University Theatre & Speech Department

06/03/2026

We are thrilled to announce that Professor Julie Kiernan is the new Chairperson of the Theatre and Speech Communication Department!

Julie Kiernan is an Associate Professor and Chair of Theatre & Speech Communication at Salem State University. A Fulbright Scholar, she taught and directed theatre at New Bulgarian University in Sofia, Bulgaria, during the Spring 2024 semester. Building on this experience, she established a memorandum of understanding between Salem State and New Bulgarian University. In Spring 2026, she led a student cohort to Bulgaria for a collaborative devised theatre project based on Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Kiernan is the recipient of Salem State University’s Distinguished Teaching Award (2016). She was a founding faculty member of the Veteran Scholars Learning Community (2013–2019), where she taught for six years, and received the Unwavering Support of Student Veterans Award from the Student Veteran Organization in 2015. She is also the founder and artistic director of Salem State’s annual National 10-Minute Veterans’ Playwriting Contest & Festival, now in its eighth year (2026).

A dedicated director, Kiernan’s recent productions include Everybody (2025), Collective Rage (2025), Antigone (2023), First Year Lab (2022), Orlando (2021), and Top Girls (2019). She will direct Becky Nurse of Salem in fall 2026 as part of Salem’s 400th anniversary celebration.

In addition to her departmental work, Kiernan has made significant contributions to global engagement initiatives. She served as Salem State’s Faculty Fellow for Global Engagement (2018–2022; 2024–2026) and as Faculty COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) Coordinator (2020–2023). In these roles, she led three year-long Faculty Learning Communities and trained 30 faculty members in COIL pedagogy. This work was recognized with the 2021 AASCU Excellence and Innovation Award for International Education and supported by a 2021 IDEAS grant from the U.S. Department of State. She also played a key role in establishing the university’s Global Engagement Seal for students.

Committed to ongoing professional development, Kiernan has participated in multiple Faculty Learning Communities focused on deepening pedagogical practice, including Service Learning (2013–2014), Contemplative Pedagogy (2014–2015), Open Educational Resources (Spring 2019), Veteran Students (2020–2021), and Teaching English Language Learners (Spring 2025).

Kiernan has presented her work nationally and internationally. Highlights include her 2024 presentation, “Practices Used in the United States to Study Shakespeare,” at the Tracing Shakespeare International Festival in Sofia, and her Fulbright project Telling Your Story: Using Theatre to Address Issues of Identity and Connection, developed in collaboration with the MIR Center and New Bulgarian University. In 2018, she delivered a TEDx talk, Setting the Stage for Human Connection, exploring theatre as a tool for intercultural competence. She has also presented at the Forum of Cities in Transition International Conference (2016) and regularly contributes to Salem State’s academic conferences and research events.
Kiernan earned her Master of Fine Arts in Performance from the University of California, Irvine, where she received a full scholarship and served as a research and teaching fellow. Her thesis, Pedagogy of Contact Improvisation in Acting Training, reflects her commitment to innovative performance education. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Salem State University, graduating summa cm laude and receiving multiple honors, including an Irene Ryan Award nomination, the Presidential Arts Scholarship, and the Dembowski Award. She gained additional training at the American Conservatory Theatre’s Summer Training Congress as well as at the College of Charleston.

Before entering academia, Kiernan worked as a professional actress in Los Angeles and has traveled internationally as an artist, presenter, and consultant. Her research interests include feminist theatre, contemplative pedagogy, value-creation education, and the development of intercultural competence.

https://www.profkiernan.com/

Congratulations, Julie!

06/02/2026

It's time for all the tiny dances at Salem Arts Festival , June 5 - 7 in downtown Salem!

Curated by SSU dance professor Betsy Miller, these performances on a 4 x 4 platform are a mainstay of the festival. The range of styles and choreographic ingenuity is always a delightful discovery.

We sing praise to all the dancers participating on the tiny stage this weekend but want to give an extra nod to SSU affiliated performers:

𝗦𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝟲
🟦Abriana McCollim (11:45am - 12:15 pm and 4:30-5 pm)
🟧Sarah Soares and Aiden Jones (2:45- 3:15 pm and 4:30 - 5 pm)

𝗦𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝟳
🟦Kaija Schram, Aiden Jones, Mackenzie Trainor and High Street Friends including Angie Benitez and Becky-Jo Roland (11:45 am - 12:15 pm)
🟧Kaija Schram, Mackenzie Trainor, Betsy Miller Dance Projects and High Street Friends including Angie Benitez and Becky-Jo Roland (2:45 – 3:15 pm)
🟦Kaija Schram, Aiden Jones, Betsy Miller Dance Projects and High Street Friends including Angie Benitez and Becky-Jo Roland (4:30-5 pm)

𝗦𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝟲 - large group dance
North Shore Improv Coalition - Betsy Miller and friends

Celebrate Salem's 400+ anniversary at the 18th annual Salem Arts Festival! This FREE weekend celebration (June 5-7, 2026) brings downtown Salem to life with incredible performances, a juried artisan marketplace, the 10th anniversary Mural Slam, interactive art experiences, and our beloved Community Art Project.

Salem State University Alumni Association and Foundation
Salem State University Music & Dance Department



📷 Creative Collective MA

06/02/2026

Congratulations Paul!! 🎉✨

CONGRATULATIONS to Paul Melendy and all of the 2026 Elliot Norton Award Winners! We appreciate all of the work that the Boston Theater Critics Association put in throughout the year and the region.

05/27/2026

Lin-Manuel Miranda was a thin, eager teenager at Hunter College High School in Manhattan in the early 1990s when he discovered the cast recording of Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George at the Lincoln Center Library. He took it home and played it until the disc wore out. He decided that the man who had written the words and the music was the closest thing his world had to a god. Sondheim was already in his sixties by then, living in a townhouse on East 49th Street and writing letters of encouragement to young theater students he had never met. Lin's drama teacher arranged a brief meeting between them at a school workshop one afternoon when Lin was sixteen. Sondheim was kind. He asked Lin what he was writing. Lin said he was working on a musical about his neighborhood in Washington Heights with salsa and hip-hop in it. Sondheim listened. He told Lin to keep going. The two of them began corresponding by letter and then by email. Lin worked on his musical for the next nine years through Wesleyan University and various part-time jobs. In the Heights opened on Broadway in March 2008. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical that June. Lin walked up to the podium at Radio City Music Hall and improvised his acceptance speech as a freestyle rap. He turned toward the front row where Sondheim was sitting. He sang Mr. Sondheim, look, I made a hat, where there never was a hat, it's a Latin hat at that, riffing on Sondheim's own lyric from Sunday in the Park with George. Sondheim laughed and clapped. He called Lin the next morning. He invited him to join the creative team of the 2009 Broadway revival of West Side Story and asked him to translate some of the lyrics into Spanish. Lin took the job. He spent that year sitting in Sondheim's living room going over single rhymes with him for hours. Lin started telling Sondheim around then about a new idea he had for a hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton. Sondheim told him it was the most exciting thing he had heard in years. Sondheim listened to early drafts of every song as Lin wrote them. He gave one piece of advice over and over. Variety, variety, variety. He said the beat of rap distracted the ear from the lyrics and Lin had to hit the audience with everything he had. Hamilton opened on Broadway in August 2015. Sondheim was at the opening night. He stood at the bows clapping with tears in his eyes. He wrote Lin a letter the next morning calling the show a breakthrough. Stephen Sondheim passed away at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, on November 26, 2021, at the age of ninety-one. Lin wrote on social media that night that our encourager in chief was gone. He framed the last email Sondheim had sent him and hung it on the wall of his writing room. He has kept writing songs ever since.

05/27/2026

05/22/2026

05/21/2026

"Your life is your story, and the adventure ahead of you is the journey to fulfill your own purpose and potential."
-Kerry Washington