About Dr. Friedman
Dr. Andrew "Drew" Friedman
Andrew (Drew) Friedman joined the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign after three decades in theatre and nearly two decades of teaching in higher education. He was a founding member and co-artistic director of Riot Group (1998-2012), an internationally celebrated theatre collective with which he created nine original works that toured throughout the US and Europe.
Drew’s research focuses on forms of theatrical provocation, experimentation, and the relationship between modernism and contemporary performance. His scholarship has appeared in leading journals and been translated into multiple languages. He is the author of Ibsen Apocalypse: Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller Six-Hundred-Year Mission to Raise the Ghosts of Modernity (Northwestern University) and co-editor of the collection Theatre Things: Material Theories and Histories (University of Michigan).
He was a 2015 participant in the Mellon School of Theatre and Performance Research at Harvard University, and a 2023 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute Fellow. Prior to joining Illinois Theatre, Drew was associate dean of the College of Fine Arts at Ball State University and associate professor of Theatre History in the Department of Theatre and Dance, where he also served as the program’s dramaturgy supervisor and Theatre Creation option coordinator.
Education
PhD, Theatre and Performance from the Graduate Center at City University of New York
BA, Sarah Lawrence College