Dr. Mark J. Kelty
Dr. Mark J. Kelty, Assistant Professor of Theatre, is the Director of
the Little Theatre. He produces and directs most of the Little Theatre
productions, coordinating the technical and performance areas. Dr. Kelty
also teaches a wide range of courses for the university including:
acting, directing, theatre history, script analysis, and basic
principles of theatre. Far and away, what he loves most is working with
students both in the classroom and in rehearsal. "There’s no better way
to get to know our students and there’s nothing more rewarding than
watching them grow as artists as they surprise and dazzle our audience
over the course of their careers at CMU."
Dr. Kelty’s previous work includes six years as the Artistic Director of
InterAct Teen-to-Teen Theatre in Columbia. InterAct provides socially
interactive theatre on teen issues. Under Kelty’s leadership, InterAct
represented Missouri at the 1999 Teen Theatre Festival at the Bevard in
Syracuse, N.Y., bringing home the Best Performance Award. The group was
later invited to perform a vignette/interactive workshop on “Building
Healthy Relationships” for the 2003 MOCASA conference and the 2004
International Pedagogy of the Oppressed Conference in Omaha.
Additional academic presentations include “The Alpha Project on Troubled
Voices of our Youth” at the National Communications Association in 1999;
two presentations on the work of the Loose Change Players (a guerilla
theatre group founded by Dr. Kelty at MU); and a presentation on the
work of Jesusa Rodriguez as a popular theatre icon in Mexico City (Dr.
Kelty’s dissertation project). He has also published scholarly articles
on Ms. Rodriguez, on Luis Martin Solis, and on Hugo Hiriart. He has
translated a number of plays from Spanish into English, including La
Carpa, which will be produced at the Little Theatre in February
2008.
Whenever possible, Dr. Kelty works as an actor, most recently at MU’s
Summer Repertory Theatre performing as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple
and as Uncle Willie in High Society. He has two film roles to his
credit: Radar Operator in the James Bond movie Licence to Kill
and Journalist #1 with Jane Fonda and Gregory Peck in Old Gringo.
Dr. Kelty’s has two children; Ana is an international nursing student at
SLU’s Madrid campus in Spain. Javier is a digital media major at our
rival Eagles campus: Avila University.
