Jane Page

Jane Page is a professional director whose work is well known across the United States and abroad. Most recently Jane directed Tartuffe for the American University in Cairo. Other recent international work includes the European premiere of Other Desert Cities for the English Theatre of Vienna, where she had previously directed God of Carnage Jane’s work has also been seen at the famous International Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland; it was there that she had won a Fringe First Award for her direction of Amelia Lives. More recently she directed The Great Goddess Bazaar at the festival. Shortly after, her production was invited to the United Solo Theatre Festival in New York City where it won the Best Variety Show in the Festival Award. This production continued to tour the United States and in Europe.

Jane in rehearsal for the European premiere of Other Desert Cities at Vienna's English Theatre; discussion with Artistic Director Julia Schafranek

In the US, Jane has been particularly active in directing Shakespeare, staging highly acclaimed productions of for the Colorado, Utah, Kentucky and St. Louis Shakespeare Festivals as well as Swine Palace in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Her shows are known for their ingenuity and originality. Most recently she directed Much Ado About Nothing for Shakespeare Orange County.

Jane directed the world Premiere of Bestseller at the International City Theatre in Long Beach. Jane was scheduled to begin rehearsals at San Diego’s North Coast Repertory Theatre for Human Error in April 2020. Owing to the pandemic the theatre had to curtail its season. Nonetheless, they went ahead with one of the first Equity Zoom productions in the country. Jane rehearsed with the actors in different cities. Human Error proved to be a success as the theatre produced subsequent productions using tis format. In the autumn, Jane collaborated on the writing and directing a second Zoom production Pandamnit! By Kyung Kim which was streamed in October. Human Error was produced once again in a more elaborate streaming version as part of the UCI season, released October 1, 2021.

Parliament Square – 2019
Photos by Paul Kennedy

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 2014
Photo by Paul Kennedy

Other work includes the West Coast Premiere of Parliament Square by British Award Winning playwright James Fritz, I and You at the Repertory Theatre of St Louis, and All My Sons for Swine Palace Productions. At the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Jane directed a staged reading of Falsettoland for the Daedalus Project. Back in Colorado, she directed Human Error for the New Play Summit at the Denver Center Theatre Company where she had recently staged The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Her work has been seen across the country at theatres including the Cleveland Play House, the Virginia Stage Company, the Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the Studio Arena Theatre, and the GeVa Theatre.

In addition to her professional work, Jane has taught and staged productions at universities; she completed residences at LSU, the University of Utah, the University of Colorado, Webster College in St. Louis and Indiana University, her Alma Mater. She was also a Guest Scholar at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

In addition to her conventional production work, Jane has brought her theatre skills to many innovative community projects. She co-wrote and directed a devised theatre piece about asylum seekers in the United States called Asylum Anguish. Other projects include conflict resolution within a low-income housing project run by the Catholic Church; an intervention with medically fragile children; a bridge building project involving middle school students who were in conflict; and, at Columbine, work with at-risk students in the wake of Columbine High School shooting.

Jane fervently believes that theatre is a vital and inspiring art form that thrives when it is out and about in the community; and not when it is confined in impressive buildings. As a result, she has been very active with educators and pre-collegiate schools. In Colorado, Jane has devoted considerable time to exploring the application of theatre techniques in enhancing education, including work with the Aesthetic Education Institute of Colorado. She contributed to a three-year federally funded project which successfully combined theatre with mathematics for elementary and middle school students. Jane has also devoted herself to improving communication skills and conflict resolution in a wide variety of settings. She continues her involvement in community projects here with UCI’s Dean of Undergraduate Education and developing outreach projects. Currently Jane is working on a collaboration with UCI’s Prison Pandemic Archive project.

Recently, Jane received the UCI Engage Faculty Great Partner Award for her Community Engagement. And in 2015, Jane was named Professor of the Year at UCI.

At the University of Denver, Jane developed and headed an outreach program for international studies. In 2003, an endowed scholarship was established in her honor at the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver. In 2007 Jane was named Theatre Educator of the Year by the Alliance for Colorado Theatre.