Samuel Yates, Ph.D., is a deaf artist and researcher who examines the aesthetics of disability and performance. Samuel is currently an Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies in the School of Theatre and Dance at Millikin University. They received their Ph.D. in English from The George Washington University, where their dissertation research earned the American Society for Theatre Research’s Helen Krich-Chinoy Dissertation Fellowship and the GWU Dean’s Dissertation Completion Fellowship. They completed an M.Phil in Theatre and Performance Studies from Trinity College Dublin as a George J. Mitchell Scholar and a B.A. from Centre College as a John C. Young Scholar. Their current monograph project, Cripping Broadway: Producing Disability in the American Musical, concerns disability aesthetics and accessibility practices in Broadway musicals, and asks how our notions of disability and the able body inform and transforms theatrical performance. Research Cripping Broadway has been supported by ATDS and, most recently, the 2021 ASTR Grant for Researchers with Heavy Teaching Loads. Samuel holds a Humanity in Action Senior Fellowship for their work on performance and body politics, and has artistically collaborated with theaters such as the Abbey Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, The Huntington, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, The Samuel Beckett Centre, and Gala Hispanic Theatre.

Disability Theatre, Musical Theatre, Accessibility, New Play Development, Queer/Trans Performance

English, Latin, French, Some ASL

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