Janet Bentley (1970-2025)

Janet Bentley was a pioneering student in our new MFA Dramaturgy Program at the University of Iowa from 2001 to 2004. As an outstanding student and a talented and passionate theatre artist, they helped to shape what the Dramaturgy Program is today. At Iowa we prize collaboration: in every semester, dramaturgs participate in Playwrights Workshop, a course in which MFA playwrights give readings to first drafts of new plays. In that course, all of the MFA playwrights sought out Janet’s input and wanted to work with her, and she collaborated sensitively and successfully with writers of a wide range of talents and personalities. Moreover, in our annual New Play Festival and other venues, Janet acted, directed, designed, mentored undergraduates - everything - and in the process drew on her special dramaturgical abilities. 

Janet was also committed to making classic works come alive for contemporary audiences. They played a pivotal dramaturgical role on department Mainstage Productions, such as faculty member Eric Forsythe’s new translation of A Flea in Her Ear. Their impressive MFA Thesis was a new translation of Ibsen’s Brand, accompanied by a deeply researched critical paper.

After graduation from our program, Janet’s theatrical work built on her multidisciplinary talents and was prolific. In New York she dramaturged, directed, and designed sound and projection for such theatres as Nylon Fusion Theatre, New Light Theatre Project, Pendragon Theatre, United Solo, the Hudson Guild, Under St, Marks, The New Ohio Theatre, Theatre for the New City, the Stella Adler Studio, The Brecht Project, and the Broadway Bound Theatre Project. Their productions included plays by such well-known playwrights as John Patrick Shanley, Annie Baker, Yazmina Reza, and Dominique Morriseau, as well as by Scott C. Sickles, Julia Barry Bell, Michelle Kholos Brooks, Joyce Miller, Owen Panettieri, Jaymes Jorsling, Frank Ceruzzi, and Ed Malin, among many others. As long as the lists of theatres and plays are, they could go on and on. The volume of Janet’s work reflected their expansive talents. They were a creative force in the world of new play development and production. 

Janet combined their love of theatre with a deep knowledge of the art and the joy of making it. They were beloved by their student and faculty colleagues at Iowa and their collaborators in New York. I recall my colleague Dare Clubb telling me how, during a Modern Drama class devoted to Ibsen, Janet revealed that they knew Norwegian and proceeded to speak the lines of the play under discussion in the original language. Dare said it was like “seeing a fountain erupt.” That was Janet - bursting with intelligence and creativity. We have lost them much too soon.

Art Borreca