Christine Arena is the co-founder of Richmond Catholic Theatre, a theatre company created in the spirit of the activist Rhapsodic Theatre of Poland. As a Master's student in the Theatre History and Criticism Program at University of Illinois, she focused her portfolio on the relationship between the body and spoken word, performance and identity culminating with a historiographical project on St. Pope John Paul II's Rhapsodic Theatre of Poland. Her undergraduate thesis laid the groundwork focusing on the intersection of identity and theatre in Italy, specifically the relationship between la commedia dell'arte and Italian national identity.  Among her credits are dramaturg for Tom Stoppard's Arcadia at James Madison University; assistant director for Henley Street Theatre Company's Julius Caesar, winner of the Richmond Theatre Critics Circle Award for Best Direction 2013;  dramaturg for Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld (Orphée aux Enfers) at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Music Lyric Theatre in 2014; director of The Jeweler's Shop: a meditation on the sacrament of matrimony, passing on occasion into a drama as part of Richmond Catholic Theatre's inaugural season.