Janna Segal received her Ph.D. in 2008 from the UC Irvine/UC San Diego joint program in Drama and Theatre. She also holds an M.A. in Theatre from Cal State University, Northridge, and a B.A. in Theater from UC Santa Cruz.
Segal’s research focuses on contemporary political theatre, early modern theatre, adaptation, and theory. Her master’s thesis, The Text in Context: The Case of Dario Fo’s Morte accidentale di un anarchico, examines the cultural processes involved in American and British adaptations of an Italian political farce that re-appropriates the guillari and commedia dell’arte performance traditions to critique Italian state terrorism in the late 1960s. Her dissertation, Shakespearean-Becomings: Transversal Explorations of Amorous Desire on the Shakespearean Stage, further explores theoretical concepts relating to identity and state formation that she and UCI Professor Bryan Reynolds developed in a series of co-authored articles. Segal argues that the transformative effects of amorous desire in six Shakespeare plays problematize early modern English conceptualizations of gender, sexuality, class, race, religion, and nationality. Her accompanying analysis of succeeding adaptations explores the ways in which Shakespeare’s love-themed plays have historically participated in the regulation and subversion of dominant Western cultural prescriptions.
Segal is a dramaturg and has taught academic and practical theatre courses at CSUN, UCI, and UCR. She believes that teaching, like theatre, is most effective when it uses intellectual and experiential means to challenge and enhance the cultural perspectives of an audience.