Clareann Despain is a fourth year doctoral student in the Theater & Dance program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received her M.A. in Theatre with an emphasis in directing from the University of New Mexico, where she subsequently served as adjunct faculty. Her master’s thesis explored the possibility of Dramatic Schizoanalysis using Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concept of schizoanalysis as a means to enhance the analysis of a play script by a theatrical director. Her dissertation, In the House (working title), looks to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to uncover the cultural forces that transformed a historically active and unruly audience into the (relatively) staid theatergoers that exist today.
Directing credits include Wonderdog!, Pale Idiot, I Sea, Below the Belt, Summer Shower, and 8 Life Lessons from Mort and Mindy. 8 Life Lessons by Jackson Warkentin was part of UCSB’s 2007 New Plays Festival under the supervision of Naomi Iizuka. Clareann has served as the director and dramaturg on a number of new scripts, most notably I Sea by Lou Clark, which won an ACTF/Kennedy Center award. Prior to pursuing directing and performance theory, Ms. Despain worked in stage management for several companies including: Tulane Summer Lyric Theatre in New Orleans, the MFA program at the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) and Lamplighter’s Music Theatre in San Francisco, PCPA Theatrefest in Santa Maria, and Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City, IA.