Marilyn Plotkins, PhD

Biography

Dr. Plotkins has been directing, producing, and facilitating professional and student productions at Suffolk University for thirty years where she is a tenured professor and chair of the Theatre Department. She has championed new work both inside the department and as founding director for the Boston Music Theatre Project (BMTP) making a specialty of developing new musicals. In 2008, she led the renovation of the Modern Theatre which became the recipient of a National Trust for Historic Preservation Award. As director of the Modern Theatre she has nurtured programmatic relationships with cultural institutions e.g. Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Boston Preservation Alliance, Casa Patas, Central Square Theater, Goethe-Institut, and WGBH to name a few. Most recently, she led the collaboration with Commonwealth Shakespeare Company to co-produce the world premiere of Robert Brustein’s The Last Will, the third in a trilogy of plays about Shakespeare’s life and work which were all premiered by Suffolk University. Dr. Plotkins has served on the New Works and Festival panels for the National Alliance for Music Theatre, the Performance Review Panel at Radcliffe College’s Bunting Institute and is the author of The American Repertory Theatre: The Brustein Years published by Praeger Press. She holds an MA from Emerson College and a PhD in Theatre History and Criticism from Tufts University.