Back to top

Photograph of Deborah Payne

Deborah Payne Associate Professor Literature

Degrees
PhD, University of California, Los Angeles<br>MA, English, University of California Los Angeles<br>BA (Highest Honors), English and Theatre, Loyola Marymount University

Bio
An expert on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theatre, Professor Payne has published on topics ranging from the Restoration actress to baroque opera. She is the editor of “The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre” (Cambridge, 2000); “Four Restoration Libertine Plays” (Oxford, 2005); and “Revisiting Shakespeare’s Lost Play: Cardenio/Double Falsehood in the Eighteenth Century” (Palgrave, 2016). Just recently she completed “The Commodiluxe Stage: A New Material History of Restoration Theatre.” Her most recent essays include “Pepys and Theatrical Spectatorship” (RES, 2015) and “Textual Skirmishes and Theatrical Frays: Double Falsehood versus the Scriblerians” in “Revisiting Shakespeare’s Lost Play” (Palgrave, 2016). Professor Payne also has forthcoming a book chapter on eighteenth-century acting companies for A Cultural History of the Theatre (Bloomsbury, 2017). In addition to her scholarly activities, Professor Payne has worked as a dramaturge and literary consultant for theatre and opera companies in Washington, D.C., including The Shakespeare Theatre Company, where she served as their Humanities Research Consultant for several years. Her teaching interests include Restoration and eighteenth-century drama; Shakespeare in Performance; drama and theory; and Modern British drama.


Professor Payne has been the recipient of fellowships from the NEH, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Huntington Library, the Williams Andrew Clark Memorial Library, and American University. In spring 2014, she lectured at the Universidad de Sevilla on a Fulbright Fellowship. She has won distinguished teaching awards from both the College of Arts and Sciences and the University.
See Also
Literature Department
For the Media
To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

AU Experts

Area of Expertise

Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theatre; theatre history; performance theory; Shakespeare in performance; dramaturgy

Additional Information

Professor Payne published "Revisiting Shakespeare's Lost Play: Cardenio/Double Falsehood in the Eighteenth Century" (Palgrave, 2016) and completed "The Commodiluxe Stage: A New Material History of Restoration Theatre." In 2014 she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to lecture in Spain. Other publications include: Four Libertine Plays (Oxford, 2005). In the summer of 2005, Fisk concluded a three-year Exemplary Project Grant in conjunction with the Shakespeare Theatre, awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities for $250,000.

For the Media

To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

Related Links