Amy Budd

Amy currently focuses on directing plays and musicals as well as teaching courses in performance and theater history. She has worked as a theater artist and educator for nearly thirty years, telling stories with professionals, amateurs, and learners ages 4 to 70+. In addition to teaching and directing, Amy has served as a performer, writer, producer, stage manager, or costume designer on more productions than she can count.

Recent projects at GC include directing plays Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Musicals directed here include Rent, Into the Woods, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and Orfeo ed Euridice. She is especially proud of 2024’s ensemble developed musical revue, Resistance! Revolution! Reconciliation!

Prior to joining the faculty of Goshen College in 2020, Amy spent three years at Purdue as visiting faculty and then a year at the State University of New York at Oswego. Here at Goshen, Amy is overjoyed to have found a community that values the spiritual transformation of art making as much as she does.

Amy is interested in bringing images of science and scientists to the stage and using popular forms such as burlesque and rock and roll to explore larger human dilemmas. She delights in finding intersections between classical text and contemporary poetic language.

MFA in Directing, Purdue University
BA in Theater, Indiana State University

Hamilton: History, Artistry, Impact (His 302/Tht 390), Purdue University. 2017, 2018.
Co-developed and co-taught interdisciplinary course with Dr. John Larson, Professor of History. An opportunity to the historic and artistic foundations of the hit musical and devised original short works in its spirit.

Notable Recent Directing Projects:
The Fantasticks, at SUNY Oswego
She Kills Monsters, Clybourne Park, Cabaret, and The Secret In the Wings at Purdue University
As You Like It, Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre
Women Speaking Math (a street performance in protest form) commissioned by the City of West Lafayette
Love And Death, a Shakespearean collaboration with Lafayette Symphony.

Writer/performer:
The Thing That Ate My Brain…Almost. Developed in Perishable Theatre’s Resident Artist program, 2006-09. Full-length play based on experiences as a Von Hippel-Lindau Syndrome (VHL) patient/survivor. Original cast and tech team toured this production to Austin, Texas and Washington, DC.

Additional Directing projects include productions at Contemporary Theatre Company (Wakefield. RI), Boston Theatre Marathon, Perishable Theatre (Providence, RI), Little Compton Community Center, Brown University’s MFA Playwriting Program (under the leadership of Mac Wellmann and Nilo Cruz), All Children’s Theatre Ensemble (Providence, RI), The Manton Avenue Project (Providence, RI), and others.

ARTSwego Flexible Funding Grant, SUNY Oswego 2020. Speaker fees for four professional guest artists presenting live and recorded talks in Introduction to Theatre classes during pandemic.
SUNY Oswego Travel Grant, 2019, Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference.
Coordinated fundraising for Andrés Forero residency across Purdue College of Liberal Arts:
Rueff School of Design, Art, and Performance; Department of Theatre; Department of History, and Latino Cultural Center.
Indiana Arts Commission, Individual Artist Development Grant, 2017
In support of participation in Goodspeed Musicals Professional Observership
Von Hippel-Lindau Alliance Special Recognition Award, 2010. The Thing That Ate My Brain…Almost. (VHLA is an international medical research and support organization.)
Providence Phoenix Top Ten Theatre Pick, 2009. The Thing That Ate My Brain…Almost.
Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, Individual Artist Project Grant, 2007, 2008. The Thing That Ate My Brain…Almost.