Rate My Professor Amanda Martin

Amanda Martin serves as the Playwriting Fellow in Theatre Studies within the School of Performing Arts at the University of Otago. An American theatre practitioner, she specializes in dramaturgy and playwriting, holding an MFA in Dramaturgy from the A.R.T. Institute at Harvard University and the Moscow Art Theatre. Prior to joining Otago in 2017, Martin contributed significantly to US theatre productions. She worked as dramaturg on Waitress at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA; Who Would Be King at Oberon in Cambridge, MA, and Ars Nova in New York, NY; and authored Little Bits of Light, produced by Hampstead Stage Company in Chicago, IL, with a subsequent US tour. Her experience encompasses the development of new musicals, including the Broadway production of Waitress, a rock opera adaptation of Don Giovanni, and scripts for devised theatre companies and universities. Original plays and adaptations such as The Firebird have been staged in New York City, Boston, Chicago, and on national tours.

Since relocating to New Zealand, Martin has directed and devised several local productions, including Yellow Coal and $19.95, for which she served as devising director and script writer; White Men as director; Dayboy as co-director; and Heathers: The Musical in 2021 at New New New Corporation Brewery in Dunedin. At the University of Otago, she teaches a range of courses in the Theatre programme, including THEA 241 Writing for Stage and Screen, THEA 341 Advanced Writing for the Stage and Screen, THEA 424 Aspects of Contemporary Theatre and Performance, THEA 457 The Working Dramaturg, THEA 153 Voice and Movement, and THEA 351 Performing Shakespeare. Her scholarly work includes book reviews in Australasian Drama Studies: Performing Dramaturgy (2018, issue 72, pp. 238-243) and Birds; Urban Hymns; The Gangster's Paradise; Still Life with Pigeons (2024, issue 85, pp. 250-256). She co-created The Anderson Localization for the 2025 Dunedin Arts Festival and delivered a verbal presentation titled Beyond Surrealism: The Theater of Robert Wilson at the 2017 Mediating the Real 2 Conference in Dunedin. Martin also supervises postgraduate theses in Theatre and Dance and contributes to the Master of Creative Writing programme.