Elizabeth Brendel Horn, M.F.A.

• Assistant Professor
• Elizabeth.Horn@ucf.edu
• Office Hours: Mondays 11am-1pm; Fridays 9am-1pm
• Campus Location: PACT221
• View CV
• View personal website

Elizabeth Brendel Horn joined the faculty of UCF as an Assistant Professor in Theatre in Fall 2015. Her creative interests include classic dramatic literature and the young actor; race and diversity; body image and the young actor; and devising.

As an educator, Elizabeth teaches in the graduate Theatre for Young Audiences program, including courses in Theatre for Social Change, Methods of Teaching Drama, Dramatic Literature for Art, and Storytelling. Elizabeth also teaching undergraduate course in Script Analysis and Creative Drama. Her forthcoming digital textbook, A World Onstage: An introduction to the artform of live theatre, will be available in 2021 through Great River Learning. In 2020, the UCF College of Arts and Humanities recognized Elizabeth as the recipient of the Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award.

Elizabeth has over thirty credits as a director, applied theatre artist, teaching artist, and facilitator of devised theatre. Credits include First Stage Academy (Milwaukee, WI), Alliance Theatre Education (Atlanta, GA), Adventure Theatre and ATMTC Academy (Glen Echo, MD), The Coterie (Kansas City, MO), Orlando Repertory Theatre, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, Dr Phillips Center for the Arts, and Orange County Public Schools. Recent projects include director of a mixed-ability original play featuring the stories of survivors of strokes with the Adaptive Learning Community; director of a youth-devised adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar fused with Bob Dylan music in the Alliance Theatre's Collision Project; director of "Once In My LIFE," a multimedia intergenerational devised piece in collaboration with Interdisciplinary Studies and UCF's Learning Institute for Elders; and Act Out Justice, a collaboration of UCF and Orlando Repertory Theatre that trains young people as theatre artists and facilitators to confront social justice issues in their communities. As a playwright, Elizabeth has written three one-act scripts suitable for high school competition adapted or inspired by Greek classics: Elektra (available through YouthPLAYS), Medea, and Antigone and Ismene.

Elizabeth has presented research about devising, diversity, and body image and the young actor at multiple national and international conferences and universities. She is published with Theatre Topics; Research in Drama and Education; TYA Today; Youth Theatre Journal; Reflective Practice; Storytelling, Self, Society; and Canadian Journal of Disability Studies.  She was recognized as the Southeastern Theatre Conference recipient of the Tom Behm Theatre for Youth award in 2020.

Prior to her appointment at UCF, Elizabeth served six years as Artistic Director of the Timber Creek Thespians, where she directed Metamorphoses, Doubt, Oedipus Rex, Elektra, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Servant of Two Masters, Rabbit Hole, Urinetown, Legally Blonde, Chicago, Anything Goes, The Wizard of Oz, and Little Shop of Horrors. Elizabeth mentored over twenty student-directed productions during her tenure with Timber Creek Thespians, and her students performed by invitation at Florida Thespian Festival and the Orlando International Fringe Festival.

Elizabeth serves on the boards of TYA/USA (Publications chair) and Florida Theatre Conference (Theatre for Youth division chair). She holds an MFA in Theatre for Young Audiences from UCF and a BFA in Musical Theatre from Brenau University with the Gainesville Theatre Alliance.

Education

• M.F.A. in Theatre for Young Audiences from University of Central Florida (2010)
• B.F.A. in Theatre from Brenau University (2007)

Selected Publications

Articles/Essays

• Forthcoming Horn, Elizabeth B., Brittany Caine, Maria Katsadouros, and Emily Freeman. “Act Out Justice”: Reflective collaborative inquiry on theatre for social change youth programming.” Reflective Practice. Forthcoming.
• Forthcoming Horn, Elizabeth B. “And So She Plays Her Part: An Autoethnographic Exploration of Body Image, Consent, and the Young Actor.” Youth Theatre Journal. 2019.
• Forthcoming Horn, Elizabeth B. “Stories in the Air: Director Self-Disclosure in the Theatre with Youth Rehearsal Space.” Research in Drama Education. 2019.
• Horn, Elizabeth B., Belinda C. Boyd, and Megan Sherod. "(Re)Discovering Story and Voice: The Adaptive Community Theatre Project," Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 2019. 
• Forthcoming Underberg-Goode, Edwanna Andrews, Mike Burke, Amanda Hill, Elizabeth B. Horn, Natasha Jones, and Stephanie Wheeler. “I Am UCF: Diverse Digital Narratives. The Media Education Research Journal. 2020.
• Hill, Amanda, Jim Brown, Elizabeth B. Horn, Alayna Sterchele, Natalie Underberg-Goode, and Claudia Schippert. "Once In My LIFE: Behind the Scenes of an Intergenerational Theatre Project," Storytelling, Self, Society, 2018. 
• "'Do You See Me?' Power and Visibility in Applied Theatre with Black Male Youth and the Police." Youth Theatre Journal​, 31:2, 79-91. 2017.
• “New Thoughts for New Ages and Stages: Teaching Artistic and Educational Responsibility in the Devising Process.” Theatre Topics. 2016. 
  

• “Playing Ball with the Big League: Introducing Advanced Acting Methodologies.” PerformerStuff.com. 2016.

• “What is Universal? Representing Race and Ethnicity in TYA.” TYA Today. 2015.

•  “A New Direction.” Incite/Insight. September 2011.

• “AATE and TYA/USA Take Action Against Bullying.” Incite/Insight. June 2011.

• “The Twenty-First Century Education Director.” TYA Today. 2010. 

Book Sections/Chapters

• Kaplan, Jeffrey S. and Elizabeth B. Horn. “Understanding Theater in Drama High: The Incredible, True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town, and the Magic of Theatre.”  Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the Content Areas. Edited by Paula Greathouse, Brooke Eisenbach and Joan Kaywell. R & L. 2017. 

Courses

Updated: Aug 22, 2020