Class of 1971 Speaker Series

Many of us are familiar with the antics of Bialystock and Bloom, the zany characters in Mel Brooks’ Broadway musical, “The Producers”.  But this has not been the experience of our classmate, Evangeline Morphos ’71, a producer of theater, film and TV shows.  Depending on the medium, a producer plays a very different part in the development and final presentation of a story or entertainment.  Many of the differences relate to the ownership of the product and the role of the writer.  From her own experience as a producer, working with writers at every level, Evangeline will tell us how producers have evolved from the stage to the silver screen and then to TV.  

Evangeline majored in Art History and English at Wellesley, where she first began directing and producing. After Wellesley, she earned her PhD in English from Harvard in 1979.  For 25 years, retiring in 2017, she taught courses in theater and film, first at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and then as a Professor of Film and Theater at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. While at Columbia, she initiated the first program devoted to television as a dramatic medium.  During visiting professorships at Cambridge and Oxford, she was the first to teach classes on American theater and television writing.  Concurrent with her academic career, she has produced over 25 plays off-Broadway, working with some of America’s leading playwrights.  She continues to produce in the media of theater, film and television. We are looking forward to learning about the meaning of “producer” and hearing about Evangeline’s successful blending of her love of both theater and teaching into an exciting career.

You can read more about Evangeline here.

Watch the recording