Professor, Department Chair
he/him/his
wessendo@hawaii.edu
Courses:
THEA 311 Script Analysis
THEA 380 Beginning Directing
THEA 412 World Theatre: Modern
THEA 429 Contemporary Performance Practices—Devised Theatre
THEA 611 Seminar in Major Theatre Theory
THEA 614 (Alpha) Topics in Dramaturgy
THEA 615 Performance Theory
THEA 616 Script Analysis
THEA 681 Advanced Topics in Theatre Directing
THEA 692 Practicum in Teaching
THEA 699 Directed Research
THEA 705 Seminar in Drama and Theatre—20th Century Critical Theory
Markus Wessendorf holds a PhD in Applied Theater Studies from the University of Giessen, Germany. His areas of specialization are in experimental and avant-garde theatre, performance studies and theatre theory, and dramaturgy and devised theatre. In his writings, he has covered a wide range of topics, from tourism to terrorism, masochism to Mohism, diaspora to deconstruction. His publications include a monograph on Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater (Berlin 1998) and a co-edited volume on interdisciplinary relationships between theatre and the other arts (Tübingen 1998), and he has been the managing editor of The Brecht Yearbook/Das Brecht-Jahrbuch since volume 43 (2018). As a director, he has staged Heiner Müller’s Germania Death in Berlin (New York 1989), Norman Price’s Barking Dogs (Brisbane 1998), Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (Honolulu 2010), and his own Anton Chekhov adaptation Uncle Vanya and Zombies (Honolulu 2012). He also facilitated the devised-theatre project Smile, You’re Under Surveillance! (Honolulu 2017) and was the dramaturg for Pei-Ling Kao’s dance-theatre productions Integral Bodies (Honolulu 2010) and Are We There Yet, Baby? (Honolulu 2023). He has been the president of the International Brecht Society since 2024.