Who's Who in Theatre Wesleyan

Jeanne Everton
Associate Professor of Theatre

Director of Acting & Directing Studies

Coordinator of Integrated Arts Core

Having earned a B.A. in Speech and Drama from Trinity University and an M.A. in Drama from Texas Woman's University, Jeanne has undertaken additional study at Indiana University--Bloomington, Pennsylvania State University, Texas Tech University and with a variety of theatre, film and television professionals including Tom Babson, Tony Barr, Squire Fridell, Dennis Gallegos, and Catherine Fitzmaurice. She has taught acting and directing at colleges and universities for more than twenty-five years, the last nine at Wesleyan.

The Dallas Observer named Jeanne the Best Stage Actress in Dallas for her performance in George and Shaherazade, sad, sad, sad and she earned The Dallas Theatre League’s Leon Rabin Award nomination for her work in A Delicate Balance.  Other professional honors include being named multiple times to Who's Who Among Teachers in American Colleges and Universities and Who's Who Among American Women.

Among her performance credits, Jeanne’s favorite roles include Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Sarah in The Norman Conquests, Dorothea in Eleemosynary, Arkadina in The Seagull, Angustius in The House of Bernarda Alba, Elizabeth I in Mary Stuart, Catherine in And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little, Simonne in Marat/Sade and Maggie in Dancing at Lughnasa, a production directed by her Wesleyan colleague Dwight Sandell.  She has directed more than forty plays and musicals and particularly enjoyed staging Agnes of God, Assassins, The Three Sisters, Joe Egg and Robert Rodriguez’s opera Suor Isabella.

Having worked professionally for nearly 40 years as an actor, director, dramaturg, designer, talent agent, casting director and producer, Jeanne brings a wide variety of experience to the classroom.   She teaches on-camera acting for film and television, Meisner Method acting classes, and entrepreneurship for performers at S.T.A.G.E. in Dallas and throughout the country.

Jeanne records for Reading and Radio Resource, a Dallas agency providing alternatives to reading for those who are visually or physically disabled and/or learning differenced, and she broadcasts a weekly program for NTRB, North Texas Radio for the Blind.  In the fall of 2008, she will publish an eBook titled The Beginner’s Guide to Acting in Commercials, the first volume of the series, Actors, Inc: The Art, Craft and Business of Acting.