Position
Associate Professor of Theatre
Co-Artistic Director, The Heartland Festival
Education
BM in Music Education/Voice Performance, Susquehanna University
MA in Theatre, Binghamton University
Ph.D. in Theatre, University of Colorado-Boulder
Previous Teaching Positions
Genesee Community College (NY)
University of Colorado-Boulder
Binghamton University
Teaching Responsibilities
Acting (all levels)
Acting and Directing Theory
Dramatic Literature
Teaching Methods
Theatre History
Voice and Diction
Dialect Coaching
Directing Pioneer Players and Musical Theatre Productions
Pioneer Players/Musical Theatre Mainstage Productions
Biographical Information
David Schuler is an Associate Professor of Theatre at UW-Platteville. Originally from Pennsylvania, Dr. Schuler moved here from upstate New York in 2006 where he previously taught in the theatre program at Genesee Community College (NY). While at Genesee, he was recognized with an Excellence Award in Teaching, Leadership and Learning from the University of Texas’ National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development.
Schuler first trained for the theatre at Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied with Rosemary Harris, Andrew Jack, Earle Gister and Paul Rogers. He has performed in over thirty productions including lead roles in Amadeus, Bitter Friends, The Quilling of Prue, Voice of the Prairie and 1776. In 2000, he developed a one-man historical portrait of John Adams and has since given over seventy performances. Notable engagements include a presidential conversation with Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt at the New York State AGATE Conference; the Arkansas Bar Association Annual Meeting; the Wayside Inn, Sudbury, Massachusetts; and the Rochester Regional Library Advocacy Conference (NY).
As a director, Dr. Schuler trained with Don Boros and Jim Symons. He has worked in Colorado, Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Norway and directed professionally for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, the Norwegian Sámi National Theatre, the Shipping Dock Theatre, First Presbyterian Theater and the Heartland Festival. In 2002, his co-adaptation of Ibsen’s Brand premiered in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Directing credits at UWP include The Fantasticks, Old Times, All in the Timing, The Trojan Women, Anything Goes, The Last Five Years, Dancing at Lughnasa, The Laramie Project, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, Cabaret, The Laramie Project Epilogue, An Evening of the Avant-Garde and Fat Pig.
Schuler’s scholarly interests include aboriginal theatre/theatre ethnography, Ibsen, modern Shakespearean performance, and living history characterization. He has published articles in On Stage Studies and the Norwegian Stage Director’s Catalogue for the 2007 Prague Quadrennial. He received the prestigious Reynold’s Fellowship for his dissertation research while at CU-Boulder, and during his time in Norway served as the translation consultant on the award-winning aboriginal film documentary Even if a Hundred Ogres. He is completing a book-length study on the Beaivváš Teáhter—the Norwegian Sámi National Theatre and has presented papers on the Sámi Theatre at both national and international conferences since 2006. Recognized as a specialist in Sámi culture, Schuler has also lectured extensively about the Sámi throughout the eastern United States since 1997.
He is active in the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival. He continues to do performance workshops for KCACTF Region II, volunteered as a production respondent in Region II and Region III, and was recognized for his work as a respondent by KCACTF in 2006.
In his former life, Dr. Schuler studied choral conducting with Robert Shaw and Brock McElheran, and performed with the Saratoga-Potsdam Chorus and the Philadelphia Orchestra under Charles Dutoit, Eugene Ormandy and Robert Shaw.
Contact Information