A dramaturg, interdisciplinary scholar, teacher, and historian, Dr. Maya Cantu (she/her) teaches on the Drama Faculty of Bennington College. Maya's research specializations encompass Broadway musicals and plays of the modernist era; American theater and drama; American musical theater history; vaudeville, burlesque and revue; the camp aesthetic in theater and performance; women in theater and feminist theater; studio-system Hollywood; and intersections of stage, screen, and popular fiction. Her second book, Greasepaint Puritan: Boston to 42nd Street in the Queer Backstage Novels of Bradford Ropes, is now available from the University of Michigan Press.
Maya's first book, American Cinderellas on the Broadway Musical Stage: Imagining the Working Girl from Irene to Gypsy, was published in 2015 by Palgrave Macmillan, as part of the Studies in Theater and Performance History series. Based upon her dissertation, American Cinderellas explores how the Broadway musical from the 1920s through the 1950s adapted and transformed the Perrault narrative in order to address changing social and professional roles for American women.
For eleven years, Maya was Dramaturgical Advisor at Off-Broadway’s Mint Theater Company. Maya's credits at the Mint included: Elizabeth Baker's Partnership (1917); Betty Smith's Becomes a Woman (1931); Noël Coward's The Rat Trap (1918); Baker's Chains (1909); D.H. Lawrence's The Daughter-in-Law (1913); Chekhov/Tolstoy: Love Stories, adapted by Miles Malleson; Micheál mac Liammóir's The Mountains Look Different (1948); Baker's The Price of Thomas Scott (1913); Lillian Hellman's Days to Come (1936); Malleson's Conflict (1925); Stanley Houghton's Hindle Wakes (1912); A.A. Milne's The Lucky One (1917); Malleson's Yours Unfaithfully (1933); N.C. Hunter's A Day by the Sea (1953); Hazel Ellis's Women Without Men (1938); Harold Chapin's The New Morality (1912); George Kelly’s The Fatal Weakness (1946) and Philip Goes Forth (1931); John Van Druten’s London Wall (1931); and she also worked as production dramaturg on Ferenc Molnár's Fashions for Men (1917; directed by Davis McCallum, and broadcast as part of PBS/WNET's "Theater Close-Up" series).
Maya has also served as dramaturg at Yale Repertory Theatre, Yale School of Drama, and Yale Cabaret, on productions ranging from Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder to Charles Ludlam's The Mystery of Irma Vep. She has also contributed dramaturgical writing to Dorset Theatre Festival and Red Bull Theater, for Theresa Rebeck's The Way of the World. Her essays and reviews have been published in New England Theatre Journal, Studies in Musical Theatre, Theatre Journal, The Sondheim Review, the New York Public Library’s Musical of the Month series, the Clyde Fitch Report, and in the edited collections The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre (Routledge, 2022); Paris and the Musical: The City of Light on Stage and Screen (Routledge, 2021); The Palgrave Handbook of Musical Theatre Producers (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); and Reframing the Musical: Race, Culture and Identity (Red Globe Press/Springer Nature Ltd, 2019). For her essay in the latter, "Beyond the Rue Pigalle: Recovering Ada "Bricktop" Smith as 'Muse,' Mentor and Maker of Transatlantic Musical Theater," Maya was selected as the 2020 recipient of the American Theatre and Drama Society's Vera Mowry Roberts Research and Publication Award.
Maya earned her Doctor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at Yale School of Drama. Before pursuing a career as a writer and dramaturg, Maya attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Always a character actor, her favorite role was as Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit.
Bluesky: @mayamcantu.bsky.social
Maya's first book, American Cinderellas on the Broadway Musical Stage: Imagining the Working Girl from Irene to Gypsy, was published in 2015 by Palgrave Macmillan, as part of the Studies in Theater and Performance History series. Based upon her dissertation, American Cinderellas explores how the Broadway musical from the 1920s through the 1950s adapted and transformed the Perrault narrative in order to address changing social and professional roles for American women.
For eleven years, Maya was Dramaturgical Advisor at Off-Broadway’s Mint Theater Company. Maya's credits at the Mint included: Elizabeth Baker's Partnership (1917); Betty Smith's Becomes a Woman (1931); Noël Coward's The Rat Trap (1918); Baker's Chains (1909); D.H. Lawrence's The Daughter-in-Law (1913); Chekhov/Tolstoy: Love Stories, adapted by Miles Malleson; Micheál mac Liammóir's The Mountains Look Different (1948); Baker's The Price of Thomas Scott (1913); Lillian Hellman's Days to Come (1936); Malleson's Conflict (1925); Stanley Houghton's Hindle Wakes (1912); A.A. Milne's The Lucky One (1917); Malleson's Yours Unfaithfully (1933); N.C. Hunter's A Day by the Sea (1953); Hazel Ellis's Women Without Men (1938); Harold Chapin's The New Morality (1912); George Kelly’s The Fatal Weakness (1946) and Philip Goes Forth (1931); John Van Druten’s London Wall (1931); and she also worked as production dramaturg on Ferenc Molnár's Fashions for Men (1917; directed by Davis McCallum, and broadcast as part of PBS/WNET's "Theater Close-Up" series).
Maya has also served as dramaturg at Yale Repertory Theatre, Yale School of Drama, and Yale Cabaret, on productions ranging from Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder to Charles Ludlam's The Mystery of Irma Vep. She has also contributed dramaturgical writing to Dorset Theatre Festival and Red Bull Theater, for Theresa Rebeck's The Way of the World. Her essays and reviews have been published in New England Theatre Journal, Studies in Musical Theatre, Theatre Journal, The Sondheim Review, the New York Public Library’s Musical of the Month series, the Clyde Fitch Report, and in the edited collections The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre (Routledge, 2022); Paris and the Musical: The City of Light on Stage and Screen (Routledge, 2021); The Palgrave Handbook of Musical Theatre Producers (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); and Reframing the Musical: Race, Culture and Identity (Red Globe Press/Springer Nature Ltd, 2019). For her essay in the latter, "Beyond the Rue Pigalle: Recovering Ada "Bricktop" Smith as 'Muse,' Mentor and Maker of Transatlantic Musical Theater," Maya was selected as the 2020 recipient of the American Theatre and Drama Society's Vera Mowry Roberts Research and Publication Award.
Maya earned her Doctor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at Yale School of Drama. Before pursuing a career as a writer and dramaturg, Maya attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Always a character actor, her favorite role was as Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit.
Bluesky: @mayamcantu.bsky.social