I believe that [National Women’s History month] is about women and social change. Leaders of change reside with women.

For me, working with rather than writing about people is the more radical act.  Work with vulnerable communities requires us to focus on their concerns and priorities, to be respectful of their autonomy and dignity. It is not therapy, but an opportunity for to create healing spaces, self-expression, psycho-social support.  Of course, there’s trepidation; I am a stranger here, we need to build trust. We work slowly, everyone participates only to the extent they desire, and no more.

Theatre Responds to Social Trauma: Chasing the Demons. ed. Kaplan, Ellen W. (Routledge, 2024)

Ellen W. Kaplan is Professor Emerita of acting and directing at Smith, a Fulbright Scholar in Costa Rica, Fulbright Senior Specialist in Pakistan, Romania and Hong Kong, an actress, director and playwright. Ellen works extensively with underserved and at-risk communities, including Arts in Special Education in Pennsylvania; Young Playwrights Festival; pre-GED literacy training; with women in prison, and death row inmates.

Ellen performs and directs internationally, (Pakistan, China, Israel, Costa Rica, Argentina, Puerto Rico and across the United States), and has been guest professor at Tel Aviv University; Hong Kong University, where she was a distinguished writer-in-residence in 2016; the Chinese University of Hong Kong; University of Costa Rica; Heredia University (Costa Rica); the University of Theatre and Film (Bucharest, Romania), the University of Kurdistan/Hewler. During the pandemic, she taught virtual classes at Rojava University in Syria.   Recent guest lectures and theatre workshops include the University of Coimbra, Portugal and National Academy of Performing Arts, Karachi, Pakistan.

“A woman enters her husband’s house in her wedding gown, leaves in her shroud.” -Ismat Chughtai

As a Fulbright Senior Specialist, Ellen was invited to Karachi Pakistan in January and February 2024, to work on collaborations between IVS (Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture) and NAPA (the National Academy of Performing Arts). She gave talks about her Applied Theatre work, (including work with adjudicated teens, in prisons, pre-GED workshops, work with elders, etc, Ellen also, conducted a workshop at NAPA on performing Shakespeare, and 2 different performances. She played Ruth in Collected Stories; and directed 24 graduate arts students in a full staging of 5 stories by Ismat Chughtai. Together, we adapted, scripted, staged, designed and performed five of her short stories, including one for which she was put on trial for obscenity.

Recent directing: The Stories of Ismat Chughtai, National Academy of Performing Arts and Indus Valley School of Arts, Karachi, Pakistan; Noel Coward’s Private Lives at Hedgerow Theatre; Turn of the Screw; Lungs; The Tattooed Man; and a radio production of The Foxfinder for Silverthorne Theatre; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time at Smith College; a virtual production of Julius Caesar; and The Magic Flute for the University of Massachusetts Amherst Opera Workshop. Recent acting: Ruth in Collected Stories (Margulies), Karachi, Pakistan; David de Sola’s La Nieta del Dictador, touring to Puerto Rico and the Midwest, and a workshop production of La Razon Blindada by Aristides Vargas, in Spanish.

Recent playwriting: Survivor, Outcast Theatre, Tampa; Livy in the Garden at the Robert Black Theatre in Hong Kong; Coming of Age, published by Next Stage Press; Out of the Apple Orchard: Off Bdwy: Actors’ Temple, NYC (2023), Orlando Repertory Theatre (2016); Someone Is Sure to Come, about inmates on Death Row, was presented in NYC at La Mama Annex and published in the Tacenda Literary Magazine; Sarajevo Phoenix, based on interviews with Croat, Slav and Bosniak women who survived the siege of Sarajevo; Cast No Shadow, about the legacies of the Holocaust, which premiered at the Jewish State Theater of Bucharest; Pulling Apart, about the 2nd intifada, produced in New Haven, CT, and won a Moss Hart Award; and two short documentary films, including Mixed Blessings, about Jews and Roma in Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism. She has written and performed plays based on archival research, about Justine Wise Polier (supported by Kenilworthy-Swift Foundation); Charlotte Salomon (supported by Haddasah-Brandeis Institute), and a play about Anzia Yezierska. Her play Testimonies is based on interviews with Ezidi women in Iraqi refugee camps. Her plays were twice named as finalists for the Massachusetts Playwriting Fellowship.

In 2022, Kaplan offered theatre workshops with Ezidi IDPs at Shariya Camp in northern Iraq; see her essay about this work in Humanities Journal.