Cason W Murphy

People
Assistant Professor of Theatre
Cason Murphy

Cason Murphy (he/him/his) is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Iowa State University where he has taught classes in acting, musical theatre, and introduction to performing arts since 2018. He is the recipient of the 2021 LAS Cassling Family Faculty Award for Early Achievement in Teaching, the 2021 ISU Early Achievement in Teaching Award, the 2022 Arts Educator Award from the Ames Community Arts Council, and the 2023 ATHE/KCACTF Prize for Innovative Teaching. He holds his M.F.A. in Theatre Directing from Baylor University and his B.A. in Theatre Arts from UCLA.

Cason’s research focuses on cultivating new audiences at the intersection of theatre and new media forms. He has presented his scholarship at national and international conferences, and published in prestigious journals including Theatre Topics, Theatre Journal, Shakespeare Bulletin, Theatre/Practice, Cinema Scandinavia, and the Journal of Film and Video, along with the edited collections The Whirlwind of Passion: New Critical Perspectives on William ShakespeareThe Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the War Film, and Pandemic Play: Community in Performance, Gaming, and the Arts. He is also the author of the textbook The World at Play: Performance from the Audience’s Perspective.

Professionally, Cason has created theatre as an actor, director, producer, and sound designer across the nation—most notably appearing off-Broadway in the original cast of Bukowsical (New York Fringe Festival) and original cast of The Brain from Planet X (NYMF). At ISU, he has directed and facilitated Sense and Sensibility (2019), On the Horizon: Festival of Student-Produced Work (2021), and BABA: A New Musical (2022). However, his favorite roles to play are being husband to Tiffany Antone, playwright and Assistant Teaching Professor of Theatre at ISU, and being human-dad to Finnegan and Daschle and cat-dad to Carrot, Mogwai, Lewis, and Mobius.

Show Credits

  • Director, She Kills Monsters, 2023
  • Director, BABA, 2022
  • Facilitating Producer, On the Horizon: Festival of Student-Produced Work, 2021
  • Director, 9 to 5, 2020 [CANCELED]
  • Director, Sense and Sensibility, 2019
Education: 
M.F.A., Theatre Directing - Baylor University
B.A., Theatre Arts - UCLA
A.A., Theatre - Los Angeles City College
Contact
515-294-8936
320 Carver Hall, Iowa State University
Ames
IA
50011