Bob Nelson

Department Chair

bob.nelson@utah.edu

 
Bob Nelson (Professor of Theatre) taught in the Department of Theatre and Media Arts at BYU for twenty-eight years, serving as chair 1998-2004. August 2005, he retired from BYU and has “come home” to his alma mater to chair the University of Utah Department of Theatre.
 
Recent directing credits include The Diary of Anne Frank and W;t at the University of Utah; The First Water Project (the opening play in The Water Project at the Salt Lake Acting Company); and Handing Down the Names by Steven Dietz, Nathan the Wise by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and The School for Wives by Molière, all at BYU. Recent stage acting credits include the title role in Macbeth, and Prospero in The Tempest (BYU-Hawaii); Judge Danforth in The Crucible (BYU Provo); and Sorin in The Seagull (Rose Wagner). Recent film credits include Isaac Hale in Emma Smith: My Story and Joseph Smith (both directed by Gary Cook), Professor in Pride and Prejudice (directed by Andrew Black), Judge Richard Young in Hancock County (directed by Merrill Demick), and Parker in Brigham City (directed by Richard Dutcher).
 
Bob has published on the teaching of Shakespeare in the Shakespeare Quarterly (vol. 35, no. 5), and on the plays of Samuel Beckett in “Standing in Their Shifts Itself. . . ”: Irish Drama from Farquhar to Friel (European Library of Irish Studies, vol. 1).
 
Bob was born in Omaha, NE and lived in Tucson, AZ, through high school and college. He has a BA in Dramatic Theory from the University of Arizona (1970), and a PhD in Theatre from the University of Utah (1976). He and the former Char Pomeroy are the relieved parents of four outstanding grown-ups.