Theresa May
Board Member
An educator and theatre-maker, Theresa is passionate about how stories connect and re-connect
us to the land. She grew up backpacking in the High Sierras before moving to Seattle where she
fell in love with the Pacific Northwest. There she started Theatre in the Wild, developing K-12
arts-based environmental education curriculum, and staging performances in public open spaces.
With partner Larry Fried, she organizing the first conference on theatre and ecology in 1991 and
co-authored Greening Up Our Houses, a book about sustainable theatre practice. After a Ph.D.
from the University of Washington, Theresa taught in the Environment & Community program
at Humboldt State U, where she and Larry started the EMOS Ecodrama Playwrights Festival.
Her leadership in the “green theatre movement” brought them to Eugene 18 years ago where she
has been professor of theatre and allied faculty of Indigenous and environmental studies at the
University of Oregon. For the past 20 years Theresa has worked to find ways that theatre and
storytelling can uplift the voices and vision of regional Indigenous community members. In
collaboration with Karuk, Yurok and Hupa community members, she wrote and directed Salmon
Is Everything, a play about the 2002 fish kill and grass-roots movement to protect salmon in the
Klamath River watershed. She’s currently at work on “BlueJay’s Canoe” in collaboration with
Marta Lu Clifford (Chinook, Cree, Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde), a play that celebrates
Indigenous waterways in Oregon and features lands under MRT’s stewardship. She’s thrilled to
bring her passion for Indigenous values, storytelling and the arts to serve the good work of
McKenzie River Trust!