Professor emerita Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television will be honored by the Association for Asian Performance (AAP) during its annual conference, on July 23-24, for accomplishments that include her role as a “founding mother” of Asian theater scholarship.
A specialist in Japanese theater and intercultural performance as well as a playwright and director, Sorgenfrei is also a founding member of the AAP. A paper on her scholarship, playwriting and teaching achievements will be presented to her at the AAP conference by Japanese theatre scholar David Jortner. His paper will appear in the Fall, 2015, issue of the Asian Theatre Journal as part of a special “founding mothers” section.
Althought Sorgenfrei retired in 2011, she still actively pursues scholarly and creative work. Throughout her prolific career, she has published more than 100 essays, articles, reviews and encyclopedia entries; given nearly 150 conference papers, keynote addresses and other presentations; written 17 original plays; translated 13 plays and essays from Japanese; and directed 39 plays and play readings.
Sorgenfrei has received numerous honors and awards, including a 1991 National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2007, she was chosen as one of 10 international scholars selected as the inaugural research fellows at the Institute for Theatre Studies of Berlin’s Freie Universität.
