Ellen C. Frye

Dr. Ellen Cressman Frye studied for her undergraduate major in Spanish at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, graduating with honors, then completed her doctoral work in the literature of Spain at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, sub-specializing in early modern Peninsular theater, specifically, Renaissance and Baroque theater of Spain. She is a tenured professor at the William Paterson University of New Jersey.

Dr. Frye is particularly interested in dramatic devices, such as the aside, soliloquy, monologue, and metatheater, and she focuses on their taxonomical sub-categorization and their primary function of establishing and maintaining the actor-spectator relationship, as well as their secondary functions. She is editing her manuscript which is tentatively titled, Weaving Worlds: The Actator on the Actor-Spectator Continuum in Early Modern Theater of Spain. She has recently published two articles on her new dramatic theory, the actator.

Dr. Frye’s work has mainly centralized on theater of Spain, but for the past several years, she has also been examining and analyzing the literature of Antarctica, with the expectation of compiling an academic anthology that scholars worldwide could use, in the hopes of cultivating interest in and igniting passion for Antarctica.

Research projects / interests:

• Poetry and prose (both fiction and non-fiction) of Antarctica
• Theatre and film of Antarctica
• 17^thcentury theatre of Spain
• The actor-spectator relationship in world theatre