Pamela Sterling Papers

Pamela Sterling, director, playwright, actress, dramaturg, artistic director, theatre educator and university professor, was born in 1951. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in the Professional Actor Training Program in 1976 and her Master of Fine Arts in Child Drama in 1982 from the University of Washington in Seattle, where she studied with Geraldine Siks, Agnes Haaga, Susan Pearson and Suzan Zeder.

Sterling served as Executive Director at the Muny First Stage (formerly the Muny/Student Theatre Project) in St. Louis, Missouri from 1984 to 1989. She was the Artistic Director at: the Coterie Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri from 1988 to 1990; the Honolulu Theater for Youth in Hawaii from 1990 to 1995; and the Idaho Theatre for Youth in Boise from 1996 to 1999.

Sterling's work as a freelance director, actress and dramaturg for professional theatre productions around the United States include: director, The Grapes of Wrath, Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; director, The Miracle Worker and The Miss Firecracker Contest, Okoboji Summer Theatre Festival; director, The People Keep Comin', Metro Theater Company in St. Louis; director, Little Women, Dallas Children's Theatre; director, All My Sons, Gint, and Talley's Folly, Profile Theatre Project, Portland, Oregon; director, The Diary of Anne Frank and The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, Northwest Children's Theatre, Portland, Oregon; director and actress, Stage One: The Louisville Children's Theatre; dramaturg, Little Medea, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Ohio; and director of a modern dress version of School for Scandal, New Heritage Theatre Company, Meridian, Idaho. She initiated the roles of Dorothy in Suzan Zeder's Ozma of Oz (Seattle Children's Theatre) and Beauty in Michael Brill's The Masque of Beauty and the Beast (Bathhouse Theatre in Seattle).

As a playwright, Sterling has four published plays for young audiences and plays commissioned by: Historyonics Theatre Company, a professional theatre company affiliated with the St. Louis History Museum; Oregon Children's Theater; and the Muny First Stage. Her published play, The Secret Garden, received the Distinguished Play Award from the Alliance for Theatre and Education (AATE) for Category A: Plays primarily for middle school and secondary age audiences in 1992. This play is also included in the anthology, Twenty Great Plays for Children, edited by Coleman Jennings and published by St. Martin's Press. Her script Friday's Child was printed in Dramatics Magazine in January 1983.

Sterling has worked extensively in the development of new plays for young audiences. She directed staged readings or workshop productions of the following plays in progress: Tomato Plant Girl by Wesley Middleton, The University of Texas at Austin's New Play Development Program; The Incredible Disappearing Lady, by Maria Headley, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Art's New Visions/New Voices program in Washington, DC; and In the Garden of the Selfish Giant by Sandra Fenichel Asher, at the Bonderman New Play Development Workshop and Symposium in Indianapolis.

She is active in the following organizations: Board member for TYA/USA (formerly known as ASSITEJ/USA) from 1990 to 1996; Winifred Ward Scholarship Foundation Board Member since 1995; adjudicator for the AATE Distinguished Play Award since 1996; and reader and/or co-chair of the AATE Unpublished Play Reading Project from 1998 to 2006. Her other memberships include: Theatre Communications Group since 1990 and Actors Equity Association (AEA) since 1982.

Her theatre related articles have been published in TYA Today, Incite/Insight and Drama/Theatre Teacher.

As a faculty member in the Department of Theatre and Film's Theatre for Youth Program at Arizona State University since 1999, she teaches creative drama, directing, playwriting, play devising, acting, theatre for social change, and touring theatre for young audiences. She directs touring and main stage plays for young and family audiences, which include: Alicia in Wonder Tierra; the hip-hop play, The Vine; Our Town; The Ash Girl; and Waking up in Lost Hills by Jose Cruz Gonzalez, the first Cornerstone Theatre-developed play to be produced by another company.

Her other awards and honors include: Winifred Ward Scholar, 1981; Kansas City Theatre Awards for Best New Play, The Adventures of Nate the Great, 1990; best director from the St. Louis Dispatch for To Kill a Mockingbird; Hawaii State Theatre Council for Po'o'kela Awards for Excellence in Directing for productions of Dinosaurus, Spoon River Anthology, and Romeo and Juliet, 1992-1995; Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (ACTF) for Ensemble Acting, Our Town, 2003; and Stephens College/Okoboji Summer Theatre Festival Wally and Alice Mendenhall Guest Artist Award, 2005.

Sterling has also been known by the following surnames: Bridgham and Torgrimson.