Melissa Crum

Melissa Crum (DIRECTOR) is a Cleveland-based Director, Writer, Performer, Producer, and Teaching Artist. Focused on humor, heart, and vulnerable truth-telling, she creates as an exploration of the crevices, complexities, and contradictions of our shared human-ness. Melissa received the 2016/2017 Nord Family Foundation Playwright Fellowship through Cleveland Public Theatre (CPT), where she and co-writer & composer Caitlin Lewins developed Everything is Okay (and other helpful lies), a dark musical comedy. Everything is Okay (and other helpful lies) received a reading at the New York Musical Festival (NYMF) in the summer of 2019. Through this work, Crum and Lewins were finalists for the 2019 Mitten Lab. Melissa completed the 2013/2014 Joan Yellen Horvitz Director Fellowship at Cleveland Public Theatre, where she directed The Drowning Girls. Melissa has directed locally at Dobama Theatre, Cleveland Public Theatre, Talespinner Children's Theatre, and Playwright's Local. Melissa currently holds the position of Artistic & Education Associate at Cleveland Public Theatre. She has served as a Staff Teaching Artist with Playhouse Square, worked as an Actor-Teacher with Great Lakes Theater, and has been a Teaching Artist with The Cleveland Play House, The Musical Theater Project, Dobama Theatre, and is a member of the National Teaching Artist Guild. Melissa holds a BA in Theatre Arts from Cleveland State University. Website, melissatheresecrum.com.