Shade Murray's directing credits include work at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, A Red Orchid Theatre, Writers' Theatre, Second City, The Inconvenience, Wildclaw, Next Theatre, Strawdog Theatre, Roadworks, the MCA, Shattered Globe, About Face Theatre and Chicago Moving Company. Shade has collaborated on the workshop and development of new work with playwrights Marisa Wegyrzyn, Carlos Murillo, Joel Drake Johnston, Brett Neveu, John Fournier, Janine Nabers and Scott Barsotti. Shade is an MFA candidate in directing at Northwestern University, an associate artist with A Red Orchid and has taught at Northwestern University, DePaul University, Act One Studios, National Louis University, National High School Institute, Piven Workshop and the Actor's Gym.
Shade Murray
Courses
TAPS 23000 Introduction to Directing
This course employs a practice in the fundamental theory of play direction and the role of the director in collaboration with the development of textual analysis. By examining five diversely different texts using three different approaches to play analysis (Aristotle, Stanislavski, Ball) students begin developing a method of directing for the stage in support of the written text. In alternating weeks, students implement textual analysis in building an understanding of directorial concept, theme, imagery and staging through rehearsal and in-class presentations of three-minute excerpts from the play analysis the previous week. The culmination is a final five-minute scene combining the tools of direction with a method of analysis devised over the entire course.
TAPS 24450 Games and Performance: Invitation and Immersion
This course explores the 360-degree nature of site-specific performance, creating immersive environments that engage audiences in shifting spatial narratives. It examines Antonin Artaud’s "Theater of Cruelty," which prioritizes visceral experiences and disrupts traditional storytelling for deeper emotional impact. Case studies include PunchDrunk’s Sleep No More, which reimagines Macbeth as a non-linear, interactive experience in a detailed hotel setting;.And Then She Fell by Third Rail, which crafts a surreal, Carroll-inspired world where spatial design shapes narrative interpretation; and Port of Entry in Chicago, which exemplifies audience-driven storytelling and reflects site-specific performance’s evolution.
For their final project, students will design performances within the Regenstein Library, leveraging its spaces for transformative experiences. Co-taught by Heidi Coleman and Shade Murray, the course redefines direction, design, and dramaturgy as active processes rather than fixed roles. Key texts include Off Sites (Ferdman), Making Site-Specific Theatre (Smith), The Punchdrunk Encyclopedia (Machon), and Performing Site-Specific Theatre (Birch & Tompkins).
TAPS 10200 Acting Fundamentals
This course introduces fundamental concepts of performance in the theater with emphasis on the development of creative faculties and techniques of observation, as well as vocal and physical interpretation. Concepts are introduced through directed reading, improvisation, and scene study.
TAPS 10300 Text and Performance
This course offers an introduction to a number of significant dramatic works and seminal figures in the theorization of theater and performance. But the course's aspirations go much further: we will be concentrating upon the intersection of interpretation and enactment, asking how these pieces appear on stage and why. This will not be merely descriptive work, but crucially it will be interpretive and physical work. Students will prepare and present applied interpretations-that is, interpretations that enable conceptual insights to take artistic form. Throughout, we will be searching for that elusive combination of philological rigor, theoretical sophistication, and creative inspiration-probing the theoretical stakes of creativity and testing the creative implications of analytic insights.