Cynthia Totten
Professor of Theatre
Ph.D., University of Nebraska-Lincoln
MFA, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale
Since 1992, Professor Totten has been teaching stage movement, acting, directing, and performance courses at Eckerd College. Eckerd directing credits include Failure: A Love Story, Stupid F***ing Bird, Eurydice, The Tempest, Fuddy Meers, Passion Play (Part One), The Gamester, Iphigenia, Rain, Some Fish, No Elephants, Our Town, The Dining Room, As You Like It, The Boys Next Door, and A Streetcar Named Desire.
She received Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival Meritorious Awards for Excellence in Direction for Iphigenia and for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. During the summer, she works as an Artist-in-Residence/Guest Director at the Central Coast Shakespeare Festival in San Luis Obispo, California, where she directed As You Like It, Almost, Maine, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Winter’s Tale, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Love’s Labor’s Lost, The Tempest, The Gamester, Treasure Island, Richard III, Macbeth, Cyrano de Bergerac, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, and The Merchant of Venice, and performed the role of Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing.
Professor Totten studied with Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts, and holds a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Certification from Ananda Expanding Light Retreat near Nevada City, California. She has served as Director of Eckerd College’s London Study Centre, where she taught The British Seminar and Acting: Shakespeare. Professor Totten received the 2016 Lloyd W. Chapin Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Art and the 2017 Robert A. Staub Distinguished Teacher Award