Sheila Hickey Garvey
President
Sheila Hickey Garvey is a Professor Emerita of Theater, Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) where she taught Acting, Directing , and topics in theatre history. She annually staged productions in SCSU’s Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. She has offered Masterclasses in many professional and community theaters and in Bosnia for the University of Banja Luca’s MFA program and at The Universe of Caen in Normandy, France.
In May of 2025 she was awarded the prestigious Eugene O’Neill Medallion which was presented to her in Athens, Greece.
Directing: Resident Director for the Greater Middletown Chorale, Elijah (Felix Mendelssohn) and Letter from Italy, 1944 Sarah Meneely-Kyder (Score) and Nancy Meneely-Kyder (Libretto).
A documentary about Dr. Garvey’s contributions to the creation and direction of the original opera Letter from Italy, 1944 won a 2014 Regional Emmy award and is narrated by Meryl Streep (Karyl Evans Productions).
Garvey has received awards also from the Region I/John F. Kennedy American College Theater Festival for her staging of Almost Maine, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, A Piece of My Heart, and the Moss Hart Memorial Award for her staging of the premiere of Pulling Apart by Ellen Kaplan.
Acting: Long Wharf Theatre, The Kitchen Playwright’s Theatre, The Weathervane Theatre, The Allenberry Playhouse, Center Stage and The Williamstown Theatre Festival among others. Film: Edith in Another Day in Manhattan (Sandeep Kumar Productions). Short Film category Winner at The Hell’s Kitchen NY Film Festival, the Festival of Nations, the Art is Alive Film Festival, and various international film festivals. It premiered in Austria in the Fall of 2020.
Books: “Circle in the Square Theatre, a Comprehensive History” (MacFarland Inc. 2020); Co-editor and contributor Jason Robards Remembered (MacFarland Inc., 2001); “The Theatre of Eugene O’Neill American Modernism on the World Stage” (London: Bloomsbury Metheun, Winner of the 2018 CHOICE Academic Book of the Year); contributor “A Critical Companion to Eugene O’Neill: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work” (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2009); “Days of Northern Lights: Fifty Seasons of the Weathervane Theater” (the Stinehour Press, 2016); “Layouts: Eugene O’Neill’s New York, a Commemorative Guidebook” with text by Arthur and Barbara Gelb, (Eugene O’Neill Society Conference Special Edition, 2011).
Garvey is also a regular contributor to The Eugene O’Neill Review, The New England Theatre Journal, and has written articles for The Recorder, Theatre Survey (Cambridge University Press) and Coup de Theatre, a journal of the Sorbonne.
Education: Emerson College, B.S., Northwestern University, M.A. Directing, Circle in the Square Acting School (certificate) and New York University (TISCH), Ph.D.