The Roe Green
Visiting Director Series



Each year we invite a guest professional director to work with our students. This is possible through the generosity of the Roe Green Visiting Director Series. Roe Green is a local arts patron and activist. In 2003, the Roe Green Foundation pledged to donate $25,000 a year for five years to the School of Theatre and Dance in order to establish a guest directors series. We are fortunate to be able to offer this diverse opportunity for our students.

Ping Chong, Blindness, the Irresistible Light of Encounter, April 2004
Sue Ott Rowlands, The Laramie Project, April 2005
Vincent Dowling, A Winter's Tale, April 2006
Victoria Bussert, Hair, February 2007
Matthew Earnest, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, April 2008

Coming in the Spring of 2009

Shakespeare's Twelfth Night directed by JR Sullivan

The Cast of Hair with Visiting Director Victoria Bussert

Roe Green

    Roe Green is a local arts patron and activist. In 2003, the Roe Green Foundation pledged to donate $25,000 a year for five years to the School of Theatre and Dance in order to establish a guest director’s series.

     Ms. Green is very active in the arts. She was a competitive ballroom dancer for more than 12 years and has dubbed herself an “avid” theatergoer. She received her B.A. in theatre and communications from the University of Colorado in 1970. In 1980, she was awarded an M.A. in theatre from Kent State. Currently, she is a member of the Kent State and Porthouse Theatre advisory boards.

     She has experience in stage business management at Cain Park, Cleveland Opera, and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. In addition to backstage work and her advisory experience at Kent State, Green also has served on the board for Cleveland Playhouse and as the president of C.A.V.O.R.T. Inc. (Conference About Volunteers of Regional Theatres). She is on the women’s committees for the Cleveland Playhouse and Aurora Blossom Music Center, and also serves on the board of Maltz Jupiter Theatre in Jupiter, Florida.

     While she is very active in the arts, Green is also the CEO of the Roe Green Foundation, which is responsible for the Judge Ben C. Green professorship at Case Western Reserve University, as well as a grant to improve the law library at Case Western. In addition to establishing the guest director series at Kent State, the Roe Green Foundation is making plans for a battered women’s shelter in Geauga called the “Green House.” The foundation also started the Green Arts Fund.

     Green, also an avid world traveler, has visited more than 140 countries.