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Dr. Zachary Dorsey (he/him) is a scholar specializing in LGBTQ+ art and activism, drag, musical theatre, and dramatic literature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His current research is on the drag storytime movement, and he is conducting interviews with the drag performers, librarians, and organizers who create these events for young audiences and their families. His research and his teaching practices explore what a commitment to kindness, creativity, empathy, and wonder might bring to the world.

At Montclair State University, Zachary is an Associate Professor of Theatre Studies, and he is the advisor for the Theatre Minor. Prior to his arrival at Montclair in 2024, he taught at St. Lawrence University for four years in the Department of Performance and Communication Arts and the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies, and for twelve years at James Madison University in the School of Theatre and Dance. As an educator, he has a longstanding commitment to gender studies, general education, and Honors programs, as well as global education. He has co-created two study abroad programs in Ireland, and he served as the director for James Madison University’s General Education Summer Semester in Scotland.

Zachary is a production dramaturg and new work dramaturg, and he has contributed to theatre, dance, and musical theatre productions at universities, as well as shows at Austin Shakespeare, Jump Start Performance Company (San Antonio), State Theatre Company (Austin), and Pendragon Theatre (Saranac Lake), among others. He approaches his role as dramaturg as a sort of “plus one” for playwrights, choreographers, directors, and audiences; he brings to his work deep listening, presence, and the practice of kindness and care in order to support the creation and reception of an artwork and to maximize joy for all involved.

His writing appears in the journals STUDIES IN MUSICAL THEATRE; RESEARCH IN DRAMA EDUCATION; REVIEW: THE JOURNAL OF DRAMATURGY; THEATRE JOURNAL; THEATRE TOPICS; THEATRE ANNUAL; and E-MISFÉRICA. He has contributed chapters to THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF THE AMERICAN MUSICAL; TROUBLING TRADITIONS: CANONICITY, THEATRE, AND PERFORMANCE IN THE US; and APPLIED THEATRE AND GENDER JUSTICE: IMAGINATION, PLAY, MOVEMENT.

He earned a Ph.D. and an M.A. from the Performance as Public Practice program in the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Theatre and Dance. His dissertation – which won the University’s Outstanding Dissertation Award – explored the ways that artworks about queer history portray violence onstage. Zachary was a co-creator of Virginia’s first regularly recurring drag storytime series.

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