Joel Grothe teaches acting and directing in the Department of Theatre & Dance. He is a proud graduate of the University of Virginia (M.F.A. in acting), the University of Toronto (B.A. in English Literature) and has worked with a range of private acting coaches, including Jim Gleason, Erica Arvold, Tom Logan and Tom Todoroff, and also trained at the American Shakespeare Center and the Lessac Training Institute for Voice and Body.

Most recently, Grothe appeared in Gotterdammerung at the National Theatre Taichung in Taiwan and in Private Lives at Main Street Theater (Houston). He has also appeared as Thomas Cromwell in the American Premiere of Wolf Hall Parts 1 and 2 in Wagner’s Ring Cycle at Houston Grand Opera and National Theatre Taichung (co-produced by La Fura dels Baus).

Joel has more than 200 stage, screen, commercial, industrial, print and voice credits throughout the United States and Canada since 1998. He was the artistic director of The Canopy Theatre Company in Toronto from 2001 to 2005 and worked as a producer for Hart House Theatre/ University of Toronto and VideoCabaret Theatre Company (Toronto). He is the writer/producer/director of the short films Gasoline & Matches, The End of Something and the author of the play Gracious Living, as well as adaptations of Waste by Harley Granville Barker and Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov. He is also the author of several journal articles.

Since coming to Lamar in 2009, he has directed The Wicked One, The Burial at Thebes, A Doll’s House, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Macbeth, Uncle Vanya, The Glass Menagerie, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, The Dumb Waiter, A Kind of Alaska, The Vertical Hour, The Birds, Bakkhai, Whale Music, and has appeared in An Inspector Calls, A View From the Bridge, Romeo and Juliet and the World Premiere of So You Can Look Ahead by Edward Morgan.