ABOUT

Melissa is a theatre artist based in Cleveland, Ohio.

She is invested in the development of new work and committed to the arts as a voice for social change. Crum delves into creative exploration through song, movement, humor, and whimsical imagery. Melissa received the 2016/2017 Nord Family Foundation Playwright Fellowship through Cleveland Public Theatre (CPT), where she and co-writer & composer Caitlin Lewins developed Everything is Okay (and other helpful lies) . The production received its World Premiere at CPT in the fall of 2018 and had a reading in the New York Musical Festival (NYMF) in the summer of 2019. Melissa completed the 2013/2014 Joan Yellen Horvitz Director Fellowship at Cleveland Public Theatre where she directed The Drowning Girls. Melissa studied Directing Devised Theatre and Theatre Creation under the tutelage of Raymond Bobgan, and holds a BA in Theatre Arts from Cleveland State University.

Melissa is inspired by work that speaks to the heart of storytelling, taking audiences to a place of allowing the ordinary to become extraordinary through the investment of their own imaginations.

Melissa is a freelance director, writer, performer, and teaching artist.

"Thanks to a vital and energizing script, and the superbly imaginative direction by Melissa Therese Crum, the production will take your breath away figuratively and, at a couple points, almost literally".

-Christine Howey, Scene Magazine