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Amy Mihyang Ginther

Assistant Professor, Theater Arts
Expertise: Voice, Speech, Accents, Dialects, Devising, Acting, Shakespeare, Archetypes, Text
Pronouns: She/They

Currently on Leave

Amy Ginther currently is a professor of Theater Arts at UCSC. Ginther is currently focusing on the relationship between voice, identity and power structures within actor training environments while incorporating and re-contextualizing interdisciplinary topics such as critical pedagogy, critical race theory, sociolinguistics, accents, adoption studies, postcolonial theory, Shakespeare, standard language ideology, EFL, speech, singing, poetry, and intercultural theatre. Her edited volume, Dynamic Bodies, Emerging Voices: Racializing and Decolonizing Actor Training, is due early 2021with Routledge. 

Ginther has coached productions at Aurora Theatre (Berkeley) and Jewel Theatre (Santa Cruz) and provided voice support for the National Youth Theatre’s performance at the Welcoming Ceremonies during the 2012 Olympics in London. In Seoul, Ginther has collaborated with Probationary and Seoul Players, Seoul Shakespeare Company, Seoul City Improv, International Filmmakers of Korea as well as coaching corporate clients. Ginther has performed in New York, Seoul, London, and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In 2012, she performed Memorial with Alice Oswald during the Brighton Festival. She is a Theatre Amoeba Teaching Artist and was featured in their TEDx Cheongju talk. Amy's solo show, Homeful (2017), was performed at the American Adoption Congress Conference as a keynote performance, as well as in San Francisco, NYC, and London.

Ginther is a member of VASTA, ATHE, and is Associate Editor of the Voice and Speech Review. She is a contributor for the adoptee online publication Transracial Eyes, was the GOA’L Spotlight Adoptee (May 2014), and has been featured on the cover of the New York Times Magazine (2015), and in Playbill (2018), and Forbes (2018).  She has an essay in Modern Loss: Candid Conversation About Grief. Beginners Welcome (Harper Wave, 2018), which has gone into its first reprint. Awards and honors include a VASTA Conference Grant for Interdisciplinary Engagement (2015), Hellman Grant (2017), Best of Fringe, SF Fringe Festival (2017), Best Storytelling Show, United Solo Festival, NYC (2018).

She is a Master Teacher of Acting and Singing with Archetypes, and is a certified teacher of Tectonic Theatre Company’s Moment Work devising method.

Education and Training: 
B.F.A (Honors), Hofstra University
TEFL (Distinction), TEFL Worldwide Prague
MA Voice Studies (Distinction), Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
Master Teacher, Voicing and Embodying Archetypes of Myths and Legends
Honors and Awards: 
  • 2017: Best of Fringe, SF Fringe Festival 2017
  • 2015: Recipient, VASTA Conference Grant for Interdisciplinary Engagement
  • 2014: Spotlight Adoptee, Global Overseas Adoptees' Link
Phone: 
Office: 831-459-4211
Office: 
Theater Arts Center, J Building, Office J18
Office Hours: 

Please see the current Faculty Office Hours and contact sheet here, or contact the department office at theater@ucsc.edu.

Mailing Address: 

UC Santa Cruz - Theater Arts 

J Building, 441 Kerr Road, Santa Cruz, CA 95064