Cason Murphy, assistant professor of theatre in Iowa State’s Department of Music and Theatre, has been elected to serve a two-year term as vice president for the Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC). He will then ascend to the position of president of MATC for 2025 and 2026, after which he will serve one year as immediate past president.
Murphy’s five-year term will begin this summer in anticipation of the 2023 MATC annual conference in Minneapolis. For his two years as vice president, Murphy will: serve as a member of the executive committee, aiming to strategize and carry out long-term planning goals for MATC; serve as chair of the nominations and appointments committee; and train the eventual incoming vice-president in the duties of the office.
Founded in 1979, MATC is one of the preeminent national theatre conferences, dedicated originally to uniting people and organizations within a twelve-state region of Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Since becoming a nationally-recognized organization in 2012, MATC has sought to produce scholarship on theatrical projects and movements of value to better understand, strengthen and broaden the influence of theatre across our country through the its annual conference, committees, research awards and chartering of two prestigious journals—Theatre History Studies and Theatre/Practice.
Murphy teaches courses in acting foundations, musical theatre, acting for the camera, script analysis and introduction to performing arts. He is author of The World at Play: Performance from the Audience’s Perspective, a textbook that offers an audience-oriented view of theatre, dance, music, film, television, podcasting, video gaming and other emergent contemporary performance forms. Murphy is also the recipient of the 2021 ISU Early Achievement in Teaching Award and the LAS Cassling Family Faculty Award for Early Achievement in Teaching.