Alissa Branch is an Associate Professor of Acting in the Helmerich School of Drama at the University of Oklahoma, where she created an advanced Shakespeare performance curriculum. She is also an actor and director whose productions have won multiple Kennedy Center awards. Her directorial credits include Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Twelfth Night, among other plays. She has studied acting at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and Shakespeare’s Globe, and she earned her MA in Drama from Washington University in St. Louis.