Samuel Yates, Ph.D., is a deaf arist-scholar who examines disability aesthetics and labor in dramatic arts. Samuel is currently an Assistant Professor of Theatre and Resident Dramaturg in the School of Theatre at The Pennsylvania State University. They previously served on the faculty at Millikin University, American University, the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, and The George Washington University (GWU). Samuel received their Ph.D. in English from GWU, where their dissertation research earned the American Society for Theatre Research’s (ASTR) Helen Krich-Chinoy Dissertation Fellowship and the Dean’s Dissertation Completion Fellowship. They completed an M.Phil in Theatre and Performance Studies from Trinity College Dublin as a George J. Mitchell Scholar and a B.A. from Centre College as a John C. Young Scholar. Samuel’s first monograph project, Cripping Broadway: Producing Disability in the American Musical, is under review. Cripping Broadway theorizes disability as a central determinant of musical theatre aesthetics, asking how our notions of disability or the able body inform and transform commercial theatre practices. They began their second book project, Strange Speech: Codemeshing Disability and Disorder, with support from the 2023 ASTR Research Fellowship and a fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., in 2024-2025.

Samuel holds a Humanity in Action Senior Fellowship for their work on performance and body politics and, as dramaturg, has collaborated with theaters such as the Abbey Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, The Huntington, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, The Samuel Beckett Centre, and the Gala Hispanic Theatre. Beyond the theatre, Samuel has worked as an arts and accessibility consultant with Gensler Architecture, Great Plains Theatre Commons, and 3Arts Chicago. Their award-winning research appears in venues like The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Theatre Topics, Prompt, and Studies in Musical Theatre, as well as edited volumes such as The Matter of Disability (U Michigan), A Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age (Bloomsbury), and Monsters in Performance: Essays on the Aesthetics of Social Disqualification (Routledge).

More recently, Samuel’s attentions have been focused on creating space to support disability scholars and disabled community members in higher education. With Patrick McKelvey, they co-created the multi-year working group Disability Performance Cultures within ASTR and wrote shared Accessibility Guidelines for the professional organizations of ASTR and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE). With McKelvey, they are co-editing a special section of Theatre History, “Disability Performance Histories,” forthcoming in Winter 2026. Their co-edited (with Lindsey Barr, American University, and Caitlin Marshall, University of Maryland) special issue of Studies in Musical Theatre, “Disability in Musical Theatre,” will be available in late Fall 2025. Samuel’s forthcoming textbook with Jeanmarie Higgins (UT-Arlington), Teaching Writing Across Theatre and Performance Studies: A Resource Guide, is in press with Palgrave Macmillan.