Careena Melia is the Grant Wood Fellow in devised theatre at the University of Iowa 2014-2015. Previously : Visiting Professor of Voice, Shakespeare and Heightened Text at the University of Iowa Fall, 2013. Careena has 20 years of professional performing experience nationally and internationally which spans theatre, dance, film, and television. She created and originated the role of Hecate in Punchdrunk's award-winning production of Sleep No More at the American Repertory Theatre and for the current New York run. Other Punchdrunk collaborations include the MIT Media Lab/Sleep No More Project and Minsky's Bar, an immersive event at the MIT Media Lab. Most recently she played Lady Macbeth in Shelter Theatre Group's Macbeth and Portia in Merchant of Venice with Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles. Other work includes productions with Theatre for a New Audience, The Irish Rep, American Jewish Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Samuel Beckett Center (Ireland) and The Huntington. Film and TV includes Moonlight Mile (with Dustin Hoffman and Jake Gyllenhaal), Songs in Ordinary Time (with Sissy Spacek), JAG, The Good Wife, Touched by an Angel, Under Hellgate Bridge.
MFA American Repertory Theatre/ Moscow Art Theatre at Harvard University; BA Sarah Lawrence College.
