Charlene V. Smith is the Artistic Director of Brave Spirits Theatre in Alexandria, Virginia. Brave Spirits Theatre stages visceral and intimate productions of Shakespeare and his contemporaries with a focus on female artists and feminist perspectives. Smith’s directing credits include The Changeling, Coriolanus, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Antony and Cleopatra, Richard III, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and co-directing the first professional modern production of Middleton and Dekker's The Bloody Banquet. She has an MLitt and an MFA in Shakespeare and Performance from Mary Baldwin University in partnership with the American Shakespeare Center and a BA in Theatre and English from the College of William and Mary. She is the head editor of Rogue Shakespeare: Stagecraft and Scholarship in an Ensemble-Based MFA Company and her essay “Margaret of Anjou: Shakespeare’s Adapted Heroine” appears in The Palgrave Handbook of Shakespeare’s Queens.