Melanie Dreyer-Lude is an American theatre artist/scholar specializing in international theater collaboration and multidisciplinary projects.  In 2011, she directed and produced S/he in Ithaca, New York and Istanbul, Turkey, a bilingual production with Turkish theater artists exploring the female body as a battleground.  In 2007, she directed a bilingual production of Outside Inn, presented in collaboration with German theater artists from Theater Rampe Stuttgart, which played in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, New York City, and Stuttgart, Germany. Fluent in German, Dreyer-Lude translates and directs contemporary German plays, which have been produced in the United States and Canada and published in international magazines and anthologies. A Fulbright scholar, her current research focuses on refugee stories, and adapting and staging traditional folktales with the Ndere Center in Kampala, Uganda. She is Chair of the Department of Drama at the University of Alberta as chair, and lives and work in Edmonton, Alberta Canada.