President, NAST (Board of Directors)
Term ends March 2026
DeAnna Toten Beard is Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre Arts at Baylor University, where she has taught courses in Theatre History and Dramatic Literature since 2002. Professor Toten Beard previously served as Graduate Program Director for Baylor’s Master of Fine Arts in Directing program. In 2012, she was named a Baylor Teaching Fellow.
Professor Toten Beard is an active historian with research interests in early twentieth-century American theatre and drama. Among her publications are “The Little Theatre Movement” in Blackwell’s Companion to American Literature (2019); “Inspiration and Atmosphere in Getting Together A War Play: Stage Authenticity and the WWI Soldier on the Broadway Stage” in Theatre Annual (2015); “Performance, Preparedness, and Playing with Fire: Major General O’Ryan and U.S. Military Theatricality in the World War I Era” in Public Theatre and Theatre Publics (2012); Sheldon Cheney’s Theatre Arts Magazine: Promoting a Modern American Theatre, 1916-1921 (2009); “Artisan to Artist: The Impact of Gallery Exhibitions of New Stagecraft in the U.S., 1914-1919” in New England Theatre Journal (2007); “American Experimentalism, American Expressionism, and Early O’Neill” in A Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century American Drama (2005). For several years, Professor Toten Beard was the editor of the Texas Theatre Journal.
Professor Toten Beard serves NAST as a visiting evaluator. She was elected to the NAST Commission on Accreditation as Member in 2012 and as Chair in 2017.
Professor Toten Beard earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Theatre History, Literature, and Criticism from Indiana University, a Master of Fine Arts degree in Dramaturgy from Stony Brook University, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre and English Literature from the University of Mary Washington.
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Updated March 2023