Sharon Ammen is the associate professor of theatre at Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods College near Terre Haute. Her professional acting roles include Maria in Twelfth Night and Emilia in Othelloat the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance and Joanne in Vanities in Washington D.C.; and Maddalena in Rigoletto at the Denver Opera Theatre. Ammen has worked extensively overseas and published scholarly articles in Text and Performance Quarterly and Utopian Studies. At Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods she's been active in directing, writing, and teaching. During the past several year she's been acting with the Cross Roads Repertory Theatre and this past summer wrote and directed a musical based on The Velveteen Rabbit. She spoke with George Walker.