Janet Scott

Janet Scott is a professor, director, writer and actor. As an actor, Professor Scott trained with Stella Adler, daughter of the legendary Yiddish actors, Jacob and Sarah Adler. In New York City throughout the 1980’s and 90’s, Professor Scott maintained her own acting studio, wrote and performed an original one-person play that enjoyed a five year Off Broadway run and worked for the top advertising agencies, making national television commercials by day and serving Off Broadway’s new play development movement by night. Representative theaters include: Ensemble Studio Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, The Women’s Project, Manhattan Theatre Club, Hudson Guild Theatre and the Theatre at St. Clement’s Church. Professor Scott has taught acting technique in studios and classrooms over forty years, serving diverse populations: aspiring actors, un-housed children in New York City and the elderly in life-long learning programs. She began her career as an acting coach for opera singers in the studio of Gail Robinson, Metropolitan Opera star and founder of the Metropolitan Opera Young Artists Program. Professor Scott now serves as the Director the University of Kentucky Opera Workshop and continues to coach professional opera singers around the world. Professor Scott is the Director of UK’s Schmidt Opera Outreach Program, a touring company performing children’s operas in underserved communities across Kentucky. Professor Scott’s active performing career on stage and camera continues to the present. She serves as an Associate Artist at Athens West Theatre Company, the first theatre in Lexington history to offer actors credits toward membership in the Actors’ Equity Association. Together with a group of prominent female actors in the region, she cofounded Lexington’s first site-specific theatre company, On the Verge. Professor Scott has written and performed historic dramas for the Kentucky Humanities Council Chautauqua Program, a partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her solo Chautauqua performances have toured stages around the country and been filmed for Public Television. Professor Scott graduated cum laude from Barnard College with honors in theatre, was a member of the Columbia University School of the Arts Playwrights Workshop under Cuban playwright Eduardo Oscar Machado and holds a Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing from Spalding University.