Jade McCutcheon is an Australian director and scholar with extensive experience in the Australian theatre industry. She began her career in 1980 as a member of International Research Theatre Group KISS in Holland, where she studied Grotowski's actor training methods, toured Europe and Australia and played at La Mama in New York. During this period she also performed with members of Cunning Stunts and Circus Oz at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and worked as a sound engineer, musician and sound designer for video, film and live performance. After graduating from the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, Australia's most prestigious actor and director training institution, McCutcheon worked as a freelance director in Sydney for several years before turning to academic pursuits and an ongoing investigation of actor training techniques. Her directing credits include productions at the NIDA Theatre, Sydney; the Adelaide Festival; Bay Street Theatre; Wharf Theatre; Sydney Theatre Company; The Australian Opera; Colorado College Theatre; and Mondavi Center, UC Davis. McCutcheon developed a shamanic approach to acting as part of her doctorate from University of Technology, Sydney, and has presented workshops and papers on her work at conferences around the world. She has also directed and devised numerous productions for local and regional theatres, youth theatres, and educational institutions. A Visiting Scholar at the Tisch School of the Arts in 1996, she is currently co-convenor of the Performance and Consciousness working group for the International Federation of Theatre Research. Among her publications are articles in Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, The International Journal of Humanities and The Media and Cultural Review.