Dr. O'Malley's primary area of research is Russian theatre, with an emphasis on the drama of Catherine the Great. She is the listowner for three national discussion lists: RUSSTHEA-L (on Russian theatre), EKATERINA-L (on Catherine the Great), and ECRSA-L (Eighteenth-Century Russian theatre). For UH, she has directed Eric Overmyer's On the Verge and Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind, and, most recently, David Hirson's La Bête. She also directed Sean T.C. O'Malley's Island Skin Songs for Kumu Kahua Theatre in 1999. She serves as the departmental advisor to Late Night Theatre. In 1993-94, she received the UH-Manoa Presidential Citation for Excellence in Teaching. "As a historian, my goal is to instill students with a sense of how thrilling our field can be-and how demanding. The theatre scholar works in many fields simultaneously: literature, history, art, music, and anthropology. My own research work on Catherine the Great has led me into all of these areas. As a director and teacher of directing, I focus on the inherent challenges of a script or project, and on the collaborative possibilities. Overall, whether I'm teaching directing, research methods or a dramatic literature course, I seek to combine a respect for rigorous discipline and intellectual inquiry with a sense of creativity and interpretive freedom."