Carrie Lee Patterson teaches acting and directing and joins the faculty after performing extensively throughout the country as well as in Chicago, which has been her home base for the last twelve years.  Her latest work in Chicago has been with Victory Gardens, Drury Lane, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Chicago Dramatists.  Her favorite roles include Desdemona in Othello and the Princess of France in Love’s Labour’s Lost (Illinois Shakespeare Festival), Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest (Arizona Repertory Theatre), Ophelia in Hamlet and Hero in Much Ado About Nothing (Washington Shakespeare Festival), C in Three Tall Women (Bas Bleu Theatre Company), Amalia in She Loves Me (South Suburban Theatre Company), Lizzie in 110 in the Shade (Canterbury Theatre), and the singer, Hayyah, in Famous Door Theatre Company’s award-winning production of Ghetto.  She spent three seasons with Nebraska Repertory Theatre, where she performed in Dinner with Friends, Wit, Crimes of the Heart, Proof, Lend Me a Tenor, and The Guys.  Carrie Lee is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild, and the American Guild of Musical Artists.  She works regularly in print, commercial, and voiceover, and her most recent film credits are Where It Gets You, Heather, House of Smoke, and Cloistered Honey.

Carrie Lee spent two years as Head of Acting and Directing for the Department of Theatre at Graceland University in Iowa.  While there she enjoyed directing many plays, including On the Verge, She Stoops to Conquer, Last Train to Nibroc, Shooting Stars, and 1940’s Radio Hour.  More recently, she directed I Hate Hamlet at the Attic Playhouse and a staged reading of Any Other Name for Equity Library Theatre Chicago.  This season, Carrie Lee will be directing Lady Windermere’s Fan and The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 for the JCSTF Mainstage.  She is a graduate of Willamette University and earned her M.F.A. from the University of Arizona.  Throughout the school year, she continues to tour Susan’s Dream: If Thee Must, Thee Must, her solo show based on the life and letters of Susan B. Anthony.