The Actor

Rebecca Yeager is an actor, director, educator, and movement professional who focuses in early childhood and collegiate education. She graduated Cum Laude from Birmingham-Southern College with a Bachelor of Arts in Musical Theatre and received a Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Performance from the University of Southern Mississippi. 

Rebecca has presented and published her creative and academic research, received grants for her classical and movement based educational outreach work, and attended the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival as both an Irene Ryan Nominee and Regional Semi-Finalist. Through her work at professional and community theatres, public, private, and community colleges, and numerous high schools, elementary schools, and private arts studios, Rebecca has spent over fifteen years working to make quality collegiate and early childhood education accessible to students of all socio-economic backgrounds. 

She is passionate about amplifying women’s stories and voices, is an advocate for accessible and collaborative educational settings from birth to adulthood, believes in strengthening empathy and critical thinking by integrating theatre across the disciplines. Rebecca’s research and scholarship has been focused in recrafting the narrative around female characters, recreating traditionally male roles from a female perspective, restoring child-led play and discovery to early childhood education, and using theatre as a vehicle for personal growth and social change.

On stage and in the classroom, Rebecca focuses on developing integrated movement and vocal technique for the actor (including yoga, stage combat, and Lugering’s Expressive Actor technique) and applying that to in depth script and character analysis guided by both Stanislavsky and Meisner. Her studies at Accademia dell’arte in Arezzo, Italy increased her love for classical works, especially Commedia, Shakespeare, Moliere, and Greek tragedy and inspired her to apply classical techniques for working with figurative language to her modern work in both musical theatre and straight plays. 

As the Resident Artist at Birmingham Children’s Theatre, Rebecca’s work reached over 100,000 children a year. BCT’s mission to “Educate, Enrich, and Entertain” further encouraged Rebecca to create honest, relatable characters that could inspire children’s imagination. During her time at BCT, Rebecca introduced new evidence based educational programs, increased the quality of productions, and developed new standards for diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. During COVID, Rebecca was an indispensable part of the creative team at BCT that reimagined the way theatre reached its audiences. Rebecca helped develop BCT’s Cardboard Puppet Theatre, Summer Camp-In-A-Box, and COVID-safe touring productions.

Rebecca is a founding member of In Toto, a group of theatre makers, visual artists, and poets working with Birmingham residents facing homelessness. In Toto uses theatre, poetry, and visual arts to empower clients of The Firehouse Shelter as they seek permanent housing, healing from addiction, and stable employment.

Some of her favorite roles include Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web, Merlin in The Sword in the Stone, Prospero in The Tempest, Betty in the world premiere of Love Is A Blue Tick Hound, Eurydice in Eurydice, The Fool in King Lear, Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Mute in The Fantastiks.