bio
Alissa Branch is a visual and theatrical artist who creates vivid, imaginative, dreamlike acrylic mixed-media paintings embedded with stories, including scraps of song, passages from Shakespeare, newsprint, vintage book pages, and ladies' dress patterns. Alissa's compositions bridge her love of text and texture, and often feature winged women and wild, windswept places.
History and Education
Alissa has always been fascinated by art and storytelling. An avid reader and daydreamer as a child, she began her creative journey by convincing her little brother to act out stories with her in the family living room. In 5th grade, her mother signed her up for a local acting class where she was assigned a monologue by Tennessee Williams, prompting Alissa to devour all of his plays. In 6th grade, she read Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in English class, and decided she'd better read all of his plays, too. She later earned her BFA in Acting from the University of Oklahoma, an MA in Theatre from Washington University in St. Louis, and a certificate from Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, where she studied acting with Royal Shakespeare Company actress Jane Lapotaire (who has become a lifelong mentor and friend) and then-Globe Artistic Director Mark Rylance.
Theatrical Work
Alissa currently serves as Associate Artistic Director for Oklahoma Shakespeare, Oklahoma's only professional Shakespeare theatre, where she regularly acts and directs. She is also an Associate Professor of Acting in the BFA Acting program in the Helmerich School of Drama at The University of Oklahoma, where she developed the program’s advanced Shakespeare curriculum.
As an actor, Alissa has worked with professional theatres including Indiana Repertory Theatre, the Phoenix Theatre, and Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theatre. As a director, Alissa’s productions have won numerous regional and national awards from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, including: 9 Parts of Desire (KCACTF Director's Choice Award); Shakespeare's Other Women (KCACTF Awards for Excellence with Heightened Text and Excellence in Ensemble Acting). Her production of Miss Evers' Boys also won the KCACTF Director's Choice Award for Region 6, a national award for Distinguished Achievement in Direction of a Play - and subsequently performed at the South African National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa where Alissa was honored with a National Arts Festival Silver Ovation Award for Outstanding Production of a Play.
Alissa has taught acting at Indiana Repertory Theatre, the Will Geer Theatricum in Los Angeles, Butler University, and has presented acting / audition workshops across the United States, the UK, and South Africa. She also developed a series of popular one-and-two day acting workshops, which she offers at The Actor Factory and other theatrical institutions across the country. She also accepts private acting clients as time allows.
Visual Art
Alissa’s paintings are a natural extension of- and evolution from- her theatrical work. Her process begins with the literature she loves, recycling and reinventing pages from old books, newsprint, scraps of song lyrics, hand-written notes, and other found items. She tears the paper into organic shapes and layers them into her canvases, using these pieces to enhance painted images and imagined landscapes, creating compositions that invite the viewer to reconsider the stories they inherit through their vivid, dream-like imagery embedded with echoes of language.
Her recent shows include The Depot Gallery's SMALL WORKS exhibit in Norman, OK, and participation as an Emerging Artist in the celebrated Susan Eddings Perez Gallery during the Summer Walks on Canyon Road in Santa Fe, New Mexico..
Travel
In 2022, Alissa created her dream course on Shakespeare in performance for the online learning company The Great Courses Plus, titled Experiencing Shakespeare: From Page to Stage, which can be found streaming here. And, in 2026, Alissa is very excited to lead two small-group tours of Shakespeare's England for The Great Courses Journeys.
Alissa also leads yearly tours of Scotland alongside her partner (noted folk/Americana singer-songwriter Tim Grimm) for his company, Scotland Folk Tours, and tours of Ireland through Inishfree Irish Music Tours. You can find more info about travel opportunities with Alissa here.
Home & Happenings
Alissa & Tim currently split their time between Norman, Oklahoma (where they host an intimate acoustic house concert series called Red Dirt Folk Salon in their 100-year-old downtown cottage), extended travel in Scotland and Ireland, and property deep in the woods of Southern Indiana. In fall 2025, they will star together in the Oklahoma Shakespeare production of The Lion in Winter.