Michael Hood retired in 2018 after twenty years as Dean of Fine Arts at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where in 2019 he was named Dean emeritus He earned his BA in Theatre magna cum laude at Arizona State University in 1972, and his MA and MFA from the University of New Orleans in 1975.
For twenty-two years he served on the faculty at the University of Alaska Anchorage. At UAA four of his productions, What the Butler Saw, The Bat, Rapier and Dagger, and Arms and the Man were selected for regional presentation and honors by the KC/ACTF, and Arms and the Man received National Honorable Mention.
Hood has worked professionally as a director/choreographer for the Alaska Repertory Theatre, the Sakhalin International Chekhov Centre in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia, the Khabarovsk Theatre for Young Spectators in Khabarovsk, Russia, Pittsburgh’s Unseam’d Shakespeare Company, the Cumberland Theatre in Cumberland, Maryland, Cyrano’s Theatre Company in Anchorage, Alaska, and the University of Mississippi.
Hood’s production of True West, performed in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia in 1994, toured to the 100 Years of Theatre Festival in Khabarovsk where it was judged the Pearl in the Ring of the Festival, and was subsequently invited by the Theatre of Nations and played at the Moscow Art Theatre. In 1996 his UAA production of A Piece of My Heart was invited and played at Russia’s Podium Festival in Moscow.
Hood is a Certified Teacher Emeritus with the Society of American Fight Directors and has presented fight workshops regionally, nationally, and internationally.