Debra Caplan of the Department of Fine and Performing Arts of Baruch College will serve as guest musical director for 80s Klezmer Aerobics upcoming performance at New York’s 2016 Limmud Conference.

Debra Caplan is an Assistant Professor of Theatre specializing in world theater, Yiddish theater and drama, theatrical travel and Jewish performance culture. Her work has appeared in Comparative Drama and New England Theatre Journal, and she frequently presents at national and international theater conferences. Prior to joining the Baruch faculty, Professor Caplan taught theater history at Emerson College and was Executive Director of the Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research at Harvard, in collaboration with Martin Puchner. She is co-chair of the Digital Yiddish Theater Project, an interdisciplinary international initiative to develop a born-digital web resource on the history of the Yiddish stage, and is the current Season Dramaturg for Target Margin Theater in New York (2012-2014). Professor Caplan is currently working on a book tentatively entitled Yiddish Empire: Jews, Theater, and the Aesthetics of Itinerancy. She earned her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University.