"Thanks to a vital and energizing script, and the superbly imaginative direction by Melissa Therese Crum, the production will take your breath away figuratively and, at a couple points, almost literally".

-Christine Howey, Scene Magazine.

Melissa is a director, performer, writer, and teaching artist. She is invested in the development of new work that explores women’s issues and experiences. Crum delves into themes of generational inheritance, bodily autonomy, toxic relationships, mortality, growth, and hope through song, movement, humor, and whimsical imagery. Melissa received the 2016/2017 Nord Family Foundation Playwright Fellowship through Cleveland Public Theatre (CPT), where she and co-writer & composer Caitlin Lewins developed Everything is Okay (and other helpful lies) which had its World Premiere at CPT in the fall of 2018 and had a reading in the New York Musical Festival (NYMF) in the summer of 2019. She completed the 2013/2014 Joan Yellen Horvitz Director Fellowship at Cleveland Public Theatre where she directed The Drowning Girls. Melissa studied Directing Devised Theatre and Theatre Creation under the tutelage of Raymond Bobgan, and holds a BA in Theatre Arts from Cleveland State University.