Dean Adams is a Professor in the Department of Theatre and Senior Associate Dean of Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. From 1989 to 2011, he was the Artistic Director of the Connecticut Theater Festival in Simsbury, Connecticut. He directed and designed a touring production of Once Upon a Mattress, the first musical ever to tour the People's Republic of China (chronicled in the PBS documentary Beyond the Wall) in 1987. As an author, he has penned book chapters for the Oxford Handbook series including the volume on musical theatre screen adaptations as well as one on Disney musicals, and he is contributing two chapters for the upcoming 50 Key Choreographers of Stage and Screen as well as a chapter for Stage Fright: Race, Gender, and Camp in Contemporary Horror of Stage and Screen entitled “Bat Boy and the Fear of the Other.”