Meet Megan Ann
For 20+ years, Megan Ann Rasmussen has served as an Award-Winning Producer, Director, and Educator, impacting multigenerational audiences.
As President of MAR Productions, she is committed to creating theatre that uplifts and strengthens each of us, building engaged communities.
As a Producer she brought FREE PLAY: Open Source Scripts Towards an Antiracist Tomorrow to The TheaterMakers Studio’s Reading Series. Additionally, Megan Ann is developing Heaven Come Home by award-winning TheaterMakers Studio Member Justin Payne, features the moving “One More Day,” a musical number where families and their deceased loved ones yearn for one more day to be together. Composer and lyricist Justin Payne says of Megan Ann’s contributions to the production, “To have Megan Ann produce this show has been monumental!”
Megan Ann is Co-Producer of Joy: The Musical, a new Broadway show with Tony award-winning producer, Ken Davenport. She is also involved with A Beautiful Noise; The Neil Diamond Musical, The Griswold’s Broadway Vacation, Kinky Boots (Off Broadway), and is Lead Producer for Spells of the Sea (Regional.)
Her passion for producing began at an early age as she sat glued to the television watching Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. She was enthralled with the singing, choreography and the magic of what music and theater could be. As the bossy oldest child of 8, she took charge and produced elaborate set designs with cardboard boxes and index cards, and costumes she could find in the cast-off dress-ups. The seeds of a panache for producing were planted.
Colleagues consider her “... in a class of her own,” and “a true find.” They’ve also said that “...whatever she does, she does it with heart and moxy,” as she “...blazes the artistic trail.”
From early beginnings, Megan Ann’s varied career knew no limits. She garnered the coveted 5-Star Guest Satisfaction Award while working at Walt Disney World. She was invited to assist VIP Guests at the Sundance Film Festival. She traveled with the adjudicated cast and crew of David Saar’s The Yellow Boat to the ASSITEJ Congress/Festival in Tromsø Norway.
She has attended six triennial international theatre congresses and festivals across the globe, and she served as Editor of the ASSITEJ International Newsletter which reached 85 countries. Her articles and photography can be found in Stage of the Art and TYA Today.
Selected as an Ann Shaw Fellow, Megan Ann cultivated a career in Theatre for Young Audiences. She worked as a teaching artist, helping to develop theatre curriculum for underserved populations in Salt Lake. She assisted in the creation of New Visions 2000: One Theatre World at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Looking back in 2020, the Kennedy Center described it as “arguably the most significant gathering of the TYA field in a generation.”
She was selected as the US Representative to the International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People’s world festival and congress in Denmark/Sweden. She was also on the Board of Directors of the Theater for Young Audiences/USA from 2006 - 2012 and served as the President from 2010 - 2012.
Megan Ann has been described as a ‘Master of Mood’ in her directing work, which includes Roxanne Schroeder-Arce’s Señora Tortuga, and Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans: A Salsa Fairy Tale by Karen Zacarías and Deborah Wicks LaPuma.
Students are drawn to her enthusiastic teaching style. Megan Ann currently directs and teaches at Utah Valley University. She has also taught at Utah State University, and Brigham Young University. She was a founding member of Brigham Young University’s Alumni Board for the College of Fine Arts and Communication, and currently serves on Utah Valley University’s Theatre for Youth in Education Center’s Advisory Board. She has a BFA in Acting from Emerson College and a Master’s degree in Theatre from Brigham Young University.
As a California-raised, Bostonian, now living in Utah, when Megan Ann is not creating theatre, she is fostering her family mission: ‘Believers. Doers. Servers. Dreamers.’ with her husband, four children, and a Goldendoodle named Maggie.