Dr. Shellie O’Neal launched her teaching career at the University of Texas at Tyler, working there for three years. She then served as the Chair of Theatre at Navarro College for 24 years and directed 94 NC Theatre productions. O’Neal has written 28 plays, two of which have won Texas state playwriting competitions and three of which have been published.
Dr. O’Neal grew up in Carthage, Texas, and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Texas at Tyler and her Ph.D. from Louisiana State University. She was voted Professor of the Year by her colleagues and students at Navarro College in the spring of 2012. Shellie began performing her first one-woman show, This is My Story, This is My Song: An Evening With Fanny Crosby in 2011, and she has performed that piece more than 200 times in 180 locations in Texas, New York City, Washington, D.C., Colorado, Arizona, Maryland, New Jersey, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Italy.
O’Neal began performing her second one-woman show, The Ministry of Angels, in December 2015, and has given 80 performances of that play.
Dr. O’Neal started performing God Bless America: A WWII Radio Hour in the summer of 2019 after researching our nation’s anthems in Williamsburg, Virginia; Brandon, Vermont; Boston, Massachusetts; Richmond, Virginia; Washington, D.C.; and Baltimore, Maryland.
One of Shellie’s children’s plays, 911 Gnomes: A Christmas Emergency, was chosen as one of twenty plays worldwide to be performed at the inaugural RAVE Theater Festival in New York City in August 2019. Nine NC Theatre students and alumni performed Shellie’s script five times in an off-Broadway theatre on NYC’s Lower East Side.
Shellie’s newest show is Content to Fill a Little Space: the Life and Ministry of Susanna Wesley.
Dr. O’Neal lives in Corsicana, Texas, where she attends St. John’s Church and sings in the choir.
