Laura Waringer

Laura London Waringer (Laura Hope-London) is an actor, director, writer, producer, and academic who joined the faculty of the Newcomb Department of Music in 2024 as director of the Musical Theatre concentration under the BFA in Music. She comes to Tulane from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she helped create their Musical Theatre Certificate program. She holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance Research from Florida State University, an MFA in Music Theatre from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and a BFA in Musical Theatre from New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts.

Waringer is the founding artistic director of Wanderlust: Theatre on Location, a 501(c)3 nonprofit immersive musical theatre company that stages musicals “on location” at site-specific venues nationwide to celebrate community identity and illuminate local histories. The company will soon premiere The Frenchtown Project, an auditory musical theatre experience that chronicles the rich history of Frenchtown, Florida's oldest Black neighborhood. The company is also developing an original musical Threads, based on the true events of the 1929 Loray Mill Strike in Gastonia, North Carolina. An initial staged reading of Threads will premiere at the Loray Mill in 2025.

Waringer’s scholarly research interests include race and gender representation in musical theatre, musical theatre education, and musical adaptation of historic events. She is currently developing her dissertation project, Triple Threat: A Study of American Musical Theatre Training, into a book. Her published work appears in the books Queen Mothers: Articulating the Spirit of Black Women Teacher-Leaders, Dance in U.S. Popular Culture, and Hamilton: History and Hip-Hop - Essays on an American Musical.