William Grange performed with the Light Opera of Manhattan and the Public Theater in New York while still attending Columbia University.
In 1972 he received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University in New York City, with a thesis titled "The Role of Tusenbach in Chekhov's 'The Three Sisters.'"
[4] He received a doctorate from Indiana University in 1981 with a dissertation titled "The Collaboration of Carl Zuckmayer and Heinz Hilpert.".
He encountered difficulties with College officials when he staged the musicals Cabaret and Grease, because some considered the shows too racy for a Methodist institution.
His productions of Shakespearean comedies and dramas by Henrik Ibsen, along with the Humperdinck opera Hansel and Gretel with mezzo-soprano Beverly Wolff met with approval.
College administrators were nevertheless pleased when he left Florida Southern to accept a position at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Grange chaired the Performing Arts Department and directed numerous musicals at Marquette University, a Roman Catholic institution in Milwaukee, Wisconsin affiliated with the Jesuit Order.
At the University of Nebraska since 1996, Grange has published several books, scholarly articles, and received numerous international awards for his scholarship and teaching, including three Fulbrights and five fellowships from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service).
While serving as Chairman of the Graduate Committee in the Johnny Carson School, his colleagues elected him their representative to the Faculty Senate for several three-year terms.
“Promise Me Nothing on Heroes’ Square: Marianne Hoppe’s Twentieth Century,” New England Theatre Journal XIV (2003): 59-80.
“Theodor Lebrun and Industrial Comedy Space in Nineteenth Century Berlin,” On-Stage Studies XXII (Fall, 1999): 16-31.
“Impulses Mirrored Darkly: Theatrical Images of Idealism in the Weimar Republic,” New England Theatre Journal I No.
“Channing Pollock, The American Theatre’s Forgotten Polemicist,” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Vol.
Book chapters: “Offenbach’s Paradox and the Postwar German Theatre of the 1870s,” in Festschrift für Paul S. Ulrich, ed.
196–201 “The Popular Repertory and the German-American Audience: the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, 1885-1909,” Thalia Germanica Bern: Peter Lang, 2001, pp. 56–80.
“Ordained Hands on the Altar of Art: Gründgens, Hilpert, and Fehling in Berlin,” The Theatre of the Third Reich, Ed.