Professor Bensky born in 1937, is a native of Perth, Australia. He earned both the B.A. and M.A. in French at the University of Western Australia, and a doctorat from the University of Paris. His mentor at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, Institut d'Etudes Theatrales, was Jacques Scherer. Noted philosopher Jean Wahl was a member of his "jury de thèse".

From 1981 to 1986, Professor Bensky was responsible for securing Department of Education grants for Intercultural Awareness programs in the School of Languages and Linguistics and in the School of Foreign Service. He also organized in 1989 the Georgetown University Bicentennial Intercultural Festival of Performing Arts in which fifteen languages were represented. He is a member of the University Advisory Council on Performing Arts and has directed several student theater productions in French, which were presented at the French Embassy. Recognized by the French Government for his outstanding work, he has been named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques.

As a teacher of literature and drama at all levels, Professor Bensky specializes in modern theater. He also conducts workshops ranging from Molière to contemporary French theater. His special fields of interest include mysticism, principally Kabbalah. Published works include two books on the symbolism and thematics of puppetry (Nizet, Paris), articles in major French reviews on contemporary dramatists (Beckett, Ionesco, Dubillard, Gatti, Benedetto) and directors (Lavelli, Lassalle, Mesguich, Marechal, Lavaudant).

Professor Bensky recently issued a study of the rehearsal process of a world premier in Paris, entitled: Cixous/Mesguich: Reprises D'Amour, with a preface by Robert Abirached (Librarie Nizet, 1994). The play, L'Histoire qu'on ne connaitra jamais, was written by the widely acclaimed professor and feminist Helene Cixous and directed by Daniel Mesguich. The playwright also granted Professor Bensky permission to translate this seminal work inspired by the pan-Germanic epic, the Nibelungen. In spring 1997 Prof. Bensky published Le Masque Foudroyé, also with Nizet, which is a series of dramaturgic and scenographic studies on cutting-edge dramatists and stage directors in present day France. Special features include the following: chapters on new playwrights Eugene Durif, Serge Valletti, Jean-Christophe Bailly and Julius-Amede Laou, a reinterpretation of the Dionysus myth as theatric ontogenesis, a major unpublished interview with Ionesco and a rehearsal diary at the Comedie Francaise, followed by a directorial response, of Lavaudant's production of Hamlet. Le Masque Foudroyé has been reviewed in the May 1997 issue of AS/SA (Applied Semiotics), issue No. 3. This issue, directed by Anne Ubersfeld from Paris 111, is devoted exclusively to the Theory of Theatre.