The Department of Art & Public Policy (APP) presents Setting the Stage for What’s Next: The Future of American Theatre. Moderated by Professor Anna Deavere Smith, this roundtable discussion will engage Artistic Directors whose bold leadership is reshaping regional theaters across the country. Join Nataki Garrett of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Hana S. Sharif of The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, and Eric Ting of the California Shakespeare Theater for what promises to be a vibrant conversation. This event is part of APP’s Art & Its Publics program series, which has received generous support from NYU’s Institute of Performing Arts.
This event is part of APP’s Art & Its Publics program series, developed in partnership with NYU Skirball with generous support from Tisch’s Institute of Performing Arts and The 370J Project.
PARTICIPANT BIOS
Anna Deavere Smith is an actress and playwright who is said to have created a new form of theatre. In popular culture as an actress—Nurse Jackie, Blackish, Madame Secretary, The West Wing, The American President, Rachel Getting Married, Philadelphia, others. Books: Letters to a Young Artist and Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines. She has created numerous one-person shows based on hundreds of interviews. The best known of those are Fires in The Mirror, Twilight: Los Angeles, and “Let Me Down Easy”. “Fires” and “Twilight” look at US race relations. The latter deals with health care. They were all performed in US regional theaters, and “Twilight” was on Broadway. Three of her plays have been broadcast on PBS. The National Endowment named her the 2015 Jefferson Lecturer for the Humanities. The lecture is the highest honor the government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. Prizes include the National Humanities Medal presented by President Obama, a MacArthur fellowship, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Award, two Tony nominations, and two Obies. She was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize for her play Fires in the Mirror. She has received several honorary degrees. She is Professor in the Department of Art & Public Policy and is founder and director of the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at New York University.
Nataki Garrett is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s sixth artistic director. Since her appointment in April of 2019, she has guided the organization through numerous transitions and crises, all while building toward a more sustainable producing and fundraising model. Garrett’s forté and passion is fostering and developing new work, including those that adapt and devise new ways of performing the classics. She has directed and produced the world premieres of many well-known and important playwriting voices of our time, including Katori Hall, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Dominique Morriseau and Aziza Barnes. Garrett is a recipient of the first-ever Ammerman Prize for Directing, given by Arena Stage. She also received the National Endowment for the Arts and Theatre Communications Group Career Development Fellowship for Theatre Directors. A frequently sought out voice for her thought leadership and subject matter expertise, Nataki can be read, watched or listened to regularly, across regional and national news media.
Hana S. Sharif‘s is the Augustin Family Artistic Director at The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. Hana’s multi-faceted theatre career includes roles as an artistic leader, director, playwright and producer. Beginning her professional career at Hartford Stage in 2003, she rose from an entry-level artistic assistant to the associate artistic director within seven years. Starting in 2012, she served as program manager at ArtsEmerson, a leading world theatre company based at Boston’s Emerson College. Hana served as Baltimore Center Stage’s associate artistic director from 2014-2019, directing acclaimed productions of Pride and Prejudice, The Christians and Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Her other achievements at Baltimore Center Stage include strengthening community engagement, producing multiple world and regional premieres and helping to guide the theatre through a multi-million dollar building renovation and rebranding effort.
Eric Ting is an Obie Award-winning director and the Artistic Director of California Shakespeare Theater. He previously served as Long Wharf Theatre Associate Artistic Director. His credits include The World of Extreme Happiness (Manhattan Theatre Club / Goodman), Appropriate (Mark Taper Forum), Kimber Lee’s Brownsville Song (LWT / Philadelphia Theatre Co), Othello (Cal Shakes), Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower with Toshi Reagon (National Tour) and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon (Berkeley Rep). Ting is a founding member of the artists’ collective INTELLIGENT BEASTS. He is a recipient of a TCG New Generations fellowship, a Jerome & Roslyn Milstein Meyer Career Development Prize, a NEFA National Theatre Project grant, and (with Meiyin Wang) a MAP Fund Award. Additionally, he has served on grant panels including the Doris Duke Charitable Trust, Jerome and McKnight Foundations, NEA, TCG, PONY, Creative Work Fund and Alpert Awards.
WATCH THE RECORDING (MARCH 30, 2021):
