Sisters in the Round
Sisters in the Round is a space where Black women + Femmes across generations who love theater can find inspiration by sharing stories, exchanging ideas, and engaging in meaningful discussions. Togeth,er we celebrate our achievements, navigate challenges, and envision a thriving future for Black women in the theatre industry. The vision of Sisters in the Round extends beyond traditional professional spaces. In this communal playground, we embrace the richness of our shared history and the diversity of our individual journeys. We honor the knowledge passed down from previous generations and value the fresh insights of those who are just beginning their careers. It's a space where mentorship and friendship intertwine, fostering connections that go beyond professional collaborations. In the Round, every sister’s voice is heard, every perspective valued, and every connection is an opportunity for growth.
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Making the Call: A Conversation with Beverly Jenkins and Ashani Smith
02/04/2026
Making the Call: A Conversation with Beverly Jenkins and Ashani Smith
Beverly Jenkins and Ashani Smith discuss finding their purpose in stage management and navigating challenging environments, inspiring growth. Beverly Jenkins has been a professional stage manager for more than 30 years. She is currently the production stage manager for the Tony Award-winning Best Musical “Hadestown.” Having stage managed many Broadway shows, her credits include “A Bronx Tale: The Musical,” “Fully Committed,” “Amazing Grace,” “Living On Love,” “Holler If Ya Hear Me,” “Machinal,” “Godspell,” “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” “In the Heights,” “Shrek: The Musical,” “Avenue Q,” “Aida,” “Sweet Charity,” “Oklahoma!,” “The Lion King,” “Bring In Da Noise/Bring In Da Funk,” and “Miss Saigon,” along with numerous other productions. She has worked with Roundabout Theatre Company on “Bad Jews” and “If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet” and at Paper Mill Playhouse for the regional run of “A Bronx Tale.” During her career in theatre management, Jenkins has been production supervisor for “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical” and “A Bronx Tale,” company manager at the Negro Ensemble Company, and executive assistant at Frank Silvera Writers’ Workshop. When she served as producer for the AUDELCO Awards, she had the pleasure of working closely with the organization’s founder, Vivian E. Robinson. She toured Europe with Jubilation! Dance Company and has managed numerous special events and benefits. Jenkins has served as executive director of the Black Rock Coalition and lecturer at the Yale School of Drama. She is on the board of trustees of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids. As a personal manager, she spearheaded the career of musician Meshell Ndegeocello and in her work with the Black Rock Coalition, partnered with producers in Italy to bring the first Black Rock Festival to the city of Bari. Jenkins studied arts administration at Howard University, graduating cum laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre. Ashani Smith is an AEA stage manager based out of Charlotte, NC! A graduate of Western Carolina University, I obtained my BA in Stage and Screen with a concentration in Stage Management in May 2021.
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Shifting the Spotlight: A Conversation with Nataki Garrett and Raiyon Hunter
01/22/2026
Shifting the Spotlight: A Conversation with Nataki Garrett and Raiyon Hunter
Nataki and Raiyon engage in an active conversation surrounding leadership, burnout, and all of the complexities in between that exist in the bustling world of theatre. Thought-leader, Keynote Speaker, Trailblazer, and 2024 winner of the prestigious Doris Duke Artist Award, Nataki Garrett is the CEO and Executive Director of the The Ladder Leadership Services, a coaching and consulting company that supports visionary leaders and values aligned organizations through strategy and alignment.. She led the national arts and health initiative as co-Artistic Director of One Nation/One Project . Washington, D.C. born and raised Oakland, CA her family of artists, educators and civil rights organizers instilled with a deep appreciation for collaboration, coalition building, and for centering access and cultural justice through performance. Garrett’s vision is to support artists; to manifest innovation; to inspire creativity and to ensure the future of performing arts by centering artists as thought leaders and change makers who transform culture. Nataki Garrett received her MFA in Directing from California Institute of the Arts, School of Theater and her B.S. in English with a minor in Theatre from Virginia Union University. (an Historically Black Collage/University) Nataki Garrett was the first Executive Artistic Director and the sixth Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) and the first Black woman in this role. She is the first female and person of color in the country to lead a $44M theater company. Nataki is lauded for saving OSF during the pandemic closure in 2020 by raising $19M from government, foundational and individual donors in less than 6 months. She previously served as Acting Artistic Director at the Denver Center Theatre Company (DCPA) and was the first woman and person of color in this role. Garrett was the co-Associate Dean and Associate Artistic Director at CalArts Center for New Performance. Additionally, she was the co-head of the undergraduate acting program at CalArts School of Theater. R aiyon Hunter is a Casting Director, Producer, and Arts Administrator from New Orleans, Louisiana. She currently works as the Casting Director/Line Producer of Arena Stage. Previously, she worked as the Casting Director of Children’s Theatre Company and the Spelman Leadership Fellow at the Alliance Theatre (Atlanta, GA) where she has contributed to a multitude of shows in varying capacities ranging from Casting Associate to Director on productions such as Do You Love the Dark, Darlin Cory, Bina’s Six Apples, Good Bad People, Confederates, and more. Additionally, she has been in residency at Oregon Shakespeare Festival under Nataki Garrett and The Repertory Theater of St. Louis under Hana S. Sharif. One of her greatest passions is making art accessible to young Black Girls and Boys. Through this mission, she brought an Arts Education organization, Xpress Yourself, to fruition. Xpress Yourself is a service organization rooted in mentorship and preparation for young artists who lack the financial and structural support in their current school systems and communities. This passion project has united many students from across Spelman, Morehouse, and Clark Atlanta University’s campus for the sole purpose of bringing art to the community around us. Raiyon has a deep desire to create community and opportunities for BIPOC Women through theater. She is a proud member of Women of Color in the Arts and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
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Setting the Stage: A conversation with Raiyon Hunter and Hana Sharif
02/10/2024
Setting the Stage: A conversation with Raiyon Hunter and Hana Sharif
Hana Sharif's bio: Hana Sharif is an artistic leader, director, playwright, and producer with a specialty in strategic and cross-functional leadership. Hana began her professional career as an undergraduate student at Spelman College. From 1997 to 2003, Hana served as the co-founder and Artistic Director of Nasir Productions, a theater dedicated to underrepresented voices challenging traditional structure. Hana joined the Tony Award-winning regional theatre, Hartford Stage, in 2003. During her decade-long tenure at Hartford Stage, Hana served as the Associate Artistic Director, Director of New Play Development, and Artistic Producer. Hana launched the new play development program, expanded the community engagement and civic discourse initiatives, and developed and produced Tony, Grammy, Pulitzer, and Obie Award-winning shows. Starting in 2012, she served as Program Manager at ArtsEmerson, a leading world theater company based at Boston's Emerson College. During her tenure at ArtsEmerson, Hana launched an Artists in Residency program, led a research program assessing barriers to inclusion across the region, and leveraged her regional theater experience to freelance produce for smaller theater companies looking to expand and restructure their administrative teams. Hana was Baltimore Center Stage's Associate Artistic Director from 2014 to 2019 and was the architect of the innovative CS Digital program: a platform that pushes the boundaries of traditional theater and looks at the nexus point between art and technology. Her other achievements at Baltimore Center Stage included prototyping the Mobile Unit focused on historically underserved audiences, strengthening community engagement, producing multiple world and regional premieres, and helping to guide the theater through a multi-million dollar building renovation and rebranding effort. Hana became the first Black woman to lead a major regional theater in 2018 when she was named the Augustin Family Artistic Director of The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. During her tenure at The Rep, Hana guided the organization through a strategic alignment, revolutionized the New Works program, expanding access to underserved communities, and centering equity and anti-racism as the organization's foundational values.Hana holds a BA from Spelman College and an MFA from the University of Houston. Hana is the recipient of USITT's 2023 Distinguished Achievement Award, Spelman's 2022 National Community Service Award, the 2009-10 Aetna New Voices Fellowship, EMC Arts Working Open Fellowship, and Theatre Communications Group (TCG) New Generations Fellowship. Hana is a founding member of The Black Theatre Commons (BTC). She serves on the board of directors for the TCG, BTC, and the Sprott Family Foundation. Raiyon Hunter's bio: Raiyon Hunter is a director, producer, and arts administrator from New Orleans, Louisiana. She currently works as the Casting Director of Children’s Theatre Company (Minneapolis, MN). She enjoys supporting the theatre’s pursuits to open access and craft opportunities to recruit young artists who are passionate, imaginative contributors to this field. Previously, she worked as a Spelman Leadership Fellow at the Alliance Theatre (Atlanta, GA) where she has worked on a multitude of shows in varying capacities ranging from Casting Associate to Director on productions such as Do You Love the Dark, Darlin Cory, Bina’s Six Apples, Good Bad People, Confederates, and more. Additionally, she has been in residency at Oregon Shakespeare Festival under Nataki Garrett and The Repertory Theater of St. Louis under Hana Sharif. S and looks forward to engagment that will allow her to expand and deepen her work in casting. One of her greatest passions is making art accessible to young Black Girls and Boys. Through this mission, she brought an Arts Education organization, Xpress Yourself, to fruition. Xpress Yourself is a service organization rooted in mentorship and preparation for young artists who lack the financial and structural support in their current school systems and communities. This passion project has united many students from across Spelman, Morehouse, and Clark Atlanta University’s campus for the sole purpose of bringing art to the community around us.
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Scribing Stories: A conversation with Pearl Cleage and a.k. payne
02/10/2024
Scribing Stories: A conversation with Pearl Cleage and a.k. payne
a.k. payne's Bio: a.k. payne (she/they) is a playwright, artist-theorist, and theatermaker with roots in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Their plays love on and engage the interdependencies of Black pasts, presents and futures and seek to find/remember language that might move us towards our collective liberation(s). They hold a B.A. in English and African-American Studies from Yale College and an MFA in Playwriting under Tarell Alvin McCraney from fka Yale School of Drama. Their work has been a finalist for the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She is the current recipient of the Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, National Black Theatre’s I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency, the Kemp Powers Commission Fund for Black Playwrights and Atlantic Theater Company's Judith Champion Launch Commission. Their work has been developed with the National Playwrights Conference, The New Harmony Project, Great Plains Theater Conference, and Manhattan Theater Club's "Groundworks Lab." Their play AMANI had its World Premiere with National Black Theatre and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in early 2023. Their play Furlough's Paradise will have its World Premiere at Alliance Theatre in early 2024. They are a proud graduate of Pittsburgh Public Schools; grandchild of the Great Migration; descendant of a music teacher and a carpenter, who both march every year with their unions in Pittsburgh’s Labor Day parade; a queer & non-binary abolitionist affected in community by the ‘New Jim Crow;” and of a great lineage of Black women storytellers and living-room archivists; all of which deeply informs, uplifts and amplifies their work as a playwright, community organizer and spacemaker. Pearl Cleage's Bio: Pearl Cleage is an Atlanta-based writer who is currently Distinguished Artist in Residence at the Alliance Theatre. A graduate of Spelman College, she also serves as Atlanta's first Poet Laureate. She is a frequently produced playwright whose dramatic work includes Flyin' West, Blues for an Alabama Sky, A Song for Coretta and Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous. Her newest play, Something Moving: A Meditation on Maynard, was commissioned by Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. and will premiere there this Fall before returning to Atlanta in 2024. She is also the bestselling author of eight novels, including What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, a memoir and the praise poem We Speak Your Names, commissioned by Oprah Winfrey and written with her husband and frequent collaborator, Zaron W. Burnett, Jr.
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Shining through Shadows: A conversation with Lauren Dixon and Kathy Perkins
02/10/2024
Shining through Shadows: A conversation with Lauren Dixon and Kathy Perkins
Lauren Dixon's bio: Lauren Kennedi Ozie Dixon is an MFA 2 Lighting Designer at the California Institute of the Arts. She graduated from Spelman College, with an independent major: Innovative Design for Production and Live Events, with a concentration in Lighting Design and a minor in education. Born in Atlanta GA and raised in Southern Mississippi, Lauren has honed her production and lighting skills by working a myriad of events since her sophomore year of high school. From theater to corporate events to live television Lauren has immersed herself in a full understanding of the way the lighting departments impact the Entertainment Industry. Lauren is a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and an advocate for serving her community. Lauren also has a minor in education and believes Theater education is instrumental in the development of adolescent students. It is a goal of Lauren's to “Light the Way'' for aspiring Black Women Designers everywhere and help diversify the production design sector of the entertainment industry. Making people of color feel seen while being properly lit is instrumental to Lauren's purpose work in the industry. Kathy Perkins' bio: Kathy Perkins is the editor of Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays before 1950, Black South African Women: An Anthology of Plays, African Women Playwrights, Alice Childress: Selected Plays and Telling Our Stories of Home: International Performance Pieces by and about Women. She is co-editor of Contemporary Plays by Women of Color, and Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women. She is a senior editor for the Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance. In 1995 Perkins co-curated ONSTAGE: A Century of African American Stage Design at New York’s Lincoln Center. In 2016 she served as theatre consultant for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture inaugural exhibition Taking the Stage. She has traveled to over forty countries as both designer and lecturer. She is the recipient of numerous research awards, including the Ford Foundation, Fulbright, United States Information Agency (USIA), New York Times Company, National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT). She is the recipient of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Career Achievement Award in Academic Theatre and the USITT Distinguished Achievement Award in both Education and Lighting. Perkins has designed lighting for Broadway and at such regional theatres as American Conservatory Theatre, Arena Stage, Berkeley Repertory, Seattle Repertory, St. Louis Black Repertory, Alliance, Goodman, Steppenwolf, Congo Square, Manhattan Theatre Club, Alabama Shakespeare, New Federal Theatre, eta Creative Arts, Mark Taper, Indiana Repertory, People’s Light, Writers Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Los Angeles Theatre Center, Two Rivers Theatre, and Arden Theatre. She is the recipient of such design awards as NAACP Image Award, Chicago’s Black Theatre Alliance, and was a nominee for the L.A. Ovation Award. She has served as faculty member at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she chaired the MFA lighting design program for nearly twenty years, and Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Perkins has served as board/advisory member for USITT, URTA, Congo Square, Definition Theatre, and The History Makers. In 2007 she was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre. She received her BFA in Drama from Howard University and her M.F.A. in Lighting Design from the University of Michigan. In 2021, the University of Michigan awarded her a Doctor of Fine Arts.
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Crafting the Stage: A conversation with Savannah Cathers and Shaunda McDill
02/10/2024
Crafting the Stage: A conversation with Savannah Cathers and Shaunda McDill
Savannah Cathers bio: Savannah Cathers has a passion for mission-driven work. With a strong background in live theatre and opera production, she learned to appreciate the power of collaboration and innovation in achieving a common goal. She holds an MS in Nonprofit Management from Columbia University and has held various positions throughout her career that have allowed her to grow and develop her skills. Savannah has held many roles throughout her career, each providing a generous opportunity for growth. In her previous role, she was the Management Associate at Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, GA. There she helped with the theatre's transformative diversity, equity, and inclusion work for the community. She also maintained program budgets, union agreements, and strategic partnerships with producers to bring new and exciting work to Atlanta audiences. Savannah has recently moved from Atlanta, GA, to Chestnut Hill, PA. She is now an Associate Director at CCS Fundraising, where she works with all types of nonprofits from various states and sectors to bolster their fundraising efforts and propel their missions forward. In her spare time, Savannah enjoys a good brunch and tending to her many houseplants. Shaunda McDill's bio: Shaunda Miles McDill joined The Heinz Endowments in October 2017 as the Creativity Strategic Area’s Arts & Culture program officer, after more than a decade of nonprofit executive and arts management experience. Most recently, she was a publicist for the Blake Zidell and Associates, a Brooklyn-based public relations firm representing artists, arts institutions and festivals. Shaunda has worked for theater companies across the country, including The Goodman Theatre of Chicago, Second Stage Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse and Cornerstone Theater Company. She also founded demaskus, a nonprofit, service-oriented collective of artists and administrators who produce theatrical projects sharing stories of the marginalized. In Pittsburgh, Shaunda served as vice president of programming and cultivation at the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, where she managed all artistic and educational programs, and oversaw a $1 million programming budget. As the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s director of public relations, she headed both national and local public relations campaigns, including the North American premiere of Florentijn Hofman’s Rubber Duck Project, which generated more than $10 million in direct spending in the city. Shaunda has an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College, where she studied under Pulitzer winner August Wilson, and an MFA in theater management from Yale University’s School of Drama. She is a member of several local and national organizations and boards.
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Stage & Academia: A conversation with Chloe Jackson and Angela Farr Schiller
02/10/2024
Stage & Academia: A conversation with Chloe Jackson and Angela Farr Schiller
Angela Farr Schiller's bio: Angela M. Farr Schiller, PhD is an Emmy® Award winning director, a multi-award winning dramaturg, and the first Black Female Associate Professor of Theater at the Formerly serving as the first African American Director of Arts Education at the four-time Southeast Emmy® Award winning ArtsBridge Foundation for the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, in Atlanta, GA--her leadership is featured in Additionally she worked as the first Black Assistant Professor, Resident Dramaturg, and Coordinator of Undergraduate Research for the Department of Theatre & Performance Studies at Kennesaw State University. She received her B.A. in Theatre from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she completed her final year of study at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. She also studied at the University of Ghana in Accra, Ghana and the University degli Studi di Siena, Italy. She received her M.A. from the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis with an emphasis in Africana Studies from New York University, and completed her Ph.D. in Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA. Angela works professionally as a director and dramaturg. She has appeared onstage with the Emmy Award-winning Kaiser Permanente's Educational Theatre Programs, the National Dance Company of Ghana, the Tony Award-winning Old Globe Theatre and La Jolla Playhouse, and toured with Stanford Repertory Theatre's production of The Wanderings of Odysseus in Athens, Greece. As a new works, production, and community engagement dramaturg, she has worked on numerous productions including The Color Purple, Hairspray, Cabaret, Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1,2, & 3), Peter and the Starcatcher, Heathers: The Musical, Three Sisters, The Scarlet Letter, Feathers and Teeth, In the Blood, As You Like It, and Native Guard and Goodnight, Tyler with the Tony Award-winning Alliance Theatre in Atlanta. Most recently, Angela served as the production dramaturg at Oregon Shakespeare Festival's (OSF) West Coast premiere of directed by Nataki Garrett and presented an opening night talk for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, entitled (Rag)time & the Politics of Change. Additionally, she works as a Dramaturg-In-Residence with Atlanta-based , the leading new play development organization in the Southeast, on new play development and teaches master classes in dramaturgy. As a director, Angela has worked on several productions such as, The Bluest Eye, Every 28 Hours Plays, Dreamgirls, Branches Etched Across the Sky, In the Red and Brown Water, and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. Her production of Dreamgirls was nominated for six (San Francisco) Theatre Bay Area Awards including Outstanding Direction of a Musical and Outstanding Production of a Musical, and her production of In the Red and Brown Water won an Outstanding Director award from the Kennedy Center College Theatre Festival. Her television production of The Georgia High School Musical Theatre Awards won a 2021 Emmy® Award for Outstanding Special Coverage Event. As a scholar, Angela has presented her research on the intersections of race and performance at various national and international conferences, including Performance Studies International (PSi), the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), Association of Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), and the International Society for the Oral Literatures of Africa (ISOLA). She is a member of Performance Studies International (PSi), Literary Manager and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA), The American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), American Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), and the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA). Her areas of research include Performance Studies, 20th century African American History and Performance, Critical Race Theory, Dramatic Literature, Sensorial Studies, and 20th and 21st Century American Drama. Her most recent published book projects are The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays (Bloomsbury, 2021), nominated for a national Lambda Literary Award, and Troubling Traditions: Canonicity, Theatre, and Performance in the US (Routledge, 2022), with a forthcoming article featured in the international journal Modern Drama entitled “Touching Back While Black: Self-Defense and the Politics of Black US citizenship in Paul Green’s In Abraham’s Bosom” (2023) and subsequent book chapter entitled, "Finding Wholeness and Community in the Academy: Tales from a Sister Circle" from The Undivided Life Faculty of Color Bringing Our Whole Selves to the Academy (2024). Most recently, Dr. Schiller gave an opening talk for the Boston Symphony Orchestra's concert version of the musical Ragtime entitled, "Let Them Hear You." She will be co-chairing the 2024 conference for the American Society for Theatre Research in Seattle and is working on a forthcoming commission of the Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays, vol. 2 (Bloomsbury, 2025), Chloe Jackson's bio: Chloë Jackson (she/they) earned her B.A. in Theatre and Performance and English from Spelman College (May 2021). Her academic work surrounds questions of how Black life is experienced, documented, and performed, using 20th-century Black theatrical and literary works as frames of analysis. Particularly, they maintain an investment in Black women, queer folk, and the American South. Chloë’s recent research explored Black Southern matriarchs as moral authorities within and beyond the Harlem Renaissance. Alongside her academic work, she is a dramaturg and educator.
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