In the Body of the World

V (Formerly Eve Ensler) (she/her) is the Tony Award-winning playwright and author of the Obie Award-winning theatrical phenomenon The Vagina Monologues, (translated into 48 languages and performed in 140 countries) along with many other plays. She is the author of a number of books including her latest bestsellers The Apology (translated into more than 15 languages) and In the Body of the World, as well as the New York Times bestseller I am an Emotional Creature. She starred on Broadway in The Good Body, and most recently Off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club in the critically acclaimed In the Body of the World. WILD is her third production at The American Repertory Theater originating new work, following O.P.C. and In the Body of the World. During the COVID-19 pandemic she helped create That Kindness: Nurses in Their Own Words, a tribute to nurses presented by Brooklyn Academy of Music in accordance with theaters all across the country. Film credits include The Vagina Monologues (HBO) and What I Want My Words to Do to You (Executive Producer, Winner of the Sundance Film Festival Freedom of Expression Award, PBS) and Mad Max: Fury Road (Consultant). She is founder of V-Day—the 23-year-old global activist movement which has raised over 120 million dollars to end violence against all women (cisgender and transgender), those who hold fluid identities, nonbinary people, girls, and the planet—and founder of One Billion Rising, the largest global mass action to end gender-based violence in over 200 countries, as well as a co-founder of City of Joy. She writes regularly for The Guardian.

(she/her) Diane Paulus is the Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University. A.R.T.: 1776, WILD: A Musical Becoming, Gloria: A Life, Jagged Little Pill, ExtraOrdinary, The White Card, In the Body of the World, Waitress (film available online, French-language production in Quebec summer 2024), Crossing, Finding Neverland, Witness Uganda, Pippin (Tony Award, Best Revival and Best Director), The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess (Tony Award, Best Revival; NAACP Award, Best Direction), Prometheus Bound, Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera, Best of Both Worlds, The Donkey Show. Other work includes Cirque du Soleil’s Amaluna, Invisible Thread at Second Stage, and the Public Theater’s Tony Award-winning revival of HAIR on Broadway and London’s West End. As an opera director, her credits include The Magic Flute, the complete Monteverdi cycle, and the trio of Mozart-Da Ponte operas, as well as the upcoming Carmen (2024 Glydenbourne Festival). Paulus is Professor of the Practice of Theater in Harvard University’s English Department and Department of Theater, Dance & Media. She was selected for Boston magazine’s 2023, 2022, 2020, and 2018 lists of Boston’s most influential people, the 2014 Time 100, Time magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and as one of Variety’s “Trailblazing Women in Entertainment for 2014.”

A.R.T.: The Shape She Makes. M.L. Dogg has designed for such companies as Actors Theatre Of Louisville, Cherry Lane Theatre, Huntington Theatre, Colt Coeur, New Group, MCC Theatre, Geffen Playhouse, Roundabout Theatre Company, Royal National Theatre, Debate Society, Ars Nova, Joey Parnes Productions, South Coast Repertory, Signature Theatre, Pearl Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Public Theatre, Second Stage Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Nicholas Ward Productions, Scott Sanders Productions, and Women’s Project.  Drama Desk, IRNE, and IT nominee; Lortel award for Here Lies Love, fringeNYC award for Go-Go Kitty, GO!.

A.R.T.: Crossing. Broadway: American Psycho, Almeida, West End; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, West End; Betrayal. London: Frankenstein, Royal Ballet; The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Royal Opera House; Chimerica, Almeida; Closer, Donmar Warehouse; Master and Margarita, All My Sons, Shunkin, Complicite; Top Girls, West End. Opera: The Feeling of Going, Skånes Dansteater and Malmö Opera; Death of Klinghoffer, Death in Venice, Onegin, Simon Boccanegra, The Damnation of Faust, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, ENO; Hansel and Gretel, A Dog’s Heart, The Magic Flute, Netherlands Opera; La clemenza di Tito, Mr Brouček, Opera North; Theatre an der Wien; Imago; Glyndebourne; RNT; Scottish Opera; LA Phil; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Schauspielhaus, Köln; Traverse; Gothenburg Opera; Bregenz. Ross has won two Olivier Awards, a Tony, and a Drama Desk Award. Training: Central School of Speech and Drama.

A.R.T.: In the Body of the World, Crossing, O.P.C. Director of Dance, Senior Lecturer in Music and Theater, Dance & Media; Artistic Director of the Harvard Dance Project, at Harvard University. Graduate of Canada’s National Ballet School; a 28-year veteran of the dance field, Johnson choreographs for film, television, and the stage; has danced in over 50 tours on 5 continents. Was soloist with the National Ballet of Canada and a principal dancer and researcher in William Forsythe’s company Frankfurt Ballet. Stages Forsythe’s work worldwide, including for Paris Opera Ballet, La Scala, Batsheva Dance Company, Norwegian National Ballet, Netherlands Dance Theater, Boston Ballet, and American Ballet Theater. Is a founding collaborator of The Movement Invention Project in New York, and has served on the faculties of and created choreographic work for Princeton University, Columbia University, the Juilliard School and NYU; and has created 12 new works at Harvard since 2011 including Paper Wing, What Moves You?, and dance installations RE: RE: RE: and LOOK UP. Recent collaborations include those with the Harvard Choruses, Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center, Boston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Dries Van Noten/Louvre Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

ART: Crossing, Witness Uganda, Death and the Powers: The Robots' Opera, Sleep No More, Let Me Down Easy. International: Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera. Off-Broadway: Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, McKittrick Hotel; Invisible Thread, Second Stage. Many productions at Williamstown Theater Festival, Boston Ballet, Huntington Theater, Hangar Theater. BFA in Stage Management from Boston University College of Fine Arts.

A.R.T.: Debut. Broadway: The King & I, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Red. Off-Broadway: The Wedge Horse, Fault Line Theatre; A Minister’s Wife, When I Come To Die, Lincoln Center Theater; Mr. & Mrs. Fitch, Second Stage Theatre; The Play Company. New York: Retro Productions, The Civilians, BC/EFA, Baryshnikov Arts Center. Regional: Nine seasons with Chautauqua Theater Company; Kavinoky Theatre; Jewish Repertory Theatre.

A.R.T. (Director): Endlings, Violet. Sammi Cannold is one of Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 in Hollywood & Entertainment and has worked on and off Broadway as well as for CBS, ABC, Nickelodeon, Apple TV, and Cirque du Soleil. Credits: Sunset Boulevard, Kennedy Center; Evita, New York City Center; Carmen, Rose Hall, Lincoln Center; Endlings, New York Theatre Workshop; How to Dance in Ohio, Syracuse Stage; Ragtime on Ellis Island. Additional: A.R.T. Artistic Fellow, member of Cirque du Soleil’s Creative Cognoscenti, Sundance Institute Fellow. Education/Training: BA, Stanford University; MA, Harvard University. @sammi.cannold, sammicannold.com

Ryan McKittrick is the Director of Artistic Programs & Dramaturg at the American Repertory Theater. He received a Master of Theater Arts in Dramaturgy from the A.R.T./Moscow Art Theatre School Institute for Advanced Theater Training and a B.A. in History and Literature from Harvard College. He is Lecturer and Head of Dramaturgy in the Theater, Dance & Media concentration at Harvard and Assistant Professor of Theater Arts at Brandeis University. At the A.R.T., he has served as dramaturg on numerous plays, operas, and musicals, over half of which were world premieres.

A.R.T.: Gatsby; Becoming a Man; Life of Pi; 1776; WILD: A Musical Becoming; Jack and the Beanstalk; Gloria: A Life; Moby-Dick; We Live in Cairo; Endlings; Othello; ExtraOrdinary; The Black Clown; Jagged Little Pill; WARHOLCAPOTE; Burn All Night; The Night of the Iguana; Trans Scripts, Part I: The Women; Fingersmith; In the Body of the World; Waitress; O.P.C. Broadway: Mary Stuart. Regional: Vanity Fair, Central Square Theater; New Electric Ballroom, Gloucester Stage Company; Arms and the Man, Guthrie Theatre; The Foreigner, Cabaret, To Kill a Mockingbird, Kansas City Repertory Theatre. As Head of Voice and Speech at A.R.T., Erika also teaches in the Theater, Dance & Media concentration at Harvard as well as coaching public speaking skills across the university. Education: MA, Voice Studies, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama; MFA, Acting, Brandeis University.