Spring Celebration

A.R.T.: Waitress. Sara Bareilles first achieved mainstream critical praise in 2007 with her hit “Love Song,” which reached #1 in 22 countries around the world from her debut album Little Voice. Since then, the Eureka, CA native has sold millions of albums worldwide and received five Grammy nominations including Song of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for “Love Song.” Bareilles’ highly anticipated sophomore release Kaleidoscope Heart debuted at #1 on the Billboard top 200 chart in September 2010 and has gained praise everywhere including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, People and Los Angeles Times. The album yielded the hit single “King of Anything,” which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and was certified platinum by the RIAA. In 2011, Bareilles joined the judges’ panel on the hit NBC show “The Sing-Off.” Soon after, she released her highly revered Once Upon Another Time EP, produced by singer/songwriter and fellow “Sing-Off” judge Ben Folds. Sara’s highly acclaimed third studio album, The Blessed Unrest, released in 2013 via Epic Records, debuted at #2 on the Billboard album chart and was nominated for two Grammy Awards including “Album of the Year” and “Best Pop Performance” for her hit single “Brave.” Bareilles’ upcoming book, Sounds Like Me: My Life (So Far) In Song, is slated to be released on October 6 by Simon & Schuster. Sara is also releasing a solo studio album featuring music from Waitress due out this fall on Epic Records.

Broadway: Hair (Tony nomination); La Cage Aux Folles; Thoroughly Modern Millie (Tony nomination). London: Hair, Mary Poppins. Regional: Bounce, The Goodman Theatre/Kennedy Center. Television: “Eloise at the Plaza,” “Eloise at Christmastime.” Original recordings: Goodtimenation, Quiet (both on iTunes). Passion: Marriage Equality.

A.R.T.: SIX. Off-Broadway: Black Nativity. Tour: Memphis (Ethel/Ensemble), Networks. Regional: SIX, Chicago Shakespeare Theater; Beehive (Tina Turner), Merry-Go-Round Playhouse; Ain’t Misbehavin’ (Charlaine), Avenue Q (Gary Coleman, 2014 ariZoni Theatre Awards), Memphis (Ensemble/Dance Captain), All Night Strut (Myself), Beehive (Tina Turner/Dance Captain), Little Shop of Horrors (Crystal/Dance Captain), Phoenix Theatre; All Shook Up (Lorraine), The Palace Theatre; Hairspray, (Lil Inez), All Shook Up (Lorraine, 2011 ariZoni Theatre Awards) Arizona Broadway Theatre; The Wiz (Ensemble/Evilene u/s), Maine State Music Theatre; In the Heights (Carla), Shrek (Voice of Gingy/Sugar Plum Fairy), Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts; Ain’t Misbehavin’ (Charlaine), Roxy Regional Theatre; RENT (Alexi Darling/Ensemble), All Shook Up (Lorraine), Seacoast Repertory Theatre. International: Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines (Production Singer). TV: “Empire” (Feature Dancer), FOX. Education: Certificate from Integrated Program, American Musical and Dramatic Academy.

A.R.T.: ExtraOrdinary, The Black Clown. Regional: Ragtime (Coalhouse), Tulane Summer Lyric Theatre; Evita, Asolo Rep; Les Misérables, Dallas Theater Center; Joseph…, 3D Theatricals. Workshops: Frozen (Olaf); Shout Sister Shout!; Beatsville. Concerts: Showboat: In Concert, Bucks County Playhouse. Education/Training: BM, Music, University of North Texas; MM, Musical Theatre/Vocal Performance, NYU.

Claudia Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; two plays including Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue; numerous video collaborations, and is the editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. For Citizen, Rankine won the Forward Prize for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry (Citizen was also nominated in the criticism category, making it the first book in the award’s history to be a double nominee), the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the PEN Open Book Award, and the NAACP Image Award. A finalist for the National Book Award, Citizen also holds the distinction of being the only poetry book to be a New York Times bestseller in the nonfiction category. Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, United States Artists, and the National Endowment of the Arts. She is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and teaches at Yale University as the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry.

Photo: John Lucas

A.R.T.: Othello, All the Way (IRNE Award, Best Director), Fingersmith (IRNE Award, Best Director). Currently Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (since 2007) and inaugural Artistic Director of the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center; Founding Artistic Director, Cornerstone Theater Company (1986- 2006). Broadway: All the Way (winner of 2014 Tony Award for Best Play). New York: Night is a Room, Signature Theatre; The Clean House, Lincoln Center. Additional directing credits: world premieres by Lisa Loomer, Lynn Nottage, Robert Schenkkan, Bill Cain, Alison Carey, Culture Clash, Dan O’Brien, Sarah Ruhl, Jeff Whitty, and others, along with classical plays at Yale Rep, Long Wharf, Guthrie Theater, Mark Taper Forum, Arena Stage, Pasadena Playhouse, Seattle Rep, Portland Center Stage. TV: “Judging Amy.” Selective Awards: Fichandler Award, TCG Visionary Leadership, Margo Jones Award, U.S. Artists Fellowship, Leadership for a Changing World, Grammy nomination. Education: Harvard University.

Julia Riew is a composer-lyricist and writer from STL and NYC. In addition to being a graduate of the Harvard University class of 2022, Julia has been the winner of the Fred Ebb Award, Playbill’s Featured Songwriter of the Month, a Woman to Watch on Broadway, and the recipient of the Harvardwood Artist Launch Fellowship. Her musical Dive is currently being developed with Tony Award-winning director Diane Paulus and GLAAD Award-winning playwright Diana Son for the American Repertory Theater. Past works at A.R.T. include Thumbelina: A Little Musical and Jack and the Beanstalk: A Musical Adventure.

Abbie Sage is a senior at Harvard College studying History & Literature and Zooming in from Hinsdale, Massachusetts, hoping to pursue a career in stage management and arts administration.

(she/her) A.R.T.: Notes from the Field, Let Me Down Easy, Fires in the Mirror (Pulitzer Prize runner-up). Anna Deavere Smith is an actress, playwright, teacher, and author. She is credited with having created a new form of theater. Smith’s work combines the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects with the art of interpreting their words through performance. President Obama awarded Smith the National Humanities Medal in 2013. Additional honors include the prestigious MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for achievement in the arts, the George Polk Career Award in Journalism, two Tony nominations, and several honorary degrees. She was runner up for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Smith has created over fifteen one-person shows based on hundreds of interviews. Her most recent play, Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education, looks at the vulnerability of youth, inequality, the criminal justice system, and contemporary activism. The New York Times named it among The Best Theater of 2016 and Time magazine named it one of the Top 10 Plays of that year. In 2018, HBO premiered the film version of Notes from the Field. Smith’s play Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 was recently named one of the best plays of the last twenty-five years by The New York Times. Smith currently appears on the hit television show “Black-ish.” Previously she appeared in “For the People,” “Nurse Jackie,” and “The West Wing.” Films include The American President, Philadelphia, and Rachel Getting Married. She is a University Professor at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU.

(he/him) A.R.T.: Arrabal. Broadway: A Bronx Tale, On Your Feet! (Tony Award Nominee, Outer Critics Circle/Astaire Awards), Memphis (Tony Award Best Musical, Olivier/OCC Award, Drama Desk/Astaire Award nominations), Jersey Boys (Best Musical Tony Award, OCC/Greenroom/Dora/Drama Desk nominations), The Addams Family, Next to Normal, Hands on a Hardbody (Drama Desk nomination), Leap of Faith (Drama Desk nomination), Guys and Dolls (Astaire Awards nomination), All Shook Up. Other theater: Invisible Thread, 2econd Stage; Carmen: An Afro-Cuban Musical (Helen Hayes Award nomination), Olney Theatre; Freaky Friday, Signature; Flashdance, National Tour; The Wiz, La Jolla Playhouse. International work includes Tarzan, Disney; Peggy Sue Got Married, West End; The Sound of Music and West Side Story, Stratford Festival. Upcoming: Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, La Jolla Playhouse; Ain’t Too Proud, Berkeley Rep.

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.