The Right to the Stage: Theatre for our Youth

Dr. Angela M. Farr Schiller
Director of Arts Education
Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre

“My body of work is ultimately rooted in revealing the ways that performance can be utilized as a meaningful tool for critical thinking, social justice, and the development of empathy and compassion for the human experience.” -AFS

Angela M. Farr Schiller, PhD is the Director of Arts Education at the three-time Southeast Emmy® Award winning ArtsBridge Foundation for the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, in Atlanta, GA. Formerly serving as an Assistant Professor, the Resident Dramaturg, and the 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 with an emphasis in critical race studies and dramaturgy 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 dramaturg and dramaturgical facilitator, 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. Additionally, she works as a Dramaturg-In-Residence with Atlanta-based Working Title Playwrights (WTP), 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.

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. She currently has two book projects slated for release in late 2021, The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays and Troubling Traditions: Canonicity, Theatre, and Performance in the US. Website: angelaschiller.com.