Announcing Whitney White and Soyica Colbert as STC Associate Directors

Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Artistic Director Simon Godwin announces two members of the creative team for The Amen Corner, Director Whitney White and Dramaturg Soyica Colbert, are joining STC as Associate Directors. Both White and Colbert will work in collaboration with Godwin and the Artistic Staff on season planning and artistic development for STC. 

“We are honored to invite Whitney and Soyica to the Company, and I look forward to having meaningful conversations with them as we continue to expand the canon of classical theatre, redefine ourselves as an anti-racist institution, and work within—and for—our myriad communities,” says Godwin. “This development will continue to evolve as we invite more Associate Directors to join us, across a variety of fields, during upcoming seasons.”

Whitney White is an Obie Award and Lily Award-winning director, writer, and musicianoriginally from Chicago. She is a believer of alternative forms of performance, multi-disciplinary work, and collaborative processes. She is the current recipient of the Susan Stroman Directing Award, is part of the Rolex Protegé and Mentorship Arts Initiative, and is an Associate Artist at The Roundabout. Recent directing: The Amen Corner (Shakespeare Theatre Company), Our Dear Dead Drug Lord (WP Theatre and Second Stage, NYT Critic’s Pick), Aleshea Harris’ What to Send Up When it Goes Down (The Movement Theatre Company, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, American Repertory Theatre, The Public Theater, NYT Critic’s Pick), An Iliad (Long Wharf), Canyon by Jonathan Caren (LA Times Critic’s Choice and recipient of the CTG Block Party Grant, IAMA), Jump by Charly Evon Simpson (National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere, PlayMakers Rep). Digital projects include: Finish the Fight by Ming Peiffer (The New York Times, 24K+ viewers), Animals by Stacy Osei-Kuffour (Williamstown Theatre and Audible), and Soft Light by Aleshea Harris (The Movement Theatre Company). Her original musical Definition will debut at the Bushwick Starr in 2021 and her five-part cycle deconstructing Shakespeare’s women and female ambition is currently in development with American Repertory Theater (Boston, MA). Past residencies and fellowships: Sundance Theatre Lab, Colt Coeur, The Drama League, Roundabout Theatre Company, and the 2050 Fellowship at the New York Theatre Workshop. MFA Acting: Brown University/Trinity Rep, BA: Northwestern University.

Read Whitney White’s statement

Dr. Soyica Colbert, the Vice Dean of Faculty and Idol Family Professor of the College of Arts and Sciences at Georgetown University, has advised Arena Stage as a dramaturg for their productions of A Raisin in the Sun and Two Trains Running. Having received prestigious fellowships for the National Endowment for the Humanities, Mellon, and Woodrow Wilson, Colbert is the author of The African American Theatrical Body: Reception, Performance and the Stage and Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics. She edited the Black Performance special issue of African American Review and co-edited The Psychic Hold of Slavery. The co-edited Race and Performance After Repetition will be published on September 11, 2020 and a monograph Becoming Free: An Intellectual Biography of Lorraine Hansberry is forthcoming in 2021.