For Shanara Gabrielle, the newly announced producing artistic director of Theater Alliance, the performing arts serve a civic duty: creating communities of artists and informed citizens, sharing stories about social justice and opportunities for effective change, and opening up dialogues about contemporary topics.
“Along with justice comes joy,” she says about socially engaged theater, “No matter how isolated, divided, and lonely we are in the world these days, I believe that we all know in our core, that we need to come into this space together to share stories and learn together, to be in a place where we’re not afraid and connect with other people.”
Gabrielle moved to D.C. in 2017, and she has become an integral multihyphenate theater artist in the District, working with many of the region’s stages as a director, actor, and producer. If you’ve seen a show in the greater DMV during the past seven years, you’ve probably seen Gabrielle at work. An Iowa transplant, Gabrielle long ago realized that her heart was in regional theater: “It’s where the best art happens and it’s where the best service to a community happens, where an arts organization becomes vital.”
Before she moved to the region, Gabrielle had already worked at theaters across the country in a variety of roles and established herself in the theater scene in St. Louis. Within days of arriving in D.C., she and her husband, Alec Wild, director of Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Academy for Classical Acting at George Washington University, saw Word Becomes Flesh at Theater Alliance, a moving performance about a young Black man sharing letters to his unborn son, which incorporated hip-hop, dance, and music. She claims it remains in her personal top 10 “great theatrical experiences.”
Now she calls her new role at Theater Alliance “a full circle moment.”
“I’ve had the opportunity to really stretch my wings in acting, directing, and producing, really digging into the intersection between civic engagement and the arts, how theater can be of service and vital to our communities,” she says. “Those values just matched with Theater Alliance, this socially conscious, thought-provoking theater really rooted in the community.”
Theater Alliance—recognized for developing and producing new plays about contemporary topics and socially relevant issues—offers a chance to continue the meaningful work Gabrielle has been so deeply invested in while creating new opportunities, too. Already she has started working alongside outgoing artistic director Raymond O. Caldwell, and the two will overlap for his final six months until Gabrielle fully takes over leadership, which, according to DC Theater Arts, will be on July 1. She relishes the theater’s approach to “radical hospitality,” which, she explains, moves beyond accessibility to create “an exciting invitation that you can’t miss because it’s vital to your life.” In addition to being an arts leader, she is a generous collaborator who looks forward to using her connections across D.C.’s interconnected theater scene to continue to grow Theater Alliance as a brave space to collaborate and share new ideas. This includes hosting a series of artist open houses and the return of Hothouse, the organization’s development workshop and reading series for new works.
“[Theater Alliance] is a place where I want to say, ‘Bring me all your dreams. Let’s dream big,’” she says. “This is a chance to stretch. We have a strong foundation already. I’m for pushing artistic boundaries and creating support for extraordinary, artistically excellent work on stage.”
As far as her own big dreams for Theater Alliance, Gabrielle is confident that she’ll be able to announce next season’s plays during the run of this season’s final play, a revival of Poetry for the People: The June Jordan Experience. She says, laughing: “I have had seven days to think about it so far.”