Events

Since late March, Program in Theater Director Jane Cox has invited special guests to join her students for informal conversations about theater-making and the creative process. The broader community is invited to join these virtual conversations on Zoom. We ask — what inspires these significant theater artists? What does community mean to them? How do they think about audiences, casting, design, arts education?

This event features a project-specific conversation between Jane Cox and Shariffa Ali, theater program faculty member and director, about Ali’s directing work at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival on Karen Zacarìas new play The Copper Children. Cox will ask questions for about 20 minutes, and then there will be 20 minutes of open Q&A. The conversation will be followed by an open chat room until 6 p.m. for anyone who wishes to connect with Princeton theater students, alumni and friends.

The conversation is free and open to the public.

Join the event on Zoom at: https://princeton.zoom.us/j/122252650
Meeting ID: 122 252 650

 

ABOUT

shariffa ali

Photo by Jeremy Tauriac

SHARIFFA CHELIMO ALI is an international creative leader committed to working with an open heart at the intersection of the performing arts and humanitarianism. Originally from Kenya and raised in South Africa, Shariffa has been a New York resident since 2013, working primarily as a director, community organizer, and administrator at The Public Theater and The New Group, among others.

In the theater season interrupted by COVID, Shariffa directed Mies Julie at Classic Stage Company in NYC and School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre, and was in the previews for Copper Children when the show had to be postponed, and then cancelled. Shariffa’s debut virtual reality short ATOMU is part of the official selection at the Sundance Festival 2020, for which she received a POV/PBS Spark Grant. Shariffa is also a New Frontier Fellow at the Sundance Institute Lab and the Royal National Theater (UK); she received her degree from the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Those in the Princeton area may recognize Shariffa’s work from her direction of Intimate Apparel at the Lewis Center in October 2019, and Eclipsed in the season prior to that. From 2018-19, Shariffa was a Berlind Playwright-in-Residence, developing her new musical We Were Everywhere with artists Avi Amon and Joanna Evans and a group of Princeton students through the Program in Theater. Shariffa also teaches the course “Intro to Art Making” at Princeton University and a regular first-year seminar on Afrofuturism.

 


jane cox

Photo by Evan Alexander

JANE COX is a lighting designer for theater, opera, dance and music based in Princeton, New Jersey. Designs in 2019 included The Marriage of Figaro at San Francisco Opera; Fefu and her Friends at Theater for a New Audience in NYC, directed by Princeton alumna Lileana Blain-Cruz; King Lear with Glenda Jackson on Broadway, directed by Sam Gold; a new musical adaptation of Secret Life of Bees (the design was nominated for a Drama Desk Award 2020); The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, directed by fellow faculty member John Doyle; a theatrical adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates book Between The World and Me, directed by Kamilah Forbes and a revival of True West on Broadway, directed by British director James McDonald.

Projects postponed due to COVID included Assassins at Classic Stage Company in NYC; Three Sisters starring Greta Gerwig and Oscar Isaacs, at NYTW; and As You Like It for Shakespeare in the Park NYC, directed by Laurie Woolery.

Other exciting designs include Othello for the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park and Jitney on Broadway, both directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson; All the Way and Roe directed by Bill Rauch; Annie Baker’s The Flick, directed by Sam Gold; a new musical of Amelie, directed by Pam MacKinnon; Color Purple directed by John Doyle; and Hamlet directed by Lyndsey Turner (with Benedict Cumberbatch).

Jane has been nominated for two Tony awards, for her work on Jitney (2017) and on Machinal(2014). Jane has also been nominated for four Drama Desk awards and three Lortel awards, and in 2013, was awarded the Henry Hewes Design Award for her work on The Flick. In 2016, Jane was awarded the Ruth Morley Design Award by the League of Professional Theater Women, and a British What’s Onstage award for her work on Hamlet.

Jane has been a company member of the Monica Bill Barnes Dance Company for twenty years. Highlights of work with the company include Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host with Ira Glass; a museum workout at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, partly developed at the Princeton Art Museum, with illustrator Maira Kalman; and Happy Hour, a piece involving karaoke, cocktails and suits. Jane has long-standing collaborations with directors John Doyle, Sam Gold and Bill Rauch, among others. Jane has taught at NYU (Tisch School of the Arts) where she also got her MFA in theater design, at Vassar (drama department) and Sarah Lawrence (dance department) and has been teaching about light and theater design at Princeton University since 2007. Jane became Director of the Program in Theater in 2016.

Presented By

  • Program in Theater

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