Theater & Music Theater Faculty

Chesney Snow

Chesney Snow headshot

Photo courtesy Chesney Snow

About

Snow is a Drama Desk Award winner and a 3-time artist in residence at Harvard University with the Office of the Arts. Most recently he collaborated with Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Dominique Morriseau for Skeleton Crew on Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club alongside Tony Award-winning sound designer Rob Kaplowitz and composer Jimmy Keys to craft vocal soundscapes and music for the critically acclaimed production. Snow was a 2020 guest artist at Princeton University (pre-pandemic). He was also a composer and co-sound designer for the 2020 La Jolla Playhouse audioplay series Walks of Life created and produced by Blindspot Collective. He presented work from his latest project Upstream at Syracuse Stage and Two River Theatre with collaborator and co-creator Faye Chiao. He wrote and performed in Soil Beneath: An Empirical Decay with original music by Diedre Murray and directed by Kimille Howard presented off-Broadway in 2020 by Primary Stages and 59E59 Theaters. He appeared in Two River Theater’s production of Oo Bla Dee written by Golden Globe winner Regina Taylor and directed by Tony winner Ruben Santiago Hudson. He was a composer and lyricist for the McCarter Theatre’s 2018 production of Crowns alongside Pulitzer finalist and Obie winner Diedre Murray at Princeton University. He also appeared in McCarter Theatre’s Princeton and Slavery Plays directed by Carl Cofield.

Snow is an interdisciplinary artist. He released his debut album on Warner Music in Europe as the songwriter for his group Spoken Love. He has penned chart topping songs for multi platinum European artists Edyta Gorniak and Marina. A member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop, he has headlined Carnegie Hall thrice with Distinguished Concerts International New York alongside Deke Sharon and toured internationally with the a cappella group ReVoiced and nationally with Vocalosity.

Considered a pioneering figure in American beatbox culture, Snow co-founded the American Beatbox Championships where he served as the executive producer for 7 years. The annual event held in New York City is a 3-day international arts festival featuring performances, film screenings, workshops, gallery exhibitions, panel discussions, and of course beatboxing battles of all kinds. The videos he has co-produced from the American Beatbox Championships have garnered millions of views on YouTube. Snow also created, produced, and starred in the feature documentary American Beatboxer which was placed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame archive as well as Schomburg Center for Black Research, the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, and the Harvard University Hip Hop archive. The film was licensed by Sean “P Diddy” Combs’ Revolt TV (Time Warner) after receiving accolades at numerous domestic and international film festivals. He has performed live with KRS One, Kayah, Eternia, Hasan Salaam, Kate Havnevik, and Nile Rodgers while opening for many legendary performers including Snoop Dogg, MC Lyte, Pharoah Monch, Immortal Technique, Gloria Gaynor, Sister Sledge, Hot Chocolate, the Village People and more.

In 2016 Snow starred on Broadway in the a cappella musical In Transit at Circle In The Square where he originated the role of “Boxman” both on and off Broadway. His critically acclaimed autobiographical choreopoem The Unwritten Law co-created, directed, and choreographed by Rebecca Arends was commissioned by Dixon Place experimental theatre and hailed as “Political Theatre at its best. The most powerful theatre I have ever witnessed” by Broadwayworld.

For over two decades Snow's work as a teaching artist has centered on engaging the arts as a vehicle for social change and empowerment. He is co-artistic director of Create2030 with Emmy award-winning filmmaker Lisa Russell and for over 10 years developing performances, workshops, and dialog surrounding international public policy, arts, and education with the United Nations. He has taught workshops and masterclasses in countless prisons, hospitals, public and private schools and universities including Princeton University, Harvard University, Juilliard, New York University, Einhorn School for the Performing Arts, University of Wisconsin Platteville, the Kingdom of Bhutan, and the U.S. State Department with American Voices, as well as numerous theaters and nonprofits throughout the country. He is a long time teaching artist with New Victory Theater, an artist in residence at New York City’s PS158, chair of theatre at Harlem School of the Arts, and more recently with The Town Hall in New York City where he created a storytelling intensive with young incarcerated men in Rikers Island Correctional facility as well as with the Fortune Society.

Campus Address

Lewis Arts complex
122 Alexander Street