Guest Artists
Isaiah Wooden
Photo courtesy Isaiah Wooden
About
Isaiah Matthew Wooden is a director-dramaturg, critic, and assistant professor of theater arts at Brandeis University. A scholar of African American art, drama, and performance, he has contributed articles and essays to The Black Scholar, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Modern Drama, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Theatre Journal, and Theatre Topics, among other scholarly and popular publications. Wooden is the co-editor of Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration (Northwestern UP 2020) and is currently at work on a monograph that explores the interplay of race and time in post-civil rights Black expressive culture. As a director, Wooden has staged both new and canonical works in the U.S. and abroad, including plays by Lee Breuer, Kia Corthron, Eisa Davis, Lorraine Hansberry, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Charles L. Mee, Lynn Nottage, Robert O’Hara, Nilaja Sun, and Mary Zimmerman. Recent dramaturgy projects include Native Son by Nambi E. Kelley and the world premiere of Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of a Native Son by Psalmayene 24.