Shá Cage and Elizabeth Carter have been named as the inaugural Lloyd Richards New Futures Resident Artists. Shá Cage will spend the year-long residency with the Cornerstone Theater Company under the Artistic Director, Michael John Garcés in Los Angeles, while Elizabeth Carter will be mentored by Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Nataki Garrett.

SDCF announced the creation of the residency program in August, recognizing the need for bold leadership in the midst of the country’s racial reckoning, and as regional theatres prepare to reemerge from the pandemic. The goal of this unique and urgently needed program is to forge new alliances between BIPOC artists pursuing institutional leadership and forward-thinking artistic directors contemplating significant changes at their organizations. The two Resident Artists will each receive $40,000 along with health insurance and assistance for housing and travel.

As a Resident Artist at Cornerstone, Shá Cage will be a member of the ensemble and senior artistic staff, and will have the opportunity to support, develop and helm community-based artistic projects in accordance with the company’s collective consensus-based organizational structure. Elizabeth Carter will join Nataki and the rest of the OSF artistic leadership team as a lead artist on O!, OSF’s digital platform and fourth formal programmatic space. Along with her digital work, she will also be immersed in OSF’s full producing operation as the organization returns to live, in-person performance in a more equitable and sustainable way in 2021.

The selection process was overseen by a committee which included Mark Brokaw, Kent Gash, Wendy Goldberg, Anne Kauffmann, Scott Richards, and Chay Yew.

To learn more about the residency, please check this article in the LA Times.

Artist Bios:

Shá Cage is a director and performer, cultural worker and writer. Her work and activism has taken her across the U.S and internationally to West and South Africa, Japan, France, Belgrade, England, The Netherlands, Canada and more.  As a thought leader, she’s been called a Change-maker, one of the leading artists of her generation, and a mover and maker.  She is the Founder of Catalyst Arts and a lead producer and consultant with Tru Ruts, a Black led community organization with a 23 year history committed to the advancement of Black narratives. She was seen last on stage as Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet at the Guthrie and recent directing credits include:  African School Girls (2019, Jungle Theater), Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds (2020, The Children’s Theater),  Buttafly Precinct ( 2020, BlackLives BlackWords), The Day You Begin (2020, Stages, Paused due to Covid). Recent Film Credits include Underbelly (Director, 2021 Documentary, TPT Forthcoming), At the Corner of (Director, 2020 Experimental Web Series), Dickens Holiday Classic (Producer, 2020 Narrative Feature), Jasmine Star (Producer, 2019 Narrative Short), Keon (2019, Narrative Short) and Your Home Now (Director, 2020 Horror Short). Recent plays she has written include Buttafly Precinct (2020) and Hidden Heroes (2019), and UGLY (2018). Shá is in the process of devising the 5th performance in her 10 year solo performance cycle on identity titled Summer of George and  launched NuWay consulting in 2020 to help pilot a city-wide Anti-Racism initiative.  She is the recipient of several awards including an Emmy Award, Iveys, as well as McKnight and TCG/ Fox Fellowships. Her proudest work is community healing and transformation through art.

Elizabeth Carter is a Bay Area actor/director who most recently directed the virtual production of Feel the Spirit for Shotgun Players and later in the year for Colt Coeur. Her directing includes San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s 2020 groundbreaking virtual King Lear,  Bondage (Honorable Mention for the Relentless Award) with AlterTheatre, Every 28 Hours Plays and A Place to Belong with American Conservatory Theatre, for colored girls….(Broadway World Best Local Play and TBA nominee Best Ensemble) with African American Shakespeare Co. and Participants (TBA Best Anthology) for TheatreFirst. She has directed numerous productions for California Shakespeare Theater Conservatory and is currently the Associate Director of the Theatre Dept. at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco. As an actor she has been nominated for several San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards (SFBATCC) and Theatre Bay Area Awards (TBA) for her work in The Convert and Wittenberg, and received an SFBATCC Award for Trouble in Mind. In 2019, her work in Eureka Day!, both in the Berkeley, Ca world premiere and Off Broadway, which was critically acclaimed in the New York Times and the New Yorker. Elizabeth also co-founded Oakland Public Theatre and served as the managing director from 1999-2004 producing new works and reimagined classics as well as theatre for young audiences in their library tour. She is an SDC Associate Member, a recipient of the Bridging the Gap Grant, and a Director’s West 2019 Alum. She is a graduate of Mills College.

Host Venue bios:

Cornerstone Theater Company

Cornerstone Theater Company makes new plays with and about communities. By combining the artistry of people with many levels of theatrical experience, we act upon the conviction that artistic expression is civic engagement and that access to a creative forum is essential to the wellness and health of every individual and community. Cornerstone aspires to change the terms by which historically underrepresented communities assert their narratives within society. Through our unique community-engaged play development process, Cornerstone offers opportunities for individuals in communities to come together and participate in dialogue around the issues that are important to them, telling their stories on their own terms and creating the potential for positive change by putting the stories of marginalized communities center stage.

A philosophy of radical audience renewal, working with a different community on almost every production, is central to our organizational strategy. Our audiences vary with each residency and our process focuses on ensuring that the cast represents the diverse communities we serve. We are committed to reflecting that diversity within our ensemble, staff and board.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Founded by Angus Bowmer in 1935, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) has grown from a three-day festival of two plays to a nationally renowned theatre arts organization that presents an eight-month season of up to 11 plays that include works by Shakespeare as well as a mix of classics, musicals, and world-premiere plays and musicals. OSF’s play-commissioning programs, which include American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle, have generated works that have been produced on Broadway, internationally, and at regional, community, and high school theatres across the country. The Festival draws attendance upwards of 400,000 to more than 800 performances annually and employs 400 to 600 theatre professionals. OSF invites and welcomes everyone, and believes the inclusion of diverse people, ideas, cultures, and traditions enriches both our insights into the work we present onstage and our relationships with each other. OSF is committed to equity and diversity in all areas of our work and in our audiences. In 2020, OSF launched O!, an immersive digital platform featuring performances, groundbreaking art, and mind-expanding discussions that you can experience at home from anywhere in the world.

OSF’s mission statement: “Inspired by Shakespeare’s work and the cultural richness of the United States, we reveal our collective humanity through illuminating interpretations of new and classic plays, deepened by the kaleidoscope of rotating repertory.”