Creative Conversations:
A Room in the Castle

Karen Ann Daniels is the Director of Programming and Performance at the Folger Shakespeare Library and Artistic Director of Folger Theatre. A native San Diegan, she is an accomplished actor, director, playwright, vocalist, musician, and community organizer. Prior to joining the Folger, she was director of the Mobile Unit at The Public Theater in NYC, producing tours around all five boroughs of NYC bringing the tools of theater to incarcerated community through Mobile Unit in Corrections (MUiC).

In her prior role as the associate director of The Old Globe’s Arts Engagement department, she managed community partnerships, and created, piloted, and implemented cornerstone programs such as Globe for All, Behind the Curtain, coLAB, Community Voices, and Reflecting Shakespeare. She is a thought-leader, facilitator, and contributing architect for creating tools to help cultural institutions integrate anti-racism, equity, accessibility, community and audience engagement, and shared leadership as a long-term mission-oriented strategy for organizational growth. She is a 2021 Fellow at the Atlantic Fellows on Racial Equity, a network of leaders from the US and South Africa working to build expansive new futures in which Black people, and all people of color, are seen, valued, and respected. She served as chair of the City of Chula Vista’s Cultural Arts Commission, as well as the New California Arts Fund Leadership and Learning Committees, and is a co-producer and facilitator for the biannual Shakespeare in Prisons Conference and Network. In recent years, her creative work focused on co-creation as a composer/lyricist/playwright for musicals like gather ‘round and The Ruby in Us, centering the lives and stories of community.

Kaja Dunn (Director) Folger Theatre and Cincinnati Shakespeare Company: A Room in the Castle; Cape Fear Regional Theatre: No Child; California Center for the Arts: Hairalouges; Old Globe: Playwrights Project: Plays by Young Writers Festival: Staged Readings or Pandemic Performances; Triad Stage: Freedom Hill; Studios of Key West and North Carolina Black Rep: Jeffery Manor; Playmakers Rep: Edges of Time (reading), Noms De Guerre. University of North Carolina College: Blues for an Alabama Sky, Suessical, Twighlight: Los Angeles, As It Is In Heaven; Cal State, San Marcos: Telling Stories.  Carnegie Mellon University: Associate Professor.

Lauren M. Gunderson (Playwright) has been one of the most produced playwrights in America since 2015, topping the list thrice including 2022-23. She is a two-time winner of the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for I and You and The Book of Will, the winner of the Lanford Wilson Award, and a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She is a playwright, screenwriter, musical book writer, and children’s author who lives in San Francisco. She graduated from NYU Tisch as a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. LaurenGunderson.com.

Sarah O’Halloran (Sound Designer and Composer) Folger Theatre: Nathan the Wise, in association with Theater J. Ford’s Theatre: Mr. Lincoln; Everyman Theatre: Queens Girl: Black in the Green Mountains, Sense and Sensibility, Be Here Now, Proof, Dinner with Friends; Theater J: Prayer for the French Republic, The Hatmaker’s Wife, This Much I Know, The Chameleon, Gloria: A Life, Two Jews Walk into a War, Compulsion, Talley’s Folly; Olney Theater Center: The Brothers Paranormal, The Humans, Our Town, Labour of Love; 1st Stage: The Phlebotomist, The Brothers Size, Swimming with Whales, Trevor, When the Rain Stops Falling; Studio Theatre: Cry It Out; Rep Stage: The Glass Menagerie; E2: The 39 Steps, The Heidi Chronicles, Things That Are Round; Mosaic Theater: In His Hands, The Return; Theater Alliance: A Chorus Within Her.