Shakespeare as a Starting Point: Shakespeare with Community

Karen Ann Daniels is the Director of Programming/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).

Barry Edelstein (Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director at the Old Globe) is a stage director, producer, author, and educator. His directing credits at the Old Globe include The Winter’s Tale, Othello, The Twenty-Seventh Man, the world premiere of Rain, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Hamlet, the world premiere of The Wanderers, the American premiere of Life After, Romeo and Juliet, the world premiere of What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, the two-part epic Henry 6, and, during the pandemic, Hamlet: On the Radio. He also directed All’s Well That Ends Well as the inaugural production of the Globe for All community tour, and he oversees the Globe’s Classical Directing Fellowship program. In addition to his recent Globe credits, he directed The Tempest with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2018 and The Wanderers Off-Broadway with Roundabout Theatre Company in 2023. As Director of the Shakespeare Initiative at the Public Theater (2008–2012), Edelstein oversaw all of the company’s Shakespearean productions as well as its educational, community outreach, and artist-training programs. At the Public, he staged the world premiere of The Twenty-Seventh Man, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, and Steve Martin’s WASP and Other Plays. He was also Associate Producer of the Public’s Broadway production of The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino. From 1998 to 2003 he was Artistic Director of Classic Stage Company. His book Thinking Shakespeare is the standard text on American Shakespearean acting. He is also the author of Bardisms: Shakespeare for All Occasions. His podcast Where There’s a Will: Finding Shakespeare was produced by the Globe and Pushkin Industries. He is a graduate of Tufts University and the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.

Laurie Woolery is a theater director, playwright, and citizen artist. As a first-generation Latinx immigrant, Woolery works with regional theaters and communities to create theater and build sustainable art practices. She has developed and directed new works with populations ranging from incarcerated women to residents of a small Kansas town devastated by a tornado. She creates site-specific theater in locations such as a working sawmill in Eureka, CA, parking lots, prisons, and the banks of the Los Angeles River. She has worked at the Public Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, Cornerstone Theater Company, South Coast Repertory, and Los Angeles Philharmonic among others. She has directed world premieres of plays by Tanya Saracho, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Charise Castro Smith, Marisela Treviño Orta, Aditi Kapil, and more.