Booking and details
Dates Sat, Feb 01, 2025, 4pm
Tickets $20 (or $150 for an All-Access Pass)
Please note: Children under the age of 4 are not permitted.
An open rehearsal
Walk with Folger Theatre Artistic Director and playwright Karen Ann Daniels through the beginning stages of writing her new adaptation with music of Much Ado About Nothing.
Shakespeare’s language, characters, and elaborate stories provide inspiration for many modern writers. But how does a writer begin? What information do they need? How much of Shakespeare’s work is essential to understand and therefore propose an entirely new adaptation or original story?
Karen Ann Daniels is joined by a scholar—Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Associate Professor in the Department of Performing Arts at American University, a professional dramaturg, and cultural critic), and an MC — MC, playwright, and artivist Miki Vale. The three come together as a creative team to see what sparks, and share process and product, in conversation with the audience.
How will they mine the text to tell a contemporary story through music and song? Where should they go next? Come and join us and participate in creating this brand-new work!
How to attend the festival
Individual events – $20
Reading Room Festival All-Access Pass – $150
Access to all staged readings, panel discussions, workshops, and community celebrations included in the Festival.
Students – Free admission to readings and conversations
Admitted free one-half hour before event start time, with a valid ID.
Who’s Who
Karen Ann Daniels
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.
Faedra Chatard Carpenter
Faedra Chatard Carpenter (Dramaturg) (PhD in Drama from Stanford University, MA in Drama from Washington University, BA in English from Spelman College) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Performing Arts at American University, a professional dramaturg, and cultural critic. As a professional dramaturg, Carpenter has worked on innumerable projects at venues such as Ford’s Theatre, Round House Theatre Company, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Olney Theatre Company, Everyman Theatre Company, Baltimore Center Stage, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Mosaic Theatre Company, Theater J, Dance Place, Crossroads Theatre Company, and Arena Stage. Folger: Dramaturg: Metamorphoses.
Tori Schuchmann
Tori Schuchmann (Production Stage Manager) Folger Theatre: Romeo and Juliet, Rap Monologues (The Reading Room Festival 2024). Constellation Theatre Company: Orlando, The School for Lies, Once on This Island; Imagination Stage: Inside Out and Backwards; Theater J: Tiny Lights; IN Series Opera: The Return of Ulysses; University of Maryland: Dance²; Arts on the Horizon: The Laundromat Show. Production Manager of Andy’s Summer Playhouse in New Hampshire and the Senior Project Manager for ViDCo (Virtual Design Collective).
Mekala Sridhar
Mekala Sridhar (Associate Director) Folger Theatre: Associate Director: Metamorphoses, Artistic Consultant: The Reading Room 2025, Producer: Where We Belong, in association with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company; Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company: Associate Director: Public Obscenities, in association with Theatre for a New Audience; Studio Theatre: Assistant Director: Fun Home, Pass Over, Good Bones (reading), Aspen Ideas (workshop). Regional: The Old Globe: Assistant Director: What You Are; La Jolla Playhouse: Assistant Director: Light Years Away; Prologue Theatre: Director: A Wake At Singh’s (workshop); Sarah Lawrence College: Director: Salome, 10708; Accademia Dell’Arte: (re)Move West. Sarah Lawrence College BA; Moscow Art Theatre School; Accademia dell’Arte.
Miki Vale
Miki Vale (MC) Folger Theater: debut. US cultural ambassador of Hip Hop, playwright, teaching artist, founder SoulKiss Theater, sound designer. Sound Design: The Old Globe/ Globe for All: Measure for Measure, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare Call and Response; Moxie Theatre: Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members; Coronado Playhouse: Barbecue. Original Music: Oceanside Theatre Company: Manny and the Wise Queens. Original music and cast: The Old Globe: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Original Music, Sound Design, Producer:Soulkiss Theater: 2 Rappers 2 Plays. Awards: 2021 San Diego Music Awards Song of the Year, 2017 Bayard Rustin Civil Rights Honoree. @mikivalethemc