Shannon Agnew

 

                     

 

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Hi friends, I am so happy to see you here. I am a director, performer, writer, and teaching artist - I likes to call myself a theater maker, because I love every part of the creation process. Born and raised in Philadelphia, I decided to move back here with my partner of more than a decade (and new spouse as of 2021) in 2021. I graduated from Pace University with her BFA in Musical Theater, Magna Cum Laude in 2011 and have been working nationally as a performer, director, and teaching artist ever since.

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Beginning my artistic career as a performer, I quickly realized the need to build and steward safe spaces for artists in which they can work in an uninhibited . So in 2015, I begin directing. This  passion is creating safe space for artists, and innovative theatrical storytelling carries me through my freelance work and brought me opportunities with the Greater Ocean City Theater Company as the Director of the Children's Theater Series for more than half a decade, a teaching artist and tour director for Sundog Theatre, and as an Artistic Associate for The Millbrook Playhouse.

 

Through my directing work I love bring narrative to life, and to re-contextualize well known theatrical pieces through a socially conscious lens that celebrates and empowers the ensemble with which I am creating. I am a visual storyteller that always anchors choices to strong dramaturgical foundations. I believe in constantly creating more fulfilling opportunities for artists, ensuring comfort, safety, and support in a production, and above all I believe in the power of the human form to create stunning visuals and adventurous moments in my work.

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As a teaching artist, I use theater to more deeply connect my students to their inner wells of creativity, empathy, confidence, and imagination, thus allowing richer connections to their creative lives in and out of theater. I strive to create more specific, fulfilled, artists, and more inquisitive, attentive, world citizens by developing their knowledge of the theater, and themselves as artists and humans. I work to promote autonomy, exploration, and consent in the classroom while encouraging a recontextualizing our inherited theatrical pedagogy to ensure the safest and most sustainable teaching practices. I am proud to say this approach has earned me credits as a teaching artists with Sundog Theatre, Millbrook Playhouse, Greater Ocean City Theatre Company, Liberate Artists, Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership, the Summer Institute at Princeton's campus, and as a private coach to students for the past ten years. 

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As a writer, my original plays and musicals have been commissioned by and produced at The Millbrook Playhouse, The Ocean City Theatre Company children's summer series, Qunice Productions GAYFEST, Philly FRINGE ARTS, and the Trans Health Conference in Philadelphia. The genre of work stretches from Theater for Young Audience scripts with a feminist slant, Drag camp with my 80's murder mystery jukebox musical KILLER QUEENS, to the celebration of Americana in a USO based pastiche piece Yours Sincerely: A Sentimental Journey. 

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In 2023, I accepted the position of Producing Artistic Director for The Millbrook Playhouse, Central Pennsylvania's oldest summer stock theater. 

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Thank you for being here, I cannot wait to see what we create together. 

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With gratitude, 

Shannon

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