Theatre Director, Scholar, Playwright and
Community Engagement Specialist
Career and Scholarship
Social Justice and Community Based Curriculum
As Theatre Program Coordinator with a history of curriculum development and artistic direction, Tara has revamped theatre curricula at two higher ed institutions and advised redevelopment for other institutions to reflect a stronger foundational base of knowledge for students to graduate as artist community advocates and empathic beings.
REsearch and Scholarship
PhD from Tufts University (grad. May 2021) in Theatre and Performance Studies, regular contributor to HowlRound Theatre Commons, professional affiliations with Association for Theatre in Higher Education, American Association for Theatre Educators, and Quincy Arts Council, presentations at Northwestern University, Villanova University, Tufts University, Salve Regina University, and Eastern Nazarene College. Her research focuses on race and gender equity in theatre.
Theatre for Social Justice and Comm Arts at ENC
Theatre for Social Justice was designed and implemented at Eastern Nazarene College in 2017 by Tara Brooke Watkins as a way to blend the college's mission of social justice with theatre development. In 2021, she was hired by Salve Regina University with the goal of bringing this same intention to their theatre department using the college's Mercy Mission to guide the programming. In addition to production and performance classes, students take a community-engagement course in which they use theatre in a local community setting, regularly work on devised plays with themes important to the immediate community, and study theatre from a history from below perspective.
ALL Friends Cabaret welcomes South Shore School of Theatre
Tara Brooke Watkins founded South Shore School of Theatre in 2010 in Quincy, MA. It started out as a summer musical theatre program and developed into a year-long acting, tech, dance, and musical theatre training school for students ages seven and up. SSST is home to approximately 150 students. It offers production classes for youth and teens, beginner acting and dancing for adults, leadership opportunities for teens, and internships for college students majoring in theatre.
As a contributor to Howlround Theater Commons, Tara Brooke Watkins addresses topics that fall within the scope of gender and race equity on stage and in performance. She will be published in the upcoming Routledge book on Race and Applied Theatre, edited by Drs. Lisa Biggs and Eunice Ferreira.