Team

Maria Schirmer is an interdisciplinary theatre artist and writer.  She holds a BA in Theatre from Marymount Manhattan College, as well as a MA from NYU where she researched how performance can be used as a tool for social justice and was awarded a Gallatin Global Human Rights Fellowship, which culminated in research with the Jana Sanskriti Center for Theatre of the Oppressed in Kolkata, India.  She is also a graduate of the Teaching Artist Training and Internship program at Community Word Project.  For ten years she served as the Director of Education and Outreach for Stone Soup Theatre while acting in and co-writing nine of their shows.  When not with Opening Act students she can be found at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics where she is a project assistant and an alumnus of their arts-activism training program EmergeNYC or performing across NYC, most recently with Heidi Latsky Dance at Lincoln Center.