Performance creator / Director / Actor / Playwright / Educator
CLISTA TOWNSEND
Director, Teacher, Actor and Playwright
Clista Townsend is a multidisciplinary performance creator, director, actor, playwright, and educator working at the nexus of theater, experience design, and social impact. Her work merges live performance with multi-sensory, immersive, participatory experiences that transform space and create community.
She is a Creative Collaborator in Story Development with White Horse Immersive, a multidisciplinary experience design studio that builds storyworlds and generates an environment where the exploration of new technologies is combined with the traditional arts.
A co-founder of Novel Stages, Arcadia Shakespeare in Philadelphia, and Ark Theater in Los Angeles. She led the development of many original plays and adaptations by authors such as Nadine Gordimer, Emile Zola, William Faulkner, and Kurt Vonnegut. Her play Marks in the Water, sponsored by AT&T, about Thomas Eakins, was celebrated in conjunction with a museum exhibit.
As an educator and facilitator, she taught and created curricula with institutions such as the FH Salzburg, University of the Arts, Arcadia University, CUNY, Hunter College, and Manhattanville University.
She holds an M.F.A. in Acting from Southern Methodist University, Further training with Jacques Lecoq, Carlo Massone-Clementi, and Philippe Gaulier in Commedia, Clown, Mask, and Physical Theatre techniques.