B. Manuel Simons, Ph.D.

theatre practitioner, educator, and researcher

I engage students to develop and expand their conceptual and practical knowledge and skills in theatre as a critically engaged medium that intersects with social justice issues in a global context. I combine culturally relevant, anti-racist, evidence-based teaching strategies with dynamic theatre curricula to maximize students’ performance skills, theatrical acumen, and critical thinking. I cultivate students’ understanding of and appreciation for intersectional, sociopolitical, and transnational approaches to theatre and performance.

artist

My professional acting credits include national tours of Driving Miss Daisy, Moliere’s Don Juan, Queer in the USA, and the musical Murder at Café Noir. My New York theater credits include Suzan-Lori Parks’ El Silencio Grande at The Public Theater, Oedipus Rex at La MaMa, Not in My Name with The Living Theatre, and Shakespearean roles as diverse as Hamlet, Richard III, and Malvolio. On-screen, I played Watergate villain Jeb Magruder in Academy Award-winner Spike Lee’s She Hate Me (opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor) and appeared on Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, and Sex and the City. I am a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association (AEA) and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA).

As a director, my New York theatre credits include Shakespeare's Haunted House at The Public Theater, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird for The American Place Theatre, Lysistrata at Nuyorican Poets Café, Unlikely Cowboys at The Provincetown Playhouse, and Still Life for The Living Theatre. I have also directed musicals, cabaret performances, and staged readings of plays featuring Broadway luminaries including Roger Bart and Gary Beach (The Producers), Simone (Aida), and John Herrera (Evita). Additionally, as a producer and creative lead, my credits include Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Macy’s July 4th Fireworks Spectacular, the Emmy-nominated television series In the Life—dedicated to accurate and inclusive representation of the LGBTQIA+ community, and live theatricals for Disney, Marvel, MGM, and other iconic media companies.

I earned my B.F.A. in Acting and M.A. in Educational Theatre from New York University and a Ph.D. in Contemporary Learning and Interdisciplinary Research Specializing in Theatre from Fordham University.

 

  

 

 

Educator

Over the last 13 years, I have taught numerous courses and workshops that have helped undergraduate and graduate students examine theatre studies and creative practice across multiple disciplines. The topics investigated in these courses and workshops have included acting, performance, directing, Black, Latinx, queer, and feminist theatre, theatre for social justice, technology and theatre making, theatre in health and human services, theatre in education, the role of theatre in society and studies in cinema, literature, creative writing, rhetoric and composition, public speaking, and more. My student-centered approach to teaching reflects an understanding of education as a process of personal and social transformation that can thrive only in an environment that fosters equity, diversity, and inclusion. To this end, I employ anti-racist, culturally relevant pedagogy and partner with students to build learning communities characterized by deep engagement and collaboration, critical inquiry and intellectual rigor, creativity and innovation, listening and respect across differences, and commitment and action to end human suffering and advance social justice.

My commitment to anti-racism in all spheres of my life means that I continually exercise and expand my racial literacy and cultural competency, and I take action to disrupt hegemonic practices and beliefs that perpetuate racism, sexism, heterosexism, class domination, and other forms of oppression. I educate students and communities about the negative and often deadly impacts of racism, including systemic racism, upon the lives and bodies of Black, Indigenous, and all people of color. I am an active member of the Brooklyn College Anti-Racist Pedagogy Working Group and serve on the Department of Theater’s Committee to Decolonize the Theatre Curriculum. Anti-racism, equity, diversity, and inclusion are foundational to my work as an artist, educator, and researcher.

 

REsearcher

My Ph.D. in Contemporary Learning and Interdisciplinary Research specializing in theatre with a focus on anti-racist, culturally relevant arts pedagogy was an organic outgrowth of more than three decades devoted to anti-oppression work in interdisciplinary, critical creative practice. These pursuits have also informed my interdisciplinary research endeavors.

The dissertation (awarded the 2021 Distinguished Dissertation Award from the American Alliance for Theatre & Education) examined how teaching artists (TAs) employ interdisciplinary theatre instruction to respond to lived experiences and cultural knowledge and foster racialized critical consciousness among students of color. I found that TAs responded to the lived experiences and cultural knowledge of students of color when they employed theatre instruction that elicited students’ voices, attended to students as social and emotional beings, integrated cultural practices and products meaningful to students, and addressed sociopolitical issues that impact students. Further, the TAs fostered students’ racialized critical consciousness when they centered the examination of racial oppression in theatre learning, positioned students in roles or situations that functioned to critique or envision the transformation of hegemonic operations of power in the lives of people of color, and engaged students in dialogic discussions about racial injustice.


credentials