Hear what Shae Marie Tolbut, co-founder of Black Stage Everything, has to say about representation onstage, Tyler Perry, and so much more.
Listen to “A Conversation with Black Stage Everything’s Shae Marie” on Spreaker.About the Guest
Shantez M. “Shae Marie” Tolbut is an Entrepreneur, Arts Administrator, Educator, Performance Artist, Writer, Stage Manager, Model, and Theater Critic who was born and raised in the South Chicagoland area where she grew a love for the performing arts as a little girl immersed in music and poetry. With her father being a disabled Vietnam veteran and her mother being physically handicapped with Autism, she is committed to equitable, inclusionary social justice and changing the world through un-gatekeeping knowledge and the performing arts. Her professional and creative experiences and visions are as innovative and unique as her humble beginnings.
Shantez holds a double BA in Communication, Media & Theatre and Women’s and Gender Studies with a minor in Vocal Music from Northeastern Illinois University. While Shantez briefly attended Pratt Institute for the Performance Studies MFA, she is now completing her MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry and Playwriting at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, NY.
Since university, Shantez has worked within urban education and theatre in the NYC/NJ surrounding areas and Los Angeles for the past 7 years. As an absolute theatre practitioner, Shantez has worked in all aspects of theatre from being a performer/teaching artist to arts administration. Shantez has worked and performed in some of the most renowned theatres, venues and festivals in the industry including The Public Theatre, Black Ensemble Theater, Signature Theater, BAAD, Trilogy Opera Company, INTAR, The Matrix Theater, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Sidewalk Cafe, MIST Harlem, Ashford & Simpson’s Sugar Bar, Village Underground, New York Theatre Workshop, New York Musical Theatre Festival and the United Solo Theatre Festival. She is currently the Director of Programs at CO/LAB Theater Group in NYC. She is also a part of the inaugural cohort of the 2022 Beltline to Broadway Critics Fellowship. Shantez is amazingly blessed that her dream to change the scope of the theatre industry is coming true. She thanks all of you all from the bottom of her heart for being a part of making BIPOC people an integral part of American theatre.
For more information visit https://blackstageeverything.com/.