Presenter

Stephanie Weisman

Artistic/Executive Director, The Marsh

Stephanie Weisman, founded and has been the Artistic/Executive Director of The Marsh since its inception in 1989. Under her leadership, The Marsh has grown from a one-night-a-week performance series to producing over 600 shows annually on its San Francisco and Berkeley stages. In addition to its developing work performance series, The Marsh’s programs include: artist-in-residencies, an after-school workshops for at-risk youth, and performance development classes and The Marsh Performance Initiative. In 1996 she spearheaded the drive to successfully buy their 12,000 sq ft facility on Valencia Street in San Francisco; and in 2010 the opened its second space, The Marsh Arts Center in Berkeley. For her work at The Marsh she has received the Meritorious Achievement Award from Bay Area Theatre Critic’s Circle and was named A Local Hero by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. The plays she has developed have since been produced in theaters both nationally and internationally and have received numerous awards including: more than a dozen Critics Circle and Dramalog Awards; three of the prestigious Will Glickman Playwright Awards (Charlie Varon’s Rush Limbaugh In Night School, Brian Freeman’s Civil Sex and Dan Hoyle's Tings Dey Happen) as well as the National Theater Critics Emerging Playwright Award. Stephanie has a BA in Psychology and a MA in English in Creative Writing from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her journalism, prose and poetry have been published nationally and she was awarded a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) for her poetry performance piece, Dancemasters. In 2006, her opera, Aphrodisia premiered to critical acclaim. She is currently working on a solo performance musical, premiering Fall 2018 and her memoir 30 Days/30 Years.