BLOOMSBURG, PA.: Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble (BTE) has named Dante Green the inaugural recipient of the BIPOC Emerging Artist Initiative Fellowship. Established last year, the program aims to create agency and growth opportunities for the rising generation of theatremakers, especially artists of color, and to connect BTE artists with influences from the wider theatre world.
“Dante is the impetus and inspiration for this Initiative,” said BTE’s communications director, Andrea Bishop, in a statement. “Seeing Dante in action, with new skills to share and a desire to have their community of origin witness their professional growth, planted the seed for making space and agency for them within BTE. While Dante’s breadth of skills and appetite for theatrical exploration is expanding BTE in exciting creative directions, Dante is gaining invaluable insights and hands-on experience in BTE’s long history of artist-empowered theatremaking.”
The BTE Emerging Artist Initiative was designed to offer the recipient flexibility over a three-year arc, culminating in a final project of their choosing. This allows them periods of intensive, self-identified opportunity at BTE while maintaining ties they have developed in the wider world. Dante has been instrumental in shaping the Initiative in its trial run. Last season, Dante performed in BTE’s Mainstage production of Lucas Hnath’s The Christians. This season, Dante selected the topic, researched and wrote the script, and directed the current Theatre In the Classroom (TIC) production of Park Protectors: The Story of the Buffalo Soldiers and National Park Service, now touring schools across Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Next season, the initiative culminates with Dante’s direction of BTE’s mainstage production of Sanctuary City by Martyna Majok.
Dante Green is a Black, queer multi-hyphenate born and raised in rural Pennsylvania. They are an alumnus of the Headlong Performance Institute as well as the University of the Arts with a BFA in directing, playwriting, and production focused on writing and directing for musical theatre. Dante is the founding artistic director of the evolving company the Makers’ Ensemble, which recently acquired its very own flex performance/rehearsal space in Bushwick. Dante’s work has been seen at Ars Nova, Pig Iron Theater Company, FringeArts, and other places. Dante has worked internationally with companies such as the Public Theater, Virgin Voyages, Lantern Theater Company, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, and others.
This year they served as associate director for the Broadway-bound musical Goddess by Jocelyn Bioh, workshopped their original musical (An Incomplete List…) at Sheridan College, and produced a concert showing of another original musical, Levi’s Big Leap! in December. They have performed in two new musical workshops, The End and the Albatross, written by Wes Zurick and produced by the 14th St. Y & Dutch Kills Theater, and a folk-opera adaptation of The Oresteia written by Nate Weida and Micah Bucey, produced by Judson Arts. They also served as musical director for, In Corpo by Nate Weida, which will have its world premiere with The Assembly and Theatre Row in June.
Founded in 1978, Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble (BTE) is a professional, not-for-profit theatre located in Bloomsburg, Pa. BTE strives to be a thriving center of community and cultural engagement through theatre and arts education, to promote creativity, inclusion and dignity. As of 2021, its budget was around $600,000.
