PROVIDENCE, R.I.: Brown University’s Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies has named Sophia Skiles the head of acting in the Brown/Trinity Program. Skiles will join the program in the fall of 2021.

“This is the ideal time for Sophia Skiles to join the faculty at Brown/Trinity,” said Patricia Ybarra, chair of the department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies, in a statement. “Her dedication to activism and her aesthetic range as seen in her body of work, along with her commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion is critical in the current political and cultural climate.”

Skiles is an NYC-based Asian American actor and teacher. She has performed in work directed by Michael Kahn (Helen Hayes nomination for ensemble performance), May Adrales, Anne Bogart, Richard Foreman, Chay Yew, David Herskovits, and Mary Zimmerman, with strong ties to Ma-Yi Theater and National Asian American Theater Company. She has more than 20 years of experience teaching acting in a wide range of environments: with public school students throughout NYC, pre-college students at Northwestern University’s National High School Institute, and high school seniors in Ulster County, N.Y. She has held teaching positions in undergraduate theatre programs at Mount Holyoke College, SUNY Ulster, and SUNY Purchase. Sophia is a dedicated community activist, having served on the steering committee of the OBIE-Award winning THAW (Theaters Against War) and currently is a trustee of the New Paltz Central School District Board of Education. Sophia is a member of the 2016 ArtEquity National Facilitator training cohort.

“The Brown/Trinity program is founded on critical consciousness, artistry, and community,” said Skiles in a statement. “I hope to advance and lean into that community and commitment to collective learning in preparation not to succeed in the field as it nominally exists, but to transform it.”