Tara Brooke Watkins, Ph.D.
Tara Brooke Watkins, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Theatre | Music, Theatre and Dance
Program Coordinator, McAuley Scholar
Dr. Tara Brooke Watkins is a an assistant professor at Salve Regina University. She holds a masters in theatre education from Emerson College and a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies from Tufts University. She is a story circle facilitator and advocate for its use in creating dialogue across boundaries. Using applied theatre techniques in collaboration with story circles, she promotes an embodied communal healing experience around oft-hushed topics like interracial relations, sexual violence, and body image. As a playwright, she develops theatre productions rooted in the story circle process. Such plays include The Bible Women’s Project, an official selection of the New York International Fringe Festival and winner of three national Kennedy Center College Theatre Festival Awards, Tulsa ’21: Black Wall Street about the Tulsa Race Massacre, The Father Bill’s Play about homelessness in Massachusetts and Shatter the Silence, a short play about sexual victimization in religious institutions. In 2019, she directed Sleeping Weazel’s The Audacity: Women Speak, which received the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Theatre Production (small/fringe).
Featured Fall 2024
The Bible Women's Project
Summary: The Bible Women’s Project tells the true stories of several young Christian women as they intersect with stories of women in the Bible. Combining storytelling, dance, music, improvisation, comedy, and moments of raw honesty, this play features women from the Old and New Testament, and focuses on both untold stories and heard stories told in fresh ways. This piece was created to fill a void found within the church as well as theatre.
Background: Last year, The Bible Women’s Project competed in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF), and received awards at the national level for Distinguished Performance Ensemble, Distinguished Devised Play, and the Citizen Artist Award, KCACTF’s highest honor recognizing programs which promote long-term societal impact through an artistic lens, encourage empathetic exploration of the complex cultural and physical world, and advocate for justice on campus and throughout the world.
Website: https://www.biblewomensproject.com/