Alexander Santiago-Jirau (he/él) is Director of Education and Community Engagement at New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW). In this role, he oversees all of NYTW’s education and community engagement initiatives, including the Mind the Gap (MTG) intergenerational theatre program, student matinees, in-school teaching artist residencies, after-school programs, master classes, administrative fellowships, audience engagement and community-based programs. Some of his favorite work at NYTW has included developing educational materials and curating programming for the world premiere of David Bowie’s and Enda Walsh’s Lazarus directed by Ivo van Hove, the world premiere of Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown developed with and directed by Rachel Chavkin, a production of Othello directed by Sam Gold featuring Daniel Craig and David Oyelowo, Heidi Shreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me, and Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play. Recent work has included facilitation of MTG devising intensive workshops in London, Chile, and North Carolina, and the creation of NYTW’s Youth Artistic Instigators ensemble.
A Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) practitioner who studied and worked with Augusto Boal, Alex has facilitated many workshops throughout his career, particularly with youth, educators and immigrant communities. He is Past-President of the Board of Directors of Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed, Inc., a national organization devoted to the work of liberatory educators, activists, artists, and community organizers.
Alex has presented his work at numerous conferences and his writing has appeared in American Theatre, The Indypendent, TYA Today, The Cross Border Project Blog, the anthology “Come Closer”: Critical Perspectives on Theatre of the Oppressed, The Routledge Companion to Theatre of the Oppressed and Applied Theatre with Youth: Education, Engagement, Activism. He has taught Latin American and Latinx Theatre at Drew University and also teaches TO for the program in Educational Theatre at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, and for the Department of Drama at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Currently, he serves as Board Vice Chair for the New York City Arts in Education Roundtable. He holds a B.S. in Urban and Regional Studies from Cornell University and an M.A. in Educational Theatre from NYU Steinhardt.