Roberta Uno

Roberta Uno is a theater director and the Director of Arts in a Changing America (ArtChangeUS), a national project on the arts and social justice based at the California Institute of the Arts. She is also the Artistic Director, ʻŌlino Arts, for the Queen Liliʻuokalani Trust. She was the Program Officer and then Senior Program Officer for Arts and Culture at the Ford Foundation 2002-2015. From 1979-2002, she was the Founder and Artistic Director of the New WORLD Theater, at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a Professor of Directing and Dramaturgy. New WORLD Theater worked at the intersection of artistic practice, community engagement, scholarship, and activism pioneering a vision of a ‘new world’—one that broke the confines of multiculturalism and was an artistic harbinger of America’s shifting demographics. A member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, she is currently collaborating on new works by artists Dahlak Brathwaite and Kauila Kanakaʻole. She is the recipient of numerous awards in theater and philanthropy and was inducted into the College of American Theater Fellows in 2014. Her publications include, The Color of Theater: Race, Culture, and Contemporary Performance and Unbroken Thread: Plays by Asian American Women, and Contemporary Plays by Women of Color.