Black Box Acting has announced Alex Dauphin as their new Director of Diversity and Inclusion.
This role will help solidify and expand Black Box's commitment to diversity and inclusion as the school celebrates its 10-year anniversary.
Black Box co-founder, Laura Hooper, said "Black Box believes deeply in the power of our training, but we also recognize that we are responsible for expanding access to that training to marginalized and underrepresented groups. Alex will lead the way to developing a company-wide training and support program focused on diversity and inclusion. We are so lucky to have Alex as we set new standards for acting institutions across the country."
Dauphin is a graduate of the ACADEMY, Black Box Acting's 5-month conservatory actor training program. She was then recruited to join the Black Box Acting Instructor Training Program, which Dauphin completed this past year. Dauphin is a graduate of Princeton University, where she studied Politics and African American Studies.
Of her new role, Dauphin said, "I am so excited to work with everyone on the team to ensure that the students who have access to Black Box reflect the diversity of our larger city and community. My hope is that Black Box will be a multicultural, multiethnic hub for artistry, and will be a model for inclusion to other institutions. I am very much looking forward to improving our inclusivity, and starting initiatives that further strengthen our commitment to diversity."
"As a queer black woman," she said. "I understand what it is to be invisible, misunderstood and feared because I am 'other.' So now, my job is to make sure that the 'others' behind me are seen, heard and elevated. I will ensure that in a world that values conformity, we will value diversity; in a country that divides us by differences, we will model community; and in an era that omits history, we will remember lingering inequity so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past. At Black Box, Diversity + Inclusion are no longer options, but central tenets. We are excited to learn, grow and adapt so that the most marginalized artists have space."