CalArts alum Scarlett Kim (Theater MFA 18) has been appointed the Associate Artistic Director of Innovation and Strategy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), one of the nation’s largest and oldest professional regional repertory theater companies.
Kim will be one of a three-person, non-hierarchical artistic team that includes Mei Ann Teo and Evren Odcikin. This new structure for OSF is part of Artistic Director and fellow CalArts alum Nataki Garrett’s (Theater MFA 02) vision for a transformed American theater. “We seek to center those who have been de-centered by predominantly and historically white theatres like OSF,” said Garrett in a statement. The Innovation and Strategy position will also work to expand OSF’s transmedia storytelling projects, such as hybrid forms of live theatre, and immersive technologies (AR & VR).
“Scarlett is a forward thinking, expansive artist in every sense,” writes CalArts School of Theater Dean Travis Preston in a message about Kim’s new position. “She creates, engages, and leads her creative fellows in the most exciting of ways. I can’t be more thrilled and proud of what Nataki and she will innovate together.”
Kim, a diasporic Korean director, artist, and producer, noted in a statement that all three of the associate artistic directors are immigrant artists, saying, “I feel so energized to enter into OSF as my full self. I’m used to severing myself, contorting myself, translating myself; and in this position I want to make sure that we hold expansive space, space that allows artists’ whole selves and full lived experiences and full artistic impulses to be present. My diasporic immigrant narrative always felt fringe in the American theater and so I sought home in other artistic mediums, like extended reality or performance in a visual art setting. My new department seeks to center the ‘fringe.’”
Related Reading: Nataki Garrett Named Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director
