Booking and details
Get TicketsDates Thu, Oct 8, 2026 at 6:30pm
Venue Founders' Room
Tickets $15; $5 with Measure for Measure ticket purchase
Please note: Children under the age of 4 are not permitted.
Join us for a conversation that highlights the abundance of Black women directing, acting, and engaging with Shakespeare in theater today. This event takes place before the October 8 performance of Folger Theatre’s Measure for Measure and draws on the themes of To Hear Her Speak: Black Women and Shakespeare, a new exhibition that opens October 16.
Moderated by Fatima Quander, the conversation features Manna-Symone Middlebrooks, Nikkole Salter, and Tamilla Woodard, all of whom have worked with Folger Theatre as an actor, director, or assistant director.
About Shared Stages
Shared Stages is a pre-performance conversation series which highlights connections between what’s on stage in our theatre and programming across the Folger. You’ll hear from a variety of artists, scholars, and thinkers about how Shakespeare and the humanities are utilized at the Folger and beyond.
Ticket discount
To get your discounted ticket for this conversation, first purchase your ticket for the October 8 performance of Measure for Measure. Before completing your purchase, our online ticketing system will ask if you would like to add this talk to your order. If you have already bought a ticket to the October 8 performance, please contact the Box Office at folgerboxoffice@folger.edu or 202-544-7077.
Who’s who
Manna-Symone Middlebrooks
Manna-Symone Middlebrooks (Associate Director and Narrator) Folger Theatre: Henry IV, Part I, Amadeus; Arena Stage: JaJa’s African Hair Braiding (Helen Hayes winner), Indecent; Shakespeare Theater Company: The Amen Corner; Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company: BLKS; Studio Theatre: Skeleton Crew, Translations, The Wolves, The Curve of Departure, The Remains. Regional: CTG/Chicago Shakespeare/La Jolla Playhouse/Berkeley Rep: Jaja’s African Hair Braiding; Chicago Shakespeare: All’s Well That Ends Well; The Wirtz Center for Perf. Arts: The Tempest, Sandblasted, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World. Broadway: Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (2 Tony Awards). mannasymone.com @manna-symone
Nikkole Salter
Tamilla Woodard
Tamilla Woodard (Director) Folger Theatre: debut. Yale Rep: the ripple, the wave that carried me home by Christine Anderson; Women’s Project Theater: Weightless (Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Outstanding Musical); Alliance Theatre: Working: A Musical; Guthrie Theater: Sweat; Women’s Project Theater, Baltimore Center Stage, and Steppenwolf NOW: Where We Stand (Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Outstanding Solo Show); American Conservatory Theater: Top Girls.
Fatima Quander
Fatima Quander is an Assistant Professor of Acting in the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park; and is the 2025 recipient of the Uta Hagen Award from the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, the American College Theatre Festival at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (KCACTF) and the HB Studio. She is proud to have participated in the Folger’s year-long “Shakespeare and Black Performing Women” workshop during academic year 2025-26 and recently directed Macbeth at UMD, taking inspiration from Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower.
Related events
Measure for Measure
Director Talk: Measure for Measure
