artistic Direction
Artistic Director — Ariana Karp
Ariana (she | her) is an actor, director, educator, and cellist. She has been the Artistic Director of ISC Santa Fe since 2018. She is an alumna of London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) with a Master’s degree in Classical Acting for the Professional Theatre, and a Bachelor’s degree in Literature-Theatre from Reed College. Ariana has made theatre in New York, London, and across the United States and Japan.
She has taught university courses on acting, Shakespeare, voice, and movement, and completed teaching residencies and workshops for actors and students of all ages throughout the US. In the fall of 2025 she began work as a teaching artist with Marin Shakespeare Company's Shakespeare for Social Justice program in various prisons throughout California's Central Valley. She is passionate about the cultivation of radical empathy, and has extensive teaching and directing experience focused on empowering individuals and developing ensembles through ownership of Shakespeare’s language, ensemble-led theatrical processes, textual analysis, Laban movement work, improvisational practices in performance, voice and vocal technique, creative problem solving, and using movement to activate the text through the body.
Since 2023, with her acting and devising collaborator Andrew Codispoti, she has developed and performed the original and constantly-evolving production Shakespeare’s Duets: Turn and Change. The production has been performed in Santa Fe, NM, Newburyport, MA, and Waterville, ME. She is a member of the international collective of artists, The Shakespeare Ensemble (curated by Ben Crystal) and joined them on a tour of Japan in 2019, performing Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet in original pronunciation (OP). Ariana is married to award-winning professor and author Charlie Hankin and lives in Davis, CA.
Previous credits with ISC Santa Fe: Director of Nine Moons reading (2026); Facilitator, Costumes, Sound Designer, and Officer in Othello (2025); Facilitator, Sound Designer, Tom Snout (Wall and Moonshine), and Mustardseed in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2025); Director of Believe None of Us reading (2025); Petruchia, Facilitator, Sound Designer in The Taming of the Shrew (2024); Facilitator, Sound Designer, and Company Manager of Romeo and Juliet (2024); Deviser and Performer in Shakespeare’s Duets: Turn & Change (2023); Facilitator, Sound Designer, and Tyrrell in Richard III (2023); Director, Composer, and Sound Designer of The Winter’s Tale (2021); Director, Sound Designer, and Gower in Pericles (2021); Director and Sound Designer of Julius Caesar (2021); Aufidius in Coriolanus (2021); Director, Composer, Sound Designer of Henry IV, Part I (2019); Duke Vincentio in Measure for Measure (2019); Regan, Composer and Sound Designer in King Lear (2018).
