artistic Director
Creating a vision for performance
Artistic Director: Ariana Karp
Bio: 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 Masters degree in Classical Acting for the Professional Theatre, and a Bachelors degree in Literature-Theatre from Reed College. Ariana has made theatre in New York, London, and across the United States and Japan.
She recently taught as a visiting instructor in the Performance, Theater, and Dance Department at Colby College and in the English and World Literature Field Group at Pitzer College. Ariana has completed teaching residencies, and conducted workshops for actors and students of all ages throughout the US. She is passionate about the cultivation of radical empathy, and has extensive teaching and directing experience with a specific focus on empowering individuals and developing ensembles through ownership of Shakespeare’s language, textual analysis, 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.
Previous credits for ISC Santa Fe: Petruchia, co-facilitator, sound designer in The Taming of the Shrew (2024); lead facilitator, sound designer, and company manager of Romeo and Juliet (2024); deviser and performer in Shakespeare’s Duets: Turn & Change (2023); director, 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).