Theatre Washington is thrilled to announce participants for the 2025 Mentorship Program Cohort.
Theatre Washington’s Mentorship Program matches artists and administrators who are in a period of growth or transition in their careers to established artists and administrators with the talents to support their growth. The 2025 Cohort is composed of 40 artists/administrators, 20 mentees and 20 mentors.
Mentor Program Lead Alissa Klusky shares, “Mentorship can often feel like it’s all about finding the answers. To me, that’s not the goal. The goal is to wonder, to be curious, to seek, to search, to puzzle through the questions of being an artist… and to do that alongside another person who is joyfully engaging in that work with you. The joy of going on that journey together is what it’s all about.”
Theatre Washington President and CEO Amy Austin adds, “It’s a great testament to the power of our community that our mentorship program continues to evolve and flourish. Every year, I am delighted to hear about the developing relationships between mentors and mentees. At a time when our industry is changing and new leadership is paramount, I’m proud that we can support this meaningful collaboration among established and emerging theatre changemakers.”
The 2025 Mentorship Cohort represents a diverse array of artistic disciplines, spanning all ages and career stages, and is a reflection of our vibrant DC-area theatre community.
The 2025 Mentorship Cohort:
Nayanna Simone and Deidra LaWan Starnes
Annie Nguyễn and Elena Velasco
Sophie Smrcka and Zavier Augustus Lee Taylor
Ash Jeffers and Katherine Ross
Danielle Ignacio and Lauren Halvorsen
Johnna Presby and Meghan Raham
Daniel Brody and Mekala Sridhar
Nathan Pugh and Michelle Lynch
Anna Longenecker and Nikki Mirza
Alessandro McLaughlin and Rex Daugherty
Oshun Baronville and Otis Cortez Ramsey-Zöe
Hui Zhu and Raghad Makhlouf
Tymetrias Bolden and Renea Brown
Marcel Hartley and Tristan Willis
Jaida Gillespie and Aria Velz
Cayla Hall and Billie Krishawn
O’Malley Steuerman and Caro Dubberly
Stacy Whittle and Fran Tapia
Abby Dunbar and KJ Moran Velz
Allegra Hatem and Pauline Lamb
In the mentorship program, participants are asked to commit to a 4-month mentorship together. Though these relationships may continue beyond the program, we ask mentees to set program goals with their mentors to help them with a “next step” in their artistic development. Over 16 weeks, mentees and mentors meet a minimum of four times to work towards these goals. These meetings are tailored to the work of each individual pairing and vary from shadowing their mentor in the field, seeing and responding to local theater, advice and visioning sessions, accountability checks for artistic projects, and more. In all of this work, we encourage our participants to engage in the “Practice of Questioning.”
Learn more about these mentorship pairs, their focus areas, and artistic backgrounds.
