About Kaneza Schaal

Kaneza Schaal is a New York-City based artist working in theater, opera, and film.

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  • A 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, Schaal has received the Herb Alpert Award in theater, a Sundance Institute Interdisciplinary Program Grant, a 2019 United States Artists Fellowship, a Soros Art Migration and Public Space Fellowship, a Joyce Award, an LMCC Alumni Award, the 2018 Ford Foundation Art for Justice Bearing Witness Award, a 2017 MAP Fund Award, a 2016 Creative Capital Award, and an Aetna New Voices fellowship at Hartford Stage.

    Her projects include GO FORTH, premiered at Performance Space 122 and then shown at the Genocide Memorial Amphitheater in Kigali, Rwanda; the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; the Cairo International Contemporary Theater Festival, Egypt; and at her alma mater, Wesleyan University. Her work JACK & was performed as part of BAM’s 2018 Next Wave Festival and at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, as well as at its co-commissioning institutions the Walker Art Center, REDCAT, On the Boards, the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. Her piece CARTOGRAPHY premiered at the Kennedy Center and toured to The New Victory Theater, Abu Dhabi Arts Center, and Playhouse Square, OH. Created with FLEXN, her dance work MAZE premiered at The Shed. She directed Triptych, composed by Bryce Dessner with a libretto by Korde Arrington Tuttle, which premiered at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Power Center in Ann Arbor, MI, BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House, and the Holland Festival. In summer 2021, Schaal directed a new staging of BLUE for Michigan Opera Theater at The Aretha Franklin Amphitheater in Detroit. Last spring she taught a course at Harvard University on theater and social practice and this year she will serve as the Denzel Washington Endowed Chair of Theatre at Fordham University.”