Laurie McCants

Laurie McCants (she/her/hers) co-founded the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble (BTE) in 1978, where she co-created HARD COAL, OUR SHADOWS (a bilingual puppet play with Egypt’s Wamda), and SUSQUEHANNA: MIGHTY, MUDDY, CROOKED RIVER OF THE LONG REACH. In 1991, she performed with BTE in a US State Department-sponsored tour of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Botswana, and Namibia. In 2010, she was named an “Actor of Distinguished Achievement” through a Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship (funded by the William & Eva Fox Foundation and administered by Theatre Communications Group). She served as Board President of the national Network of Ensemble Theaters, and she serves as a Trustee on the Board of the national Theatre Communications Group. She was composer Julia Wolfe’s "coal region consultant” for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize winner, ANTHRACITE FIELDS. In 2016, she accepted BTE’s “Outstanding Theatre” award from the National Theatre Conference. Her solo show INDUSTRIOUS ANGELS was presented at the Ko Festival of Performance in Amherst, Massachusetts in 2018, and at BTE in 2019. She is currently researching her new solo show, for which she received a Fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts, and a Virtual Exploration Grant from the Network of Ensemble Theaters. Because of her work at Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska, she is an adopted Kiks.ádi Tlingit, Frog Clan, Raven Moiety. Her Tlingit name is Khaachguun.