Spectrum Theatre Ensemble Appoints Laura Cornwall Executive Director

Spectrum Theatre Ensemble has announced the appointment of Laura Cornwall as the company's first Executive Director. Cornwall joins Artistic Director Clay Martin as the company expands its organizational structure following a year-long strategic planning process.

"STE is excited to welcome Laura Cornwall as our first, full-time executive director. Laura brings with her a deep passion for neurodivergent inclusion in the arts, valuable professional experience and visionary leadership. Her leadership and administrative acumen will allow us to expand both our artistic and inclusionary programming as we seek to broaden our impact on the neurodivergent community and our society as a whole."

Laura Cornwall is an administrator, educator, artist, and activist from the California Bay Area. She has worked with organizations including The Sol Project, Cleveland Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Yale Repertory Theatre, and Berkeley's Youth Musical Theater Company, and has held management positions in Mercury Glass Theatre Company as well as the Yale Cabaret. She is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama and most recently served as Managing Editor of the Yale Theater Management Knowledge Base. While at Yale Cornwall co-founded the disability affinity group DEFY, and her work on neurodivergence and disability justice was recently featured in the Yale School of Medicine conference RebPsych 2020: Decolonizing Mental Health.

"As an openly neurodivergent leader, I am thrilled to join Clay Martin and everyone at STE in championing neurodiverse voices in and beyond the American theater. Neurodivergence is everywhere, yet historically there's been such reluctance to include us-and particularly the multiply marginalized among us-in the room or on the stage. STE is part of a disability vanguard changing that. With our industry at a crossroads it has warmed my heart to see other organizations recognizing the importance of disability justice and embracing the beautiful potentials of access, and I look forward to joining STE in bringing this work to the field writ large."

Cornwall's first project with Spectrum Theatre Ensemble will be the Neurodiversity Matters online conference in April, followed by STE's annual Neurodiversity New Play Festival in August. The Festival will feature outdoor and streamed performances of a 10 Minute Play Series, staged and concert readings of commissioned works by neurodiverse playwrights, and the World Premiere of Resident Playwright Jeremy Kamps' The Importance of Being... (A Play in Earnest), a full-length play developed with STE company members. For more information, visit STEnsemble.org.

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