Tiffany Trent is an accomplished director, deviser, and scholar of theater and performance studies. Her artistic and scholarly practices encompass theater and performance primarily in contexts of justice work and faith practice, particularly with youth. She earned her B.A. in Politics, Economics, Rhetoric, and Law at the University of Chicago, an MFA in Directing at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, and an M.Div. from Chicago Theological Seminary. Most recently, Trent completed her doctorate in Theatre for Youth at Arizona State University, where she received research support from the American Alliance for Theatre Education (AATE) as a Winifred Ward Scholar, grants from the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at ASU and the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), and was a doctoral fellow with the Forum for Theological Exploration. Her dissertation, “Radical Welcome in Youth Performance Spaces on Chicago’s South Side: the Child as Hungry, the Child as Village, the Child as Visible,” intertwines her research areas of performance studies, child drama, child theology, liberation theology, and critical race theory. In her wider projects analyzing embodiments of race, class, gender, childhood, and faith, Trent connects arts practice to citizenship, self, and culture.
Aesthetically, Trent’s work includes cultural legacies, found objects, and ritual onstage. Her theatre credits include script development workshops with Alabama Shakespeare Festival and New Harmony Writers’ Project; directing with MPAACT and Pegasus Young Playwrights’ Festival; teaching with Goodman Theatre’s Youth Drama Workshop, Chicago Dramatists, and The Viola Project. Currently, Trent is part of the NOURISH cohort with Goodman Theatre and the Center for Performance and Civic Practice to incubate a community arts chaplaincy. Trent has served two local United Church of Christ congregations, Trinity UCC and God Can Ministries UCC, as well as wider ecumenical and interfaith initiatives through facilitating drama as part of liturgy, community engagement, and exegetical enterprise. Beyond her undergraduate degree from UChicago, Trent’s long association with the UofC includes stints as Assistant Director of College Admissions and Lecturer in TAPS.