Natalie Sowell is an artist, educator, arts administrator and activist who most recently served as the director of the School of Theatre at University of North Carolina Greensboro for four and a half years. Prior to that she taught and served in administrative roles at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, for 16 years, where she founded the Child Drama and Community program and served as director of the Critical Studies of Childhood, Youth, and Learning Program, dean of the School for Interdisciplinary Arts and dean of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion.
Specializing in applied theatre for social change, creative drama, critical literacy, and oral storytelling, Sowell is a trained theatre of the oppressed practitioner who studied with Augusto Boal, Julian Boal, TOPLAB New York, and the Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed NE.
Sowell has conducted applied theatre workshops, classes, and artist residencies in colleges, schools, prisons, community centers, and churches throughout the United States and in Nigeria. She worked as the Artistic Director of UJIMA YOUTHEATRE and Associate Managing Director of Manbites Dog Theater, served as an Arts Ambassador for the Massachusetts Department of Secondary and Elementary Education, as the faculty consultant for Five Colleges Inc.’s Doors to the World: Global Children’s Literature for Critical Multicultural Literacies project. She also served on many arts and nonprofit organization boards and consults on issues of diversity, inclusion, and access for several organizations.
Professor Sowell has directed dozens of socially conscious plays for young audiences and adult audiences. Her recent favorites include Last Stop on Market Street, adapted from the book by Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson by Cheryl West with music by Lamont Dozier and Paris Dozier, Dontrell Who Kissed the Sea by Nathan Allen David, and Nick and the Prizefighter by Kamilah Bush. Her research focuses on culture shifting and Black women leaders in academic theatre.
As an interdisciplinary artist, Sowell has illustrated several picture books for children and enjoys making jewelry and crafting. Her 14-year-old son, Noble Langston, is her favorite theatre critic. Sowell received a bachelor of science in biology from Creighton University and an MFA in theatre for youth from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.