fbpx Astats79 | HowlRound Theatre Commons
Dr. Ayshia Mackie-Stephenson

Writer, Scholar, Artist

Dr. Ayshia Mackie-Stephenson is a performance studies scholar, intimacy director, and an award-winning writer and educator from Brooklyn, NY. With an MFA from CalArts and a PhD from UMass Amherst, she uses theatre and performance to investigate pleasure, sexuality, and human rights. Her critical and creative work appears in Routledge, Black Camera, Qualitative Inquiry, Boston University Press, International Review of Qualitative Research, Theatre Topics, Howlround and Research in Drama Education. Dr. Mackie has directed or intimacy directed productions at The Huntington, Fresh Ink Theatre, Jewel Box Theatre in NYC, Arts at the Armory (Somerville), The Rockwell, and the DC Black Theatre & Arts Festival. She is a freelance Intimacy Director and Adjunct Faculty at NYU. 


 

Intimacy Directing For Theatre Book Release Event Logo.
Video

Intimacy Directing for Theatre Book Release: Reading Number Two

Celebrate the Release of the First Textbook to Address Intimacy and Consent Work in our Theatre Classrooms.

Monday 18 March 2024
United States
Intimacy Directing For Theatre Book Release Event Logo.
Video

Intimacy Directing for Theatre Book Release: Reading Number One 

Celebrate the Release of the First Textbook to Address Intimacy and Consent Work in our Theatre Classrooms.

Wednesday 21 Februrary 2024
United States
The silhouettes of a Black woman and a Black man in an embrace against a pink-purple ombre background.
Essay

Confessions of a Black Intimacy Director: Black Love and Human Rights

7 June 2021

Dr. Ayshia Mackie-Stephenson believes that when it comes to intimacy directing, choreography can celebrate Black love as an act of racial and sexual justice.

silhouette of two people embracing, with a red and purple starry background.
Video

Confessions of a Black Intimacy Director with Dr. Ayshia

A talk on Black sex, Black bodies, and Black love led by Dr. Ayshia Stephenson

Monday 15 March 2021
United States
text one love on black background
Video

One Love: A Racial Justice Theatre Workshop with Dr. Ayshia

One Love pedagogy, a racial justice method for teaching and learning theatre

Monday 22 February 2021
United States
two actors onstage with five actors' shadows behind them
Essay

Remembering The Death of the Last Black Man

On How Black Theatre Is Essential

5 October 2020

Dr. Ayshia E. Stephenson revisits the 2016 Signature Theatre production of The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, which she believes stands as a testament to why Black theatre matters and is essential to resisting white supremacy.

Book cover for "Teaching Racial Justice Theatre and Performance".
Video

Healing and Health: One Love Method Grounding Practices

A Racial-Justice Theatre Healing Session

Tuesday 9 June 2026
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Intimacy Directing For Theatre Book Release Event Logo.
Series

Intimacy Directing for Theatre Book Release

Celebrate the Release of the First Textbook to Address Intimacy and Consent Work in our Theatre Classrooms.

Celebrate the release of the first textbook to address intimacy and consent work in our theatre classrooms.

Subscribe to HowlRound

Sign up for our daily, weekly, or quarterly emails so you never miss the latest theatre conversations.

Sign me up

Support HowlRound

We fundraise to keep all our programs free and open and to pay our contributors. Thank you to all who make our work possible!

Donate today