Amanda Shank

Amanda Shank is an artist and educator based in Los Angeles, California. With an experimental practice rooted in the interplay between text, image, and performance, her work frequently explores themes of women’s identity and sexuality while also dismantling traditional notions of form, genre, chronology, and performativity.

As an artist, Amanda has developed projects with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique, the National New Play Network, CalArts Center for New Performance (CNP), the Henson Foundation, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), The Industry, the Prototype Festival, Los Angeles Performance Practice’s LAX Festival, Circle X Theatre, and many more. She has presented these works at venues such as the Ace Hotel DTLA, the Hammer Museum, Z Below, and Automata Arts. As a playwright, her work has been published in the U.S. and translated internationally.

Amanda has also worked with organizations such as Pomegranate Arts and the CalArts Center for New Performance to develop and present works by artists including Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Lucinda Childs, Adrienne Kennedy, Stan Lai, Octavio Solis, and Daniel Alexander Jones. Works have been presented at REDCAT, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, Hauser & Wirth, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), MoMA, Divine Comedy International Theatre Festival, Wuzhen Theatre Festival, and many more.

Amanda received her BFA in Writing, Literature & Publishing from Emerson College and her MFA in Writing for Performance from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).