I first met Shanique when we were both working in the Bay Area professional theater community, and she was cast as the lead in the premiere production of a play of mine. I was struck by Shanique’s dedication to the artistic process, her commitment to excellence, her versatility as a performer, and her dynamic stage presence. As an actor, Shanique exhibits extraordinary vocal, physical, and emotional range. As a writer and deviser, she is also stunning in her range and versatility.
With kindness and patience, she has now turned her prodigious talent to education, fostering the voices of students with a broad range of ages and experiences. In particular, she has created unique opportunities for youth of color in what is an overwhelmingly white town.
— Carol Lashof, playwright, educator and theater producer, Professor Emerita, St. Mary’s College of California
About Shanique Scott
Shanique has loved theater as long as she can remember.
It started with stand-up comedy. When she was 15, growing up in a struggling family and a Bronx neighborhood greatly affected by the crack and AIDS epidemics, Shanique took refuge in a group home where she became the “house clown” as a means of getting by. She got “discovered” when a New York City comedian dropped by to lead improv games and took a shine to her. He said that if Shanique could put together five minutes of material, he’d give her a slot at a NYC Comedy Club. She did — and was a hit. She continued doing stand-up while earning a BA at Russell Sage College and living intermittently at Sheltering Arms.
At the University of Buffalo, where Shanique earned an MA in Theater in 2000, she wrote her first play, “The Momma Game.” It featured the pretend games she played as a kid with her younger sister to keep away the demons that haunted them, real and imagined. It also shared stories of the people who colored the neighborhood, from drug pushers to the unhoused, people her audience would never have encountered. Telling these stories became a passion.
In 2001, Shanique moved to the Bay Area to put her playwriting and acting to the test. Her one woman autobiographical show, “Prisons,” received the San Francisco Arts Commission award in 2008. At Arizona State University, where Shaniqued earned an MFA in 2014, she won multiple acting nominations and awards (e.g. Mainstage Best Acting Award,’12). She has performed and taught acting nationwide (e.g. at the Lorraine Hansberry Theater in San Francisco, as a teaching artist in the Oakland and New York City public schools).
Shanique relocated to Ashland, Oregon in 2016. For several years, she was a teaching artist at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Wanting to create a space for young, multiracial girls and boys like her, with theater in their blood, Shanique started the Empowered Arts Ensemble in 2022.
Collaborators
A group of talented and experienced collaborators help the Empowered Arts Ensemble soar. They include Pamela Sterling, Emeritus Theater Professor at Arizona State University; Carol Lashof, playwright, educator and theater producer, Executive Director, Those Women Productions; Ellen Sebastian Chang, Portland and Bay Area-based Theater Director; Tyrone Wilson, OSF Actor (Acting Consultant); Carla Pantoja (OSF Fight Choreographer and Teaching Artist); and Marc Freeman, former OSF actor and currently on the staff at Southern Oregon University.
