Draft:Ash Marinaccio

• Comment: I am not an expert in this area but I don't think the subject meets the (rather stringent) criteria for inclusion. Please see WP:NOTRESUME and also refer to the list of sources at WP:Perennial Sources. We would need multiple sources that are significant, reliable, and independent of the subject. Caleb Stanford (talk) 05:48, 22 June 2025 (UTC)

---

Ash Marinaccio (born: January 9, 1985) is an American documentarian and director whose work spans theatre, photography, and film. She is the founding artistic director of the NGO Girl Be Heard (tenure: 2008-2016). Marinaccio's work frequently explores themes of identity, patriotism, sexuality, grief, resilience, and justice using nonfiction storytelling as a means to provoke political engagement.

Early Life and Education

Ash Marinaccio was born in Sidney, New York, and raised in Long Branch, New Jersey. She was raised by a paraplegic single mother and attended Red Bank Regional High School's performing arts program as a dance major. Throughout much of her early life, she was a competitive dancer and presented choreography in showcases at Broadway Dance Center and Steps on Broadway. She moved to New York City in 2003 to pursue a degree in theatre and anthropology at Pace University. Her experience studying Arabic at Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon, during the 2006 War strongly influenced her decision to work at the intersection of theatre and journalism.

Marinaccio holds her M.A. in Performance Studies from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance from The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her dissertation, entitled "Beautiful Resistance: Nonfiction Theatre, Rehearsals, Processes, and Prefiguration in War," examined nonfiction theatre rehearsals and devising processes in and about conflict and war.[1] Her PhD research was inspired by her experience as a nonfiction theatre maker.

Career

Theatre

In 2008, Marinaccio co-founded Co-Op Theatre East (COTE), alongside two of her colleagues in NYU Performance Studies program Robert A. K. Gonyo and Casey Cleverly. Co-Op Theatre East's mission was to "create theatre that actively works to challenge the status quo and create lasting social change." Notable Co-Op Theatre East shows created by Marinaccio included "Documentary," a documentary theatre piece about LGBT teen suicide; "Decadent Acts," about discriminatory laws against LGBT people influenced by the Langbehn v. Jackson Memorial Hospital case; " and "10 Years Later," a documentary theatre play based on verbatim experiences of children and young people who grew up in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Marinaccio collaborated with Co-Op Theatre East ensemble members to create "Raw Thought," a documentary theatre play about the life and work of Aaron Swartz based on interviews with Swartz's colleagues, and his diary entries. "Raw Thought" was set to premiere at Hunter College in 2020 but was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, with Co-Op Theatre East, she directed an immersive production of The Vagina Monologues in a Harlem apartment building and My Name is Rachel Corrie, which featured multiple actresses in the title role of Rachel Corrie. Co-Op Theatre East disbanded in 2021.

In the fall of 2008, Marinaccio was hired by Manhattan Theatre Source to write and direct a show for teenage girls, to be presented as part of their annual Estrogenius Festival. Instead of writing the show for the ensemble, she encouraged the ensemble to write and perform their own stories. Through this project, the company Project Girl Performance Collective was formed, which later rebranded to Girl Be Heard in 2012. The mission of Project Girl Performance Collective/Girl Be Heard was to empower young women through theatre and performance. Under Marinaccio's Artistic Direction Girl Be Heard presented original theatre at The White House, the US State Department, TED Talks, and the Women’s March. In 2012, Girl Be Heard became a United Nations-recognized NGO and partnered with the Girl Up Foundation and UN Women, embarking on theatre tours in Denmark, England, Switzerland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Trinidad and Tobago. In 2017, Girl Be Heard’s Trinidad and Tobago program launched with support from the US State Department/US Embassy of Trinidad and Tobago.

Notable Girl Be Heard performances developed and directed by Marinaccio included "9mm America," about gun violence in the United States, "Trafficked," about sex trafficking in New York City, "EmbodiED," about body dysmorphia and the US diet industry, and the "GirlPower" series, an exploration into the lives, hopes, and dreams of American girls. Marinaccio departed Girl Be Heard in 2016. Her tenure at Girl Be Heard is discussed in the book Girls, Performance, and Activism: Demanding to Be Heard by Dana Edell.

In 2022, Marinaccio founded Docbloc, whose mission is to bring together artists, scholars, and journalists working across nonfiction genres for creative collaborations in live performance. [2]

For her documentary theatre work, Marinaccio received a Lucille Lortel Visionary Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women, fellowships from the Drama League, the Mellon Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, New York Public Humanities, and Social Practice, CUNY. She is an alumna of Lincoln Center's Directors Lab (2009), Old Vic/New Voices, BAM/Kennedy Center's Professional Development Program, BAX's EMERGENYC (2008). In 2018, she was named one of Culture Trip’s “50 Women in Theatre You Should Know."[3] Marinaccio has presented at TED Women, TEDxTeachersCollege, and TEDxBroadway.

Marinaccio is a member of the New York City-based investigative theatre company The Civilians, where she was part of the 2016 Field Research Team and the 2024-2025 R&D Group. During this time, she developed "2024, Spring," a documentary theatre play about the student Gaza Solidarity encampments, in collaboration with multi-disciplinary artist Joseph Shahadi.

Photography

While in her Ph.D. program, Marinaccio began experimenting with theatre and photography. Marinaccio’s work has been featured in publications including Time Out New York, New York Daily News, The Huffington Post, The Advocate, The Indypendent, Our Town NY, Arab Stages, Performance Research, HowlRound Theatre Commons, About Performance, and Anthropology News.

Teaching

Marinaccio has worked as a professor at New York University, Pace University, SUNY Purchase College, CUNY Hunter College, and the Shanghai Theatre Academy. Currently, she is a faculty member in the department of Media Studies at CUNY Queens College.

As a teaching artist, Marinaccio has worked at Queens Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center, Wolf Pack Theater (Oregon), Pitchwise Theatre Festival (Bosnia and Herzegovina), ASHTAR Theatre (Palestine), and Garden of Hope (Taiwan). She is a co-facilitator with the Creative Pathways Refugee Theatre Program in Providence, Rhode Island.