Anu Yadav

Anu Yadav is a critically acclaimed actress, playwright, and cultural organizer dedicated to the stories of poor and working class people. As a solo performer, Anu shapeshifts into characters from everyday life with both humor and drama. Her devised theater work sparks a powerful forum for people to reflect and listen to each other’s stories across social and economic divides.

As an actress, Yadav has performed with the Shakespeare Theatre Company, Imagination Stage, Theatre Alliance, and African Continuum Theatre, as well as at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Strathmore Mansion and the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts in Beijing. 

As a teaching artist she worked with Young Playwrights’ Theatre, Capital Fringe Festival Youth Producers, Sasha Bruce Youth Works, Imagination Stage and facilitated workshops at various colleges, universities and high schools on themes ranging from identity, diversity, autobiographical-based performance and improvisation.

She co-founded the storytelling project Classlines, and wrote and performed her solo plays ‘Capers and Meena's Dream that debuted to sold-out houses and toured nationally.  She was featured in the documentaries Walk with Me and Chocolate City.  She was a 2014 Western Arts Alliance 'Launchpad' Artist, DC Artist Fellow, Mercersburg Academy Fowle Scholar-in-Residence, Wellesley College Artist-in-Residence and Arts Midwest Spotlight Showcase Artist.  She was a 2015 Center for Performance and Civic Practice Catalyst Grant recipient partnering with the Institute for Policy Studies. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and holds an M.F.A. in Performance from the University of Maryland at College Park.  She wrote the children’s play, The Princess and the Pauper: A Bollywood Tale, a feminist adaptation of the Mark Twain tale produced by Imagination Stage.  She was a 2018 DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Artist Fellow, DC Public Library Artist-in-Residence and Alternate ROOTS grantee. She was the 2019-2020 Creative Strategist Artist-In-Residence with the Los Angeles County Department of Arts & Culture, in partnership with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health (LACDMH). From 2021-2022, she co-designed and co-directed the community programming for WE RISE, a mental health campaign produced by LACDMH and Cause Communications. She is a member of Actor's Equity Association, Dramatist's Guild, Alternate ROOTS, Network of Ensemble Theaters and the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.

Recent Honors

(2023) Dramatists Guild Foundation Catalyst Fellow

(2023) Race Forward Housing, Land, and Justice Artist Fellow

(2023) Annenberg Civic Media Fellow Summer Sprint Grantee

(2019) Creative Strategist Artist-in-Residence, Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health

(2018) DC Public Library Inaugural Artist-in-Residence

(2018) Six-time DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Artist Fellow

(2017) American Theatre Magazine "Person to Watch"

(2016) Opportunity Agenda Creative Change Fellow at Sundance Institute

(2016) Network of Ensemble Theaters Travel Grant Awardee

(2016) National Performance Network Residency at Sandglass Theatre

(2015) Catalyst Initiative Grant Recipient, Center for Performance and Civic Practice

(2015) Arizona Commission on the Arts AZ Art/Worker Featured Artist

of Note

Creative Communities Grantee, Community Foundation of the National Capital Region, Washington, DC, USA

Back on the Block Company Member, Washington, DC, USA

Residency with Jana Natya Manch (People's Theatre Front), New Delhi, India

Residency with Centro do Teatro do Oprimido (Center of the Theater of the Oppressed), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to study theater and social change in India, Brazil & South Africa

ARTISTIC PHILOSOPHY

We each have a lens with which we receive the world, colored by our experiences.  If you stack all those lenses on top of each other, I believe you come closer to a Bigger Truth that connects us all.  Stories are like lenses that help us understand each other more clearly.  I absorb and honor stories because listening is a revolutionary act, and can support the transformation of our society.  I'm a cultural worker, actress, writer, teacher, and producer of performance. I am part of networks of artists and change makers dedicated to the ending of all systemic injustice.

My work lives at the nexus of theater, liberation, community organizing, and dialogue about people and ideas that should be heard more than they are.  I want to leave people feeling more whole, inspired and connected than when they arrived.

We are all born artists.  We are all born creative geniuses, as Robert Alexander of the late great Living Stage Theatre Company used to say.  I'm all about encouraging the genius of everyone along my path, through all that I do. 

*cultural worker:  "catalyst, guide, mirror and facilitator of social change, seeking implicit and explicit solutions to collective and individual problems. This individual accepts the intellectual challenge of analyzing the world for the purpose of changing it (Cone, 1986)."