Jennifer Lanier

Jennifer Lanier is an actor, writer, and director. She grew up in Greensboro NC and received her classical acting training at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts under Gerald Freedman, Cigden Onat, and Robert Moyer. She began working with Robert Moyer at the United Stage, bringing scripted and improvisational stories to young audiences throughout the South. They had a run at the Smithsonian Institution’s Discovery Theatre of Lanier’s original piece for young audiences, BRER RABBIT MEETS COYOTE, exploring the challenges of growing up as an ethnically mixed person in a white supremacist culture. Lanier expanded the piece into a solo comedy called NONE OF THE ABOVE. She is currently working on a comedy about playing Othello as a black lesbian in the whitest city in America.

Lanier has taken her love for improvisation to classical theatre and is currently Co-Artistic Director of Original Practice Shakespeare Festival (OPS Fest), a professional theater company committed to bringing unpredictable and accessible Shakespeare for free to the widest possible audience. Implementing the unrehearsed, improvisational performance techniques used Shakespeare’s time and creatively using gender-, color-, differently abled-, size- and age-conscious casting, OPS Fest provides a completely unique perspective to the classic canon. www.OPSFest.org Lanier continues to work in regional theatre (Portland Center Stage, American Stage, Portland Playhouse, Ruth Foreman Theatre), television (guest star on Leverage, Hawaii, Grimm), and film (Thin Skin, Scrapper, Last Champion). Lanier lives in Vancouver WA.