Theater and community work may seem like disparate endeavors, but LaNeshe Miller-White, KLN ‘08, is working to make them one and the same. The communication alumna who minored in theater is the new executive director of Theatre Philadelphia, an organization that aims to connect theater artists with audiences across the city and also hosts the annual Barrymore Awards that honors professional theater artists in the Greater Philadelphia region. Miller-White’s bonds with Philadelphia’s theater community have been solidified through her work with several arts organizations including Theatre in the X, which she co-founded in 2013 to bring free and accessible theater performances to West Philadelphia’s Malcolm X Park. However, the foundation of her relationships in the city begin with her time at Temple University.
Miller-White was selected as the new executive director of Theatre Philadelphia after an extensive search that started at the beginning of the year. When the COVID-19 pandemic caused the first wave of a financial downturn in the United States, the search was forced to pause. While the organization’s staff and board of directors acted as interim leadership, they began to reconsider the priorities of the organization, especially how they could incorporate social justice efforts into their values and practices. The search resumed later in the summer, and the staff and board of directors knew that their ideal candidate would need to have strong, existing relationships with Philadelphians coupled with a desire to diversify the city’s theater artists and audience members.
Enter Miller-White, whose involvement in the Philadelphia theater community is recognized locally and beyond. At Temple, she was a student worker with the School of Theater, Film and Media Arts (TFMA) and continued working with the Theater Department after graduation. From there, she took on the role of marketing manager for the Painted Bride Art Center from 2008 to 2017. Her accolades include being named a 2012 Knight Foundation Emerging Leaders Fellow, a 2013 National Performance Network Wesley V. Montgomery Memorial Mentorship & Leadership Award winner and a 2015 and 2017 City of Philadelphia Performances in Public Spaces grant recipient. In 2017, she also graduated from the Arts & Business Council of Greater Philadelphia Designing Leadership Program.
Despite her countless contributions to the Philadelphia theater community, Miller-White is excited to make even more of an impact in her new role at Theatre Philadelphia. “I’m looking forward to helping the theater community...connect with audiences in this time and normalize virtual theater and educational theater while that is the only thing that we can do,” Miller-White says.
Jason Lindner, president of Theatre Philadelphia’s board of directors and assistant director of marketing and communications at TFMA, is confident that Miller-White’s skills and experiences are what the organization needs to take on the challenges caused by the current political and economic climate. Having worked at Temple since 2018, he recognizes how Miller-White’s unique mix of practicality and drive were in part inspired by her experiences at the university.
“She knows what she wants, she works from a place that has an ethical and moral compass and she’s not proposing things that are potentially unfeasible or things that are floating castles in the air,” Lindner says. “It’s more like ‘This is what we’re going to do, and these are the steps we’re going to take to get there and then this is how the work is going to progress.”
Miller-White is appreciative for the lessons she learned while attending and working at Temple, including how to combine her passions for theater and marketing and turning them into a viable career. “I’m very grateful for the connections I made at Temple and the education that I got there and my ability to continue to expand my relationship in the theater community from that being the starting point,” she says.
In lieu of this year’s Barrymore Awards, Theatre Philadelphia will host a virtual celebration of the 2019-2020 season of theater on November 16. The organization is also accepting applications for their emergency relief fund, which provides microgrants to eligible local artists to help with financial burdens caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.