Beatrice Basso

Beatrice Basso (she/her) is an Italian American multidisciplinary performance maker, actor, writer, and dramaturg/curator whose work has recently appeared at The Front Gallery, Diversionary Theater, Wagner New Play Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, and Cygnet Theatre.

 

On the East Coast she performed at Long Wharf Theatre, where she also worked as Dramaturg and Literary Manager. In the Bay Area, her acting credits include Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Brava Theater, Santa Cruz Shakespeare, Eureka Theatre, The Western Stage, and Golden Thread Productions, among others. With Atosa Babaoff, Nora El Samahy and Emily Hoffman, she is founding member of the performance group Affinity Project whose piece “Russian Play” was named one of "five wildest theatrical moments of 2015" alongside Wooster Group and Rude Mechs by KQED/Theater Junkie. Beatrice is the lead in the short film “Laundry” by Danielle Katvan and lent her voice to ghosts in Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Creek.”

 

Her short stories have been selected for Novel Readings NYC and Book Catapult’s Dimestories podcast, while her theater translations have premiered at Oregon Shakespeare Festival (where she received two commissions), Santa Cruz Shakespeare, and American Conservatory Theater, where she also served as Director of New Work. There she launched and dramaturged many new play processes with writers including Ursula Rani Sarma, Melinda Lopez, and Christina Anderson, among others, as well as the lauded New Strands Festival. Beatrice curated Práctica, a platform for multidisciplinary artists practicing south and north of the Tijuana-San Diego border and provided cultural consultancies for the academy award-nominated Pixar film “Luca” and its accompanying short “Ciao Alberto.”

 

Beatrice's directing work was produced by Diversionary Theater, Wagner New Play Festival, and La Jolla Playhouse's WOW Festival. She holds degrees in Classics and Theatre from the University of Padova, Italy, and in Performance Studies from Wesleyan University’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (Sam Miller Thesis Prize). She is the Creative Director of the Italian Cultural Center of San Diego and a Lecturer in acting, dramaturgy-translation, and ensemble making at UCSD.