Shirley Kaplan

Raised in Connecticut, Shirley Kaplan started painting at an early age at the Silvermine Guild and gained experience as an apprentice to the set designers at Westport Country Playhouse. At seventeen she received a grant to study in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. She spent four years painting in Paris during the artistically active postwar period of the 1950s and had a solo exhibit at the Stable Gallery in New York.

When she moved back to the States, she co-founded, along with Judy Martin, Remy Charlip, and Sudie Bond, the Obie Award-winning Paper Bag Players. With little cash but many ideas, cardboard and other found materials were repurposed in their newly created theatre company. Their first performance at the Living Theatre combined music, jokes, dances, and songs and connected with other theatre artists. Kaplan’s deep interest in form and original material led the way to new work as a playwright and director at off-Broadway theatres including LaMama, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and Ubu Repertory. She also created original cabarets and painted projects for Ben Bagley’s long-running Cole Porter show.

In the 1970s Kaplan was invited by Remy Charlip and Wilford Leach to come to Sarah Lawrence College to share her techniques in developing original material. Charlip was teaching a class called Children’s Theater, which evolved into a course called Workshop in Making Things Up. Kaplan brought her hands-on experience working in the schools from her background in Connecticut’s Project Create, the first outreach program in the country that placed professional artists in the schools to work with teachers and students in the classroom. June Ekman and Burt Supree rounded out the team. Kaplan started a course, Painters Theatre, which brought Sarah Lawrence students into the Yonkers community. She felt strongly that this work had to be part of the broader theatre curriculum and would go on to found a new course, Theatre Outreach.

Theatre Outreach was structured around hands-on classes using different methods of creating original work and discussions about artistic and societal issues. The course included classes, conference work, and placements in schools, museums, and senior centers throughout the Bronx, Yonkers, and Westchester area, and emphasized the act of play to develop new theatrical and expressive work based on the whole student and their experiences. Guest artists shared their knowledge and techniques, providing students other points of view and other contexts. Theatre Outreach included special workshops with teachers so that they could experience firsthand the techniques for creative learning that extend into the classroom. An important component was Lunch Box Theatre, a free Saturday program for the children of faculty and other employees of the college as well as the greater community.

Over the years the Theatre Outreach Program has reached thousands of people of all ages and socioeconomic groups. One of her early students, Kwame Johnson, would go on to found Youth Theatre Interactions, which enriched Yonkers’ cultural landscape by providing much-needed after-school performing arts education for youth. Kwame’s dedication to community work inspired generations to express themselves through the arts and fostered empathy, understanding, and change. Many of Kaplan’s students have gone on to continue the work through teaching and starting theatre companies and projects across the U.S. and other countries.

Kaplan is now Faculty Emerita at Sarah Lawrence College, having worked there for over 40 years. She was Head of the Theatre Department from 1988 to 2016.

She is currently working with composer Chet Biscardi on extending their song cycle Sailors and Dreamers, originally commissioned by the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation at the Library of Congress and premiered at Merkin Hall. She’s also working on an autobiography on creating new work / a life.