Professor Natalie Sowell, Director of the UNCG School of Theatre is also an alumna who received her MFA in Theatre for Youth from UNCG. Prof. Sowell taught and served in administrative roles at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts for 16 years where she founded the Child Drama and Community program and served as Dean of the School for Interdisciplinary Arts and Dean of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion. Specializing in applied theatre for social change, creative drama, critical literacy, and oral storytelling, Sowell is a trained Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner who studied with Augusto Boal, Julian Boal, TOPLAB New York, and the Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed NE. She has conducted applied theatre workshops, classes, and artist residencies in schools, prisons, community centers, and churches throughout the United States and in Nigeria. She was the Artistic Director of UJIMA YOUTHEATRE (Omaha, NE) for 8 years and Associate Managing Director of Manbites Dog Theater (Durham, NC). Sowell has served on numerous arts organization boards, consults on issues of diversity, inclusion, and access for several non profit organizations, served as an Arts Ambassador for the Massachusetts Department of Secondary and Elementary Education, and worked as the faculty consultant for Five Colleges Inc.’s Doors to the World: Global Children’s Literature for Critical Multicultural Literacies project. Prof. Sowell has directed dozens of socially conscious plays for young audiences, family audiences, and adult audiences.