TU professor wins $5,000 award from Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance

COFAC faculty well represented among this year’s finalists

Naoko Maeshiba, professor of theatre arts and director of TU's MFA in Theatre Arts Program, sits down with a class earlier this semester. Maeshiba is the the 2016 recipient of the $5,000 Board of Governors Award from the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.
Naoko Maeshiba, professor of theatre arts and director of TU's MFA in Theatre Arts Program, sits down with a class earlier this semester. Maeshiba is the the 2016 recipient of the $5,000 Board of Governors Award from the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.

Naoko Maeshiba, professor of theatre arts and director of TU’s MFA in Theatre Arts program, is the 2016 recipient of the $5,000 Board of Governors Award from the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance (GBCA). The award is part of GBCA’s annual Baker Artist Portfolios and Awards program established by the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund.

Maeshiba, who was born in Kobe, Japan, is a director, choreographer and performer. She received her MFA in directing/Asian performance from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Before joining TU’s faculty, she worked at Arena Stage as a directing fellow and ran Tsunami Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., as the co-artistic director/director. She founded Naoko Maeshiba/Kibism (aka Naoko Maeshiba Performance Collective), an ongoing performance lab that investigates the depth of the body.

Her award-winning portfolio can be viewed on the GBCA website.

The Baker Artist Portfolios and Awards program, comprising five awards totaling $85,000, supports artists and promotes Greater Baltimore as a strong creative community. It is open to artists from all disciplines in Baltimore City and the five surrounding counties.

GBCA selected 39 finalists from among the 684 portfolios submitted this year. In addition to Maeshiba, TU finalists included Joseph Kraemer, Electronic Media and Film; Jenn Figg and Matt McCormack, Art + Design, Art History, Art Education; and Vincent Thomas, Dance. (Their portfolios are also available on the GBCA website.)

According to GBCA, the Baker Artist Portfolios have been viewed by hundreds of thousands of art lovers, critics, gallery owners, academics, and leaders in creative business in nearly every country around the globe.