Amanda Shank is a Los Angeles-based arts leader, educator, and generative artist working at the intersection of high-level institutional operations, multidisciplinary curation, and creative ecosystem design. For over a decade, she has built thriving institutional infrastructures that empower groundbreaking creators to dream at scale while maintaining her own rigorous artistic practice.

In her current capacity as an Associate Dean and Regularized Faculty member at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) School of Theater, Amanda directs a high-density, year-round residential arts environment. Her institutional leadership is defined by a rare ability to bridge visionary artistic intent with long-term operational sustainability—stewarding a multi-million dollar comprehensive annual budget, managing complex capital resources, and fostering tight strategic alignment between governing boards, internal academic stakeholders, and external communities.

As a producer and curator, Amanda is dedicated to fostering deep cultural lifecycles and constructing the administrative frameworks necessary for contemporary artists to realize ambitious work. Her extensive curatorial portfolio spans the commissioning and development of over 25 major new works, navigating complex international touring logistics, managing major field award fellowships, and producing high-profile, multi-medium presentations alongside elite civic and international partners, including LACMA, The Huntington, REDCAT, and the Wuzhen Theatre Festival.

This extensive operational footprint is directly informed by Amanda’s active, experimental studio practice. Moving beyond traditional boundaries of medium and form, her generative voice explores the limits of language and narrative anarchy through a vital interplay between text, image, and environment. Since 2018, this interdisciplinary inquiry has focused on a longstanding photography and object-based practice, hand-generating limited-edition artist books that serve as tactile spaces for intimate exchange, durational performance, and site-responsive mapping.

Amanda’s fluid creative methodology directly shapes her approach to pedagogy and institutional mentorship. She views the classroom as an active, collaborative studio where students examine how text, image, and object live together in space and time. By uniting rigorous academic governance with site-responsive artistic generation, she trains and advises the next generation of cultural innovators, routinely mentoring emerging creators toward top-tier national honors.

Education

MFA, Writing for Performance
California Institute of the Arts (CalArts)
2013

BFA, Writing, Literature & Publishing Emerson College
Cum Laude, 2007

Employment

Associate Dean, School of Theater
California Institute of the Arts (CalArts)
2018 – Present

Associate Artistic Director
CalArts Center for New Performance (CNP)
2018 – Present

Regularized Faculty, Theater Métier Studies, CalArts
2022 – Present

Special Faculty, School of Theater
CalArts
2015 – 2022

Operations Manager & Producer of Special Projects
Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance, CalArts
2013 – 2014

SELECTED WORKS

(upcoming) Territories of the Self
Interdisciplinary performance installation & site exchange
CalArts x Université Côte d'Azur in partnership with Hubert Crabières
2026

WZRD
Daniel Alexander Jones
Curatorial & producer frameworks
CalArts Center for New Performance
2024 – 2025

AREYTO
Rosanna Tavarez
Curatorial & producer frameworks
CalArts Center for New Performance
2024

Passage of the Spiral (Pasadizo en Espiral)
Natalia Lassalle-Morillo
Curatorial presenting framework
REDCAT
2024

Augustine Machine ou Encore une nuit d’insomnie
Lead Artist in collaboration with Travis Preston, Marie Darrieussecq and Tom Gunning
CNP with Conservatoire de Paris
2022 – 2023

In My Arms (like a raft, like rope)
Lead Artist in collaboration with Zoe Aja Moore
Site-specific performance & visual installation
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
2022

Witkacy / Two-Headed Calf
Natalia Korczakowska
International production & festival infrastructure
REDCAT / Divine Comedy Festival (Poland)
2018 – 2019

Nightwalk in the Chinese Garden
Written and Directed by Stan Lai
Site-specific environmental partnership
The Huntington Library & Botanical Gardens
2018

Awards

Curriculum Diversity Initiative Grant California Institute of the Arts (CalArts)
2021 – 2022

Puffin Foundation Project Grant
The Puffin Foundation
2018

Collaboration Fund Award
National New Play Network (NNPN)
2016 – 2017

National Playwright-in-Residence
NNPN / Unicorn Theatre
2016 – 2017

Artist-in-Residence Fellowship
Annenberg Community Beach House
2015

Press

Follow the Artist: 20 Years of CalArts Center for New Performance,
2024

“Watch This Space: Artists Train for All Media,”
American Theatre Magazine
2020

“Collaboration and Profanation,” HowlRound Theatre Commons
2019

“Sharing a Site-Specific Secret,”
The New York Times
2018

Feature Presentation Spotlight: Nightwalk
The Los Angeles Times
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