Visual storyteller Ash Marinaccio (2024-25 SPCUNY Faculty Fellow) joins host Catherine LaSota to talk about her projects in theatre, photography, film, and activism. Ash is faculty in Media Studies at Queens College CUNY and is the Founding Artistic Director of Girl Be Heard and Founder of Docbloc, an organization dedicated to bringing artists across documentary genres together for live performance collaborations. In this conversation, she discusses her connection to nonfiction theater, ways to approach community-engaged work, and how we can use art to foster systemic change locally.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of Episode 25 available here.

About our guest:

Ash Marinaccio, Ph.D., is a multidisciplinary documentarian and visual storyteller working in theatre, photography, and film. She is dedicated to storytelling , highlighting the socio-political issues defining our times, and regularly works throughout the United States and internationally. For her work, Ash has received the Lucille Lortel Visionary Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women, a Drama League Residency, fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, NY Public Humanities, and National Endowment for the Humanities, been listed as one of Culture Trip’s “50 Women in Theatre You Should Know”, and is a two time TEDx Speaker. Ash is the founding artistic director of the United Nations-recognized NGO Girl Be Heard and founder of Docbloc (docbloc.org), dedicated to bringing artists across documentary genres together for live performance collaborations. She holds her M.A. in Performance Studies from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance from The Graduate Center, CUNY.

More about Ash Marinaccio:

Website: ashmarinaccio.com
Instagram: @ashmarinaccio
Documentary Photography portfolio: ashmarinacciophotography.com

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Thank you to our podcast editor Jade Iseri-Ramos, and thank you to Gaius LaSota for our Part of the Practice music.
Part of the Practice logo courtesy of Maliyah Mohamed.

Social Practice CUNY is funded by the Mellon Foundation.