Nicole Brewer earned her M.F.A. in Acting from Northern Illinois University and her B.F.A. from Howard University. She's worked professionally as an actor, director and educator in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as in Washington DC. Nicole is a passionate advocate for anti-racist theatre training. She has presented on Conscientious Theatre Training, embodied acting techniques, disrupting traditional theatre training programs, and Anti-Racist Theatre practice at the 2017, 2018, & 2019 TCG conferences, the 2017 & 2019 National Black Theatre Festival in Winston Salem, North Carolina, 2018 Black Theatre Network, and internationally at Goldsmith’s University in London. She has facilitated anti-racist theatre workshops at numerous institutions including Cambridge University, Playwrights Horizons Theater School at NYU, Yale, Connecticut College, Howard University, and the National Theater Institute. She also spoke at the 2019 Humana Festival Share Your Spark Panel.
Feeling strongly that traditional theatre training is harmful to marginalized communities she created the Cross-Cultural Collaborative Committee (CCCC) whose sole mission was to gather theatre professionals from diverse backgrounds to discuss issues in traditional training and potential solutions. The ideas shared in the CCCC helped Nicole to refine an inclusive method of theatre training and practices which she calls Conscientious Theatre Training. Nicole’s article, “Training With A Difference” was published in the January 2018 edition of American Theatre and calls for a shift in how theatre is taught.
She is a founding member of the HBC Playback Theatre Ensemble in Washington D.C. who at the time was the only all-female women of color playback ensemble in The United States and the founder of Creative Acts Learning Center LLC in Washington DC which provided workshops and seminars to actors in the Nation’s Capital. Ms. Brewer has worked at Duke Ellington School of the Arts, a premier performing arts high school in Washington D.C. as visiting faculty (acting). She is visiting faculty at the National Theater Institute (NTI). For seven and half years she had the distinct privilege to work as faculty in the theatre department of her alma mater Howard University. Nicole has also worked as adjunct faculty at Connecticut College, Northern Virginia Community College, and Montgomery College teaching acting and introduction to communications courses.
Nicole is a member of the 2018 artEquity cohort, VASTA, and Black Theatre Network. Directing credits: Ties that Bind at Catholic University, My America at Montgomery College, Milk Like Sugar at The Black Rep, Jonkonnu at Howard University, and Hair Chronicles DC Fringe Festival. Acting Theater Credits include: White Rabbit Red Rabbit Theater Alliance, For Colored Girls Colored Peoples Theater, In The Blood The Hegira, Tartuffe & Taming of the Shrew African American Shakespeare Company, Anton in Show Business Spreckels, and Gypsy and the Bully Door by Nina Mercer.
Nicole currently resides in Washington D.C. with her partner and three freakishly amazing kids.