Shoshanah Tarkow

Theatre Director, Multimedia Artist

Shoshanah Tarkow (she/her) is a New York based theatre director, educator, and multimedia artist. Shoshanah received her BFA in Theatre Studies from Adelphi University and her MA in Performance Studies from New York University Tisch School of the Arts.

Shoshanah is an adjunct professor in the Department of Theatre at Adelphi University, where she teaches Scene Study, Stanislavski, Viewpoints, and Laban techniques. Additionally, Shoshanah has developed a series of interactive experiences for Adelphi University: an augmented reality poetry scavenger hunt and a virtual election simulator. In the Fall of 2022, Shoshanah collaborated with artists at St. Ann’s Warehouse and Little Amal Walks New York, to create an opportunity for Adelphi students to engage with the Amal puppet. Most recently, Shoshanah created an original theatre piece with the Adelphi University first-year acting students called UNBOXING which explored hope, curiosity, and the paradoxes of both Pandora’s Box and Schrodinger’s Cat.

Shoshanah is currently a teaching artist with TADA! Youth Theater where she works with performers ages 4-18. For the past two summers Shoshanah has served as Associate Artistic Director of Andy’s Summer Playhouse in Wilton, New Hampshire.

Shoshanah has been an associate with ViDCo (Virtual Design Collective) since January 2021. In that capacity, Shoshanah has served as Artistic Project Manager for Geffen Stayhouse's world premiere of Jared Mezzocchi's SOMEONE ELSE’S HOUSE; and assisted with virtual and hybrid productions for BAM, Ars Nova, and TheaterWorks Hartford. Additionally, Shoshanah has had the honor of working on the virtual filming for seasons 2 & 3 of Paula Vogel’s Bard at the Gate. Outside of her work with ViDCo, Shoshanah has worked professionally as a projection designer, video editor, and multimedia consultant for theatre companies in and around the New York area.

Shoshanah’s work exists in the interstices between science, technology, human connectivity, and art. Modeling her artistic practice after Karen Barad’s idea of “diffractive reading”, Shoshanah creates theatrical experiences which activate and embody dense scientific concepts through imaginative and fact-based narrative storytelling. One example of this is when Shoshanah was commissioned to write and direct an original mini-musical about human connectivity and quantum mechanics for Andy’s Summer Playhouse in Wilton, New Hampshire.

Growing up, Shoshanah loved museums and other interactive, hands-on learning environments. As an artist, she aims to create the kind of experiences that would have captivated her as a child. One example of this is when Shoshanah was commissioned by Adelphi University to make an interactive experience for the Walt Whitman Centennial Celebration on Long Island. She partnered with an augmented reality app called Wallame to create an AR poetry scavenger hunt around the University campus. Participants were invited to follow a virtual map to collect lines of text from ‘Leaves of Grass.’

When the COVID pandemic shut down most theatres and arts institutions, Shoshanah enthusiastically embraced the new landscape of digital theatre making. Choosing to focus on the shutdown as an opportunity for innovation, Shoshanah worked with like minded collaborators on creating new forms of theatrical storytelling. Shoshanah is passionate about continuing to push boundaries, challenging normative assumptions, and inventing novel modes of making theatre.

Fun fact: Shoshanah is one of the 0.01% of the global population to ever complete a full-length (140.6 mile) Ironman Triathlon (December 2019, Western Australia)!

OnWords

an augmented reality poetry scavenger hunt!

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The Digital Happening Project

a communal art experience

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Cast Your Vote!

an election simulator

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ViDCo

virtual design collective

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Grounded

projection designer

Short Films

video experiments & musings

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Adelphi's First Virtual Theater Production Hits National Stage, Earns Awards

Adelphi's First Virtual Theater Production Hits National Stage, Earns Awards

03/09/2021

Adelphi University's production of This Odd Geometry of Time, directed by Shoshanah Tarkow and written Megan Lohne, has just been named a Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival regional winner!

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Staged entirely on Zoom, Too Solid Flesh is a contemporary cross-pollination of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, & The Tempest

Staged entirely on Zoom, Too Solid Flesh is a contemporary cross-pollination of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, & The Tempest

05/15/2020

Live Zoom shows already feel “old school.” One young company’s new show pushes its boundaries!

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The Assembly's Deceleration Lab Continues with Nehassaiu DeGannes' Ebb & Lo'

The Assembly's Deceleration Lab Continues with Nehassaiu DeGannes' Ebb & Lo'

12/19/2020

Lab artist Nehassaiu deGannes and digital theater director/co-conceptual artist Shoshanah Tarkow have assembled over two dozen performing artists to collaborate on EBB & lo', a devised exegesis of the life and writing of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

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Adelphi Students, Alumni To Present Live Virtual Theater Production About Life In Quarantine

Adelphi Students, Alumni To Present Live Virtual Theater Production About Life In Quarantine

05/12/2020

Too Solid Flesh is an Adelphi family affair, written by Megan Lohne and directed by Shoshanah Tarkow, Adelphi alumne and creators of Like Fresh Skin, a theater company utilizing emerging technologies to create text-driven immersive theatrical experiences that champion untold feminist stories.

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Too Solid Flesh could easily become a cult favorite!

Too Solid Flesh could easily become a cult favorite!

05/20/2020

If you seek escape, entertainment, raw reality and the wit of Shakespeare himself, this is the moment for you. We invite you on the journey that is Too Solid Flesh.

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Reality Writes: Classic Literature, Now Augmented

Reality Writes: Classic Literature, Now Augmented

08/20/2020

Picture this: With the help of established digital content curator and Adelphi alum Shoshanah Tarkow, two Adelphi University computer-science seniors have turned an interactive poetry project into its own augmented reality, complete with massive commercial and educational upsides.

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Taking Poetry "OnWords": Adelphi Theater Alumna Creates Augmented Reality Scavenger Hunt for Fall Arts Festival

Taking Poetry "OnWords": Adelphi Theater Alumna Creates Augmented Reality Scavenger Hunt for Fall Arts Festival

09/25/2019

Shoshanah Tarkow is combining her love of poetry, immersive theater and technology to bring Walt Whitman's famous poetry to life at this year's Fall Arts Festival.

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NYU Alum Shoshanah Tarkow Creates Augmented Reality Scavenger Hunt for Fall Arts Festival

NYU Alum Shoshanah Tarkow Creates Augmented Reality Scavenger Hunt for Fall Arts Festival

09/28/2019

Shoshanah Tarkow, NYU Performance Studies M.A. '17, is combining her love of poetry, immersive theater and technology to bring Walt Whitman’s famous poetry to life at this year’s Fall Arts Festival.

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Words Like Fresh Skin: an Immersive Journey into the Life and Times of Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay

Words Like Fresh Skin: an Immersive Journey into the Life and Times of Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay

03/21/2019

Staged as an interactive, immersive, and multi-sensory theatrical experience, Words Like Fresh Skin invites audiences to experience Millay’s world first-hand: follow Vincent from her childhood in Maine to her formative years at Vassar; attend a roaring ‘20s soirée as her guest and watch as she rises to stardom among America’s literati; experience her world and her poetry with all your senses!

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Lab/Shul's PPPPPPurim 2018: Prophetic Post-Patriarchy Purim Performance Party

Lab/Shul's PPPPPPurim 2018: Prophetic Post-Patriarchy Purim Performance Party

03/12/2018

Last week’s PPPPPPurim 2018: Prophetic Post-Patriarchy Purim Performance Party at the House of Yes was a powerful night of patriarchy smashing, narrative flipping, boundary pushing, and radical ritual reinventing. Check out digital artist Shoshanah Tarkow’s inspiring reflections on her Digital Happening: #ImaginePostPatriarchy

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  • New York, NY, United States

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