Tara's profile
Tara Cariaso is a performing artist and movement worker, binding her work as a director, educator, mask-making designer, performer, and writer. As a Baltimore-born Filipina-American, and a queer theatre artist, her aim is to create liberatory art making practices that center justice and joy.
As a thinker and writer in the theatre field, Tara publishes on the topics of colonial harms, and forging liberatory acting pedagogy that uplifts folks with marginalized identities. Two of her articles on the subject of Reimagining Commedia have been published by the online journal, HowlRound Theatre Commons, and she has a new article to be published in the Invisible Architectures journal at Towson University entitled, "Forging Liberatory Acting Processes". Influenced by the work of Jacques Lecoq, clown performance, and diverse mask traditions around the world, Tara reconsiders theatre practices with an eye for liberation, authentic embodiment in traditional American theatre education, and connecting social justice movements like restorative and transformative justice with art making.
In 2010, she created the Waxing Moon Masks Company putting Baltimore on the map as a pioneering community on the subject of theatrical masks and design, introducing area actors and audiences to larger stylized mask play. Since her company has created more than 200 original designs for clients around the world, and collaborated with companies and universities via workshops/residencies across the US. (See www.waxingmoonmasks.com).
Tara has been awarded two Maryland State Arts Council grants, a Baltimore BASE grant, and a Grit Fund grant, as well as membership in the NET/NEXT 2022 Cohort, and the WOCA Leadership through Mentorship 2020 cohort. She received her MFA from the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre with an emphasis on Ensemble-generated work, a BA from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in Drama (acting), and a certificate of achievement for mask making and performance instruction from the Sartori Centro Maschere e Strutture Gestuali in Abano Terme, Italy.
