The Old Globe Appoints Adena Varner as Director of Arts Engagement

A Theatre Arts Leader, Creator, Innovator, and Advocate of Equity and Diversity for Two Decades

The Old Globe is pleased to announce that Adena Varner has been appointed as its new Director of Arts Engagement. A theatre arts leader, creator, innovator, and advocate of diversity and equity in a career that has spanned 20 years, Varner will assume her position at the Globe beginning August 1, 2023. She will lead a department of more than 30 employees and teaching artists that engages tens of thousands of people in neighborhoods around San Diego in theatre and theatre-related programming.

Varner comes to The Old Globe from St. Louis, where she most recently was the Director of Learning and Community Engagement at The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. Native to Baltimore, Maryland, she was also the Director of Learning and Social Accountability at Baltimore Center Stage before joining The Rep in 2020. She is a playwright, producer, director, performer, and educator committed to advocating for equity and diversity in the arts and increasing access to art for all children. She is a member of Theatre for Young Audiences and the Educational Theatre Association. Varner received her B.F.A. in Theatre from University of Maryland, College Park and her M.A. in Theatre Education from The Catholic University of America. Her directing credits at The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis include Tomás and the Library Lady, The Glowy Snowy Day, The Last Fresh Start, and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. She acted in Center of Creative Arts’s production of The Wolves.

“The Old Globe’s arts engagement programming is central to the life of this great company,” said Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director Barry Edelstein . “Our work bringing theatre and theatre-related activities to communities throughout San Diego is an expression of our commitment to the idea that this art form matters, and that it impacts our city and its people in positive and beautiful ways. That AdenaVarner will be joining us to lead our efforts in this area is a great joy. Adenais one of our country’s most thoughtful and talented practitioners of community-oriented theatre. In her previous posts she demonstrated remarkable innovation and creativity as she built meaningful and lasting programs. She will bring to San Diego her considerable strategic acumen, leadership ability, charisma, and, most of all, abundant warmth. Adenais a passionate believer in the theatre’s power to make a difference in individual lives and to foster greater understanding between people. She will take the Globe’s nationally renowned work to a new level of achievement. I am thrilled to welcome her to our team and our city.”

“I am humbled and beyond thrilled to join the great legacy of The Old Globe. What a privileged opportunity I have, to lock arms with new colleagues and partners, as we serve the beautiful and culturally rich community of San Diego and its surrounding regions,” said The Old Globe’s newly appointed Director of Arts Engagement Adena Varner

The Tony Award–winning The Old Globe is one of the country’s leading professional not-for-profit regional theatres. Now in its 88th year, the Globe is San Diego’s flagship performing arts institution, and it serves a vibrant community with theatre as a public good. Under the leadership of Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director Barry Edelstein and the Audrey S. Geisel Managing Director Timothy J. Shields, The Old Globe produces a year-round season of 16 productions of classic, contemporary, and new works on its three Balboa Park stages, including its internationally renowned Shakespeare Festival. More than 250,000 people annually attend Globe productions and participate in the theatre’s artistic and arts engagement programs. Its nationally prominent Arts Engagement Department provides an array of participatory programs that make theatre matter to more people in neighborhoods throughout the region. Humanities programs at the Globe and around the city broaden the community’s understanding of theatre art in all its forms. The Globe also boasts a range of new play development programs with professional and community-based writers, as well as the renowned The Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre Program. Numerous world premieres—such as 2014 Tony Award winner for Best Musical A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, Bright Star, The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! —have been developed at The Old Globe and have gone on to highly successful runs on Broadway and at regional theatres across the country.

“Well Well Well” at BFree studio in La Jolla through June 10 About the Exhibition: (excerpt from a narrative by Art Historian and Educator, Sally Yard, PhD)

There are threads that weave through the work of April Banks, June Edmonds and Glen Wilson. Edmonds paints lush, meditative abstractions, Banks has created architectonic works in public spaces; photographs veiled in encaustic; fused glass and metal images. Wilson melds street photography and found objects and materials ranging from salvaged chain link gates embellished with metal arabesques to cymbals and broken records. In some of their works, each of the three takes as a touchstone one neighborhood or another. In works ranging from geometric abstractions to convergences of objects found in alleys to artifacts, all have in one way or another served as chroniclers, archivists or narrators of indomitable, complex lives that are full of intention and success—daunted by obstacles and triumphant nonetheless. Their works variously become a meditation, an invocation, recasting absence as presence, erasure as memory, the past as the platform from which futures will be formed. It is a project of alternative mappings. The exhibition at Bfree entails a return to place, Edmonds completed her undergraduate degree at San Diego State University and Wilson his MFA at the University of California San Diego. The works of Edmonds, Banks and Wilson are generous. Clear-eyed and exacting in uncovering what has been hidden, they propose grace and beauty and reflectiveness.

Well, Well, Well can be viewed at BFREE Studio through June 10, Tues-Sun 11am-5pm and anytime by appointment. Additionally - there are three special events

Saturday, May 13th

7pm - 9pm - Artist Q & A

Join us for an artist talk! June Edmonds, April Banks, and Glen Wilson will speak about their works, their artistic process, and their latest exhibition. This is a fantastic opportunity to engage with the artists, and their works

First Friday Artwalk La JollaFriday, May 5th and Friday, June

2nd 4pm - 7pm

Bfree is a part of La Jolla’s First Friday Art Walk where over 16 local galleries open their doors for extended evening hours to art lovers.

About The Artists

Glen Wilson

Glen Wilson is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, California. With roots stretching back to documentary and street photography, his body of work includes sculpture, assemblage, installation, and filmmaking. Recent works layer imagery with found and constructed materials that encourage the viewer to engage the work’s physical and conceptual qualities. He locates his practice at intersections of personal and communal identities, sites of collective memory, and offers alternative mappings of place.

The series entitled “GateKeeping” presents original photography woven into the grid of chainlink gates salvaged from his Los Angeles neighborhood of Venice Beach and similar communities across the country. His work foregrounds voice, visibility, and resilience in places where daily tensions around currency and equity test the fabric of long-standing neighborhoods.

Concurrent with his art practice, Wilson has worked as a photographer on more than forty feature films, and has directed short form films and music videos. “Revolution By Design: Spike Lee x Emory Douglas”, presents a kitchen table dialogue between the artist and filmmaker, within the historical context of the struggle to protect black lives. “Betye Saar / Present Tense” and “RE: Henry Taylor” offer lyrical glimpses of each artist at work in their studios.

April Banks

April Banks is an LA based artist and creative strategist with deep ancestral roots in Virginia.

Her hybrid practice sits intentionally between image, space, and experience. Recent works from encaustic to public art time travel through archives and memories using the language of pattern, text and glyphs to examine place.

Her work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago,Minneapolis, Cleveland, Daytona Beach, New Hampshire, Maryland, New York, Switzerland,Colombia, Brazil, United Arab Emirates, Senegal and Ethiopia. Her work is in the collection of the Getty Museum, the City of Santa Monica and private collections. April was selected for a 2022 Fellowship for Visual Artist Award from the California Communi- ty Foundation. Her recent public art includes commissions in Santa Monica, CA, Sun Village, CA and San Bernardino County, CA and Washington, DC.

April is also the producer of Tea Afar, a nomadic storytelling experience, launched in 2016. Tea Afar was conceived as a salve—bringing us together across borders. She has produced events in Los Angeles, Montreal, Sri Lanka and San Francisco that center first person stories and hospitality traditions from around the world.

June Edmonds

June Edmonds uses abstract painting to explore how color, repetition, movement, and balance can serve as conduits to spiritual contemplation and interpersonal connection to her African-American roots. Exploring the psychological construct of skin color or tone through pattern and abstract painting has proven to be a revealing gesture and these ideas are explored in her two ongoing series: the Energy Wheel Paintings inspired by her meditation practice and her Flag Paintings, which explore the alignment of multiple identities such as race, nationality, gender, or political leanings.

June Edmonds was born in Los Angeles, where she lives and works. Edmonds received her MFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, and a bachelor’s degree from San Diego State University. She also attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and is the recipient of the 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship, the California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists, inaugural

2020 AWARE Prize, presented by the French non-profit Archive of Women Artists Research and Exhibitions; a 2018 City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Grant (COLA) and Exhibition at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery; a California Arts Council Individual Artist Grant. Edmonds has done residencies in Vermont at the Vermont Studio Center in 2022 and Paducah Artist Residency in Kentucky in 2017. In 2023 she will be going to Ucross in Wyoming and MacDowell in New Hampshire.

About BFREE Studio

Where Creativity, Culture and Community Meet

Where Creativity, Culture and Community Meet

BFree Studio is an Art Gallery in La Jolla, CA. We are located in a prime spot at 7857 Girard Avenue in La Jolla. We are open Tuesday-Sunday, 11am5pm, and open anytime by appointment. We aim to foster an environment for emerging and mid-career artists to have a space to showcase their artwork and engage with the community. Artisans of all kinds are welcome. We absolutely love interesting, fun, and unusual pieces. We look to provide an opportunity for all artists to share their work and interact with collectors in a prime location. Expect variety in the artists featured and a breadth of exhibitions rotating every two weeks. www.bfreestudio.net