Abby Zan embraces the intersections between the arts and civic engagement.  She is currently based in Washington, DC, where she works as the Connectivity Associate at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. She is a founding member of FYI: For Youth Inquiry, a Chicago collective that creates participatory theatre experiences that engage youth and their allies about sexual health and violence.   She has collaborated on a number of community-engaged productions, including the Women at War Project at Rivendell Theatre Ensemble and Student Body at Northwestern University. She trained in community-based theatre with Makhampom Theatre Group in Chiang Dao, Thailand, and at Northwestern University. Abby has worked as a teaching artist with Changing Worlds, Redmoon Theater, Actors Training Center, American Theater Company, and the Hartland Center in Salt Lake City. 

Abby Zan directs and curates performance events, creating with a love for the site-based, the immersive, and the multidisciplinary.   She is drawn to work that reimagines theatrical forms and conventions, and draws inspiration from a range of texts: poetry, non-fiction, ethnography, myth, music, literature, and more. Abby produced and curated original, multidisciplinary, immersive events with White Elephant in Chicago, and has directed scripted works, original adaptations, and devised pieces.

Abby Zan graduated in 2012 from Northwestern with a BA in Performance Studies and certificate in Devising and Adaptation.  She holds a certificate in Creative Placemaking from Ohio State University.    

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