Gigi Bolt

Following a career focus on government funding and policy-making for the arts, Gigi Bolt is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor in Columbia University’s graduate Theatre Management and Producing Concentration, and a theatre and musical theatre program consultant with an emphasis on new work. Recent projects include work with NAMT’s Frank Young Fund for New Musicals, Global Entertainment/Japan Society, the National New Play Network, the Network of Ensemble Theatres, Theatre Development Fund, Musical Theatre Matters (UK), the Mellon Foundation, and the Humana Festival.  

From 1995 to 2006 she served as Director of Theatre and Musical Theatre at the National Endowment for the Arts, where she advised the agency on policy related to the fields, and oversaw the review of applications from 500 theaters and musical theaters across the country. She also created and worked with discipline-based agency initiatives including the NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights, the NEA/TCG Career Development Programs for Directors and Designers, the NEA/USC Arts Journalism Institute, and Shakespeare in American Communities. In 2006-2007 she served as Interim Executive Director of Theatre Communications Group. Prior to joining the Endowment, she was Director of the Theatre Program at the New York State Council on the Arts. Her tenure at the Council was preceded by work as an actor including five seasons as a member of the company of the Cleveland Play House. 

She serves on the William Inge Festival Foundation Board, Ford’s Theatre’s Advisory Council, the Rhinebeck Writers Retreat Sounding Board, TCG’s Programming Council, as an NNPN Ambassador, and on the Emeritus Boards of SITI Company and Theatre Communications Group. She has served as speaker, guest lecturer or panelist for many organizations including the Commercial Theatre Institute, Actors Equity Association, New Dramatists, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Yale University, New York University, the New School, the Broadway League, the South Carolina Arts Council, and the Arts Community Alliance of Dallas. 

She is the recipient of a Chairman’s Distinguished Service Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lee Reynolds Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women, the La MaMa E.T.C. Silver Bell Award, and the Alumni Honor Citation and Alumni Merit Award from the University of Kansas where she was inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame. She also studied at the Goodman Theatre School, the Sorbonne, the University of Vienna, and in the national theatre academies of Poland, Czechoslovakia and the former Yugoslavia.