Gail Burton

Gail A. Burton

Gail A. Burton grew up in East Harlem NYC and graduated Radcliffe College, Harvard University. She received her Master’s in Education with a specialization in Politics, Drama and Civic Engagement from Goddard College.  She is a member of Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory collective (TOPLAB). She began her work with Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory, Institute for Popular Education at the Brecht Forum in New York City in 2003 in the facilitator training internship. She had been working extensively with incarcerated women. Her practice of Theater of the Oppressed became a means of further clarifying and strengthening her political vision and skills as a community educator, and she soon contributed significantly to the growth and direction of Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory collective (TOPLAB) as a political project. She was developed as a Joker by Marie-Claire Picher, Julian and Augusto Boal. Burton has trained Jokers nationally through TOPLAB and internationally for the Federation of Senegalese Theater of the Oppressed groupsin Dakar, Senegal. 

ART

Burton performed with Medea Project Theater for Incarcerated Women and founded the New Freedwoman Project.  She received the Cambridge Peace Award for her play, Muses, which created positive visibility for LGBTQA communities of African descent. Her work has been written about in the African American Review, ArtsMedia, Proscenium, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Boston Phoenix, Bay Windows, Bay State Banner. 

COMMUNITY

She was a member of the Boston Busing Desegregation Project focusing on narrative strategy and story collection focusing on participants 18-35. She was also a member of One Boston, a partnership between artsEmerson and the people of Boston to envision and foster performance, media, open dialogue, (art)making, and creative thinking for everyone in Boston, everywhere in Boston.

TEACHING

Burton has been on faculty at Roxbury Community College, Bunker Hill Community College, City University of New York, Trinity College, University of Massachusetts, Boston and Emerson College where she received a Presidential Curricular Innovation Award for a partnership with BBDP and a Part time Faculty Professional Development grant to support her work in Senegal. She has also delivered workshops at Harvard College and Brown University. 

She co-lead the Civil Rights Educator’s Institute for the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site from 2011-2016.