National Council on the Arts Members

Ben Donenberg (Los Angeles, CA)

Ben Donenberg is the Founder and Producing Artistic Director of Shakespeare Festival/LA, a 20-year-old, award-winning, community-based arts organization.

Donenberg has performed as an actor on and off Broadway, on television, and in film. He has been a unit producer for feature films, and produced and directed more than 25 professional, theatrical productions. He annually stages a series of Shakespeare readings, hosted by Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks, that features many of the world's finest actors and actresses.

He has lectured on theater aesthetics for the University of Southern California, at the Huntington Library's teacher training seminars, and with Shakespeare Festival/LA's Will Power to Schools teacher trainings. He has taught Shakespeare performance at the California Institute for the Arts.

Shakespeare Festival/LA's "Will Power for Youth" was recognized as an exemplary program for disadvantaged youth with the 2003 Coming Up Taller award from the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

Donenberg has served as a theater grants panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and for the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.

National Endowment for the Arts · an independent federal agency
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