Lisa Biggs, PhD, is an actor, playwright, and performance studies scholar. She currently serves as the John Atwater and Diana Nelson assistant professor of the Arts and Africana Studies at Brown University. Her first book, The Healing Stage: Black Women, Incarceration, and the Art of Transformation, investigates the impact of theatre programs for women incarcerated in the US and in South Africa. Prior to joining the Brown faculty, she worked as an assistant professor at Michigan State University and had a long career as an actor and playwright. Her stage credits include productions at the Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, Living Stage Theatre Company, ETA Creative Arts Foundation, Woolly Mammoth, and Lookingglass Theatre. Her original stage plays have been produced at the Drew University, the National Black Theatre Festival, Links Hall, Shadowbox Theatre, Cultural Odyssey, the NY Hip Hop Theatre Fest, DC Arts Center, and the Baltimore Theatre Project. Her creative work and scholarship has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships, including from Brown’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, the DC Arts Council/National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ellen Stone Belic Foundation. Her most recent play, After/Life, tells the story of how women and girls’ lit up and lived through the 1967 Detroit rebellion, and was awarded a 2017 Knight Foundation Detroit Arts Challenge grant.