Campus Directory

Pronouns she/her/hers

Division Arts Division

Department/ College/ Unit Department of Performance, Play & Design (PPD)

Title Distinguished Professor of Theater Arts

Affiliation Faculty

Faculty Type Regular Faculty

Primary Office Location Theater Arts J Offices
J-13

Office Hours for Students/ Office Hours By appointment, please email ssolt@ucsc.edu

Mail Stop Theater Arts Center

Biography, Education and Training

Overview

Susan Solt’s career is distinguished by her rare ability to bridge scholarship, artistic practice, and institutional leadership. From producing acclaimed feature films in Hollywood to commissioning groundbreaking theater at CalArts, from pioneering creative entrepreneurship at UC Santa Cruz to advancing scholarship on Shakespeare and race, Solt’s work reflects a sustained commitment to artistic innovation, and interdisciplinary inquiry. She profoundly believes in the social justice mission of this campus.

Research and Teaching Interests
Theater and Film Producing, Creative Entrepreneurship, Dramaturgy, Theater History and Dramatic Literature, Shakespeare.

Education and Training 

PHD History (Atlantic World Cluster), UCLA
MFA Theater Administration, Yale School of Drama
MA African American Studies, UCLA
MA Organization Development and Leadership, Fielding Graduate University 

AB, World Theater (ILP), Indiana University, Bloomington
National Academy for Dramatic Art, Warsaw, Poland
Smith College

Career as an Educator and Academic Administrator
Susan Solt is Distinguished Professor of Theater Arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She served as UCSC's Dean of the Arts from 2016-2019. In 2018, she was named a "top-tier" national arts educator by Variety. Solt’s current scholarly research and creative work focus on Shakespeare and race, particularly Othello, as a signifying racial figure. Her latest research project is a book titled The Biography of Othello, A Signifying Life that captures Othello's value in the history of the construction of race. She is also working on a screenplay based on her Shakespeare research entitled Dark Lady and a book based on her teaching of professional practice titled The Artist as Entrepreneur. 

As former Dean of the Arts Division at UC Santa Cruz, Solt established a new model for graduate arts education, the Studio Lab. Her idea was to recruit celebrated, active artists deeply engaged with professional practice to the campus as permanent faculty to work with graduate students in a lab setting, integrating these students into the faculty artists' professional projects as collaborators. Solt successfully recruited international figures dedicated to innovation and social justice to establish these Studio Labs. First, Marianne Weems, theater and opera director and founder of the award-winning New York-based theater company The Builders Association. And, then, Sir Isaac Julien, the world-renowned Afro-British installation artist and filmmaker, and his creative partner, curator, Mark Nash.

Before coming to UC Santa Cruz as Dean, Solt was on the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) faculty, where she taught from 1995 to 2016. Her pioneering, interdisciplinary course Entrepreneurship: The Artist as Entrepreneur was a longtime favorite among students across all the arts, especially students of color, looking to develop cutting-edge careers. At CalArts, Solt served for eight years as Dean of the School of Theater. As Dean, she established the MFA Producing Program and the MFA Writing for Performance Program, recruiting the African American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks to serve as inaugural director. Under Solt’s leadership, CalArts Theater School was ranked by US News among the top-10 drama programs in the country and was lauded for its diversity by The NY Times.

Visiting Researcher in African American Studies at UCLA (2023–2024). 

Visiting Researcher at the UC Santa Barbara Interdisciplinary Humanities Center (2020–2021, 2021–2022).

Professional Career as a Film and Theater Producer
Prior to entering academia, Susan Solt had a prominent career as a film producer and studio executive. She began her film career working for Academy Award-winning director Alan J. Pakula (To Kill a Mockingbird, Klute, All the President's Men) as Artistic Coordinator on Sophie's Choice, starring Meryl Streep. Streep won an Oscar for her performance, with Solt serving as the actress's Polish language dialect coach. Solt learned Polish as a Fulbright-Hays Fellow in Poland in the late 70s, studying acting with the legendary avant-garde director Jerzy Grotowski and directing at the Warsaw National Academy for Dramatic Art.

After Sophie's Choice was released in 1982, Solt worked exclusively for eight years as Alan Pakula's producer and vice president of New York-based Pakula Productions. Following her producing tenure with Pakula (Dream Lover, Orphans, See You in the Morning), Solt led her own company and then served as Senior V-P of Production for Miramax Films, working with such artists as Alexander Payne and David O. Russell. As an independent producer for Warner Bros. in the early 90s, she produced the award-winning feature films Presumed Innocent, starring Harrison Ford and Doc Hollywood, starring Michael J. Fox.

While at CalArts, Susan Solt served as founding Artistic Director as founding Artistic Director/Producer of the ground-breaking Center for New Theater (renamed Center for New Performance in 2006). Her signature work as a producer of professional theater at CalArts was an all-female, multicultural production of Shakespeare's King Lear. This site-specific production played the 2003 Frictions Festival in Dijon, France, with the eminent black actress Fran Bennett (Roots, In the Heat of the Night) in the title role. While at CalArts, Solt also commissioned a reimagined production of the Chinese classical drama Peach Blossom Fan directed by the celebrated Chinese director Chen Shi-zheng (Peony Pavilion, The Ring Cycle). Peach Blossom Fan opened REDCAT -- CalArts then new, downtown L.A. performance space, to great acclaim in 2003.

Academic and Career Recognition

Honors

• Named a “Top-Tier Educator” for Film and Entertainment by Variety Magazine (April 25, 2018)

Awards

• NAACP THEATRE IMAGE AWARD (Beverly Hills/Hollywood Chapter), King Lear, Best Produced Play, Susan Solt Producer (2002)

Grants

• UCLA Graduate Summer Research Mentorship Program Grant (2011)
• Institute of American Cultures/UCLA Bunche Center Research Grant in Ethnic Studies
  • (London, Summer 2008)
• UCLA Department of History Research Travel Stipend (Summer 2008)
• Asian Cultural Council, The Rockefeller Foundation, Travel Grant to South Korea (1998)
  • Sponsor: Dongsoong Arts Center
• Numerous Faculty Development Grants, California Institute of the Arts (2003-16)

Fellowships

• UCLA Regents Fellowship and Stipend (2007-08)
• IREX (International Research and Exchange Board), Research Fellowship (1981-82)
• Bates Resident Fellow, Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University (1980-81)
• National Endowment for the Arts, Resident Fellow, International Program (Summer 1980)
• Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship, Polish
  • Russian and East European Studies Institute, Graduate School,
  • Indiana University Bloomington (1979 -1980)
    • (Declined in order to attend Yale Drama School)
• Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, Poland, (1978–79)

Publications 

Susan Solt's current research and creative work focus on Shakespeare and race, particularly the figure of Othello as a signifier of racial representation. Her essay, “Parallel Lives Sharing a Frame: Frederick Douglass and Othello—A Meditation on Isaac Julien’s Lessons of the Hour”, was published in Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour—Frederick Douglass (2022), alongside contributions by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Paul Gilroy. The book won the 2023 Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award.

Work as Book Editor and Literary Executor

Solt is the younger daughter of celebrated concrete poet Mary Ellen Solt and serves as literary executor of her estate. In 2024, she edited and published The Collected Poems of Mary Ellen Solt (Primary Information), a comprehensive volume of her mother’s work. A review in The Nation (March 2025) praised the collection as “a visually stunning and beautiful entry point into the world of concrete poetry,” noting its significance as a definitive presentation of Mary Ellen Solt’s pioneering contributions to visual poetics.

Feature Film Credits

Doc Hollywood (1991) — Producer
Warner Bros.; directed by Michael Caton-Jones; starring Michael J. Fox, Woody Harrelson, Bridget Fonda, and Julie Warner. 
  
Presumed Innocent (1990) — Executive Producer
Warner Bros.; directed by Alan J. Pakula; starring Harrison Ford, Raul Julia, Brian Dennehy, and Bonnie Bedelia. 

See You in the Morning (1989) — Producer
​Warner Bros.; Directed by Alan J. Pakula; starring Jeff Bridges, Farrah Fawcett, Alice Krige, Macaulay Culkin, and Lukas Haas.      

Orphans (1988) — Co-Producer
Lorimar Pictures; directed by Alan J. Pakula; starring Albert Finney, Matthew Modine, and Kevin Anderson.     

Dream Lover (1986) — Associate Producer
MGM/UA; directed by Alan J. Pakula; starring Kristy McNichol; winner of the Grand Prix at the Avoriaz International Fantastic Film Festival.   

 
Sophie’s Choice (1982) — Coordinator for Director Alan J. Pakula ITC Entertainment; starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline. During location filming in Zagreb, Solt also served as Meryl Streep’s Polish dialect coach. 

Selected Theater Producing Credits

What to Wear? (2006) — Commissioning Producer
Richard Foreman; World Premiere, REDCAT at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles.

Peach Blossom Fan (2004) — Commissioning Producer
Conceived and directed by Chen Shi-Zheng, with music and lyrics by Stephin Merritt; World Premiere, REDCAT at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

King Lear (2002) — Producer
Multicultural, all-female, site-specific production directed by Travis Preston and starring Fran Bennett as Lear; winner of the NAACP Theatre Image​Award for Best Produced Play and subsequently presented in Dijon, France​ ​at the Frictions Festival.

In the Blood (2002) — Producer
Suzan-Lori Parks; West Coast Premiere, with the playwright in residence; CalArts Center for New Theater. 

Bad Behavior (2000) — Producer
Richard Foreman and Sophie Haviland; World Premiere, CalArts Center for New Theater; named one of the Los Angeles Times’ ten best productions of the 2000 theatre season.

Theater of the Ears / Théâtre des oreilles (1999) — Producer
World Premiere of Valère Novarina’s bilingual work; subsequently presented at the Henson International Festival of Puppet Art, Festival d’Avignon, and the Biennale Internationale des Arts de la Marionnette in Paris.

Courses THEA 61A Ancient and Medieval Drama
THEA 61B Drama from the Renaissance to the Modern Age
THEA 61C The Birth of the Modern: Drama and Performance After the Renaissance
THEA 163A Shakespeare