Lakeside School

by Aicha S-K ’27

Garrett Allen, sometimes known as GARE, is a multidisciplinary artist who centers their work on liberation, a term encompassing both individual expansion and freedom for all. They have performed at new-work festivals and at an eclectic range of contemporary and experimental art and music spaces across New York and Brooklyn. They have also created and directed performances in internationally recognized settings, including the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center and Williamstown Theatre Festival. For four years, they directed work at LEGACY: A Black Queer Production Collective, an organization they co-founded in 2020.

I was a small, awkward freshman and didn't really know my place. Acting in my first play was the first time I realized I have a voice that matters. That, actually, we all matter. — Garrett Allen ’12

At Lakeside, Allen discovered theater when they were mistakenly placed in a drama class. Alban Dennis encouraged them not to drop the class. By the end of high school, Allen had worked on most of the fall plays and acted in two musicals. They wrote their college application essay about “Burying Your Brother in the Pavement,” the first play they had acted in at Lakeside. At Harvard, planning to pursue medicine, they majored in neuroscience and psychology — but minored in drama and dance. They went on to earn an MFA in directing from the School of Drama at Yale University.

Allen continues to embody liberation in their work, whether writing choreography or directing anti-war Brecht plays or teaching dramaturgy to New York University undergrads. “I think a lot of my work pushes at the boundaries of not just capital-P plays and capital-T theater,” they say, “but what it is to create live experiences for people.”