Writer; theater maker; arts administrator
I believe that how we make and share work is just as important as the work itself. It’s crucial that arts spaces are accessible and anti-racist, and that artists and arts administrators are paid fairly for our work.
Bio
Rukmini Girish (she/her) is a writer, performer and arts administrator who grew up in Chennai, India and lives in Chicago, USA. Her writing often focuses on identity and the ways we perform it. Her nonfiction has appeared in Essay Daily and Litro Magazine, and her solo show ABCD has been developed with Piven Theatre Workshop and the Chicago Theatre Marathon. She is working on her first book while occasionally telling stories and performing in storefront theater.
Rukmini was a 2021 Lambda Literary Fellow in Playwriting and a 2018 Luminarts Creative Writing Fellow. She has an MFA in Nonfiction from Columbia College Chicago and a BA in Creative Writing and Sociology from Augustana College.
Rukmini likes to joke that if Mariano’s had been hiring, she may never have worked in arts administration. In graduate school, she started working in a nonprofit theatre’s call center to pay the bills and… just kept going. While she’s very happy to have made the switch from sales to customer service, she’s now spent over 5 years talking to people about art and helping manage ticketing and front-of-house infrastructure. Along the way, she’s developed a strong commitment to accessibility of all sorts, pay equity and equitable organization structures.