Founding Executive Director

Shantez M. "Shae" Tolbut is a Stage Manager/Playwright/Poet/Arts Administrator/Educator/ Practitioner who was born and raised in the South Chicagoland area. There, she grew a love for the performing arts as a little girl immersed in music and poetry. With her father being a disabled Vietnam veteran and her mother being physically handicapped with Autism, she is committed to equitable, inclusionary social justice and changing the world through un-gatekeeping knowledge and using the performing arts as a tool for social change. 

Shantez holds a double BA in Communication, Media & Theatre and Women’s and Gender Studies with a minor in Vocal Music from Northeastern Illinois University.  She also holds a MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Dramatic Writing from St. Francis College in Brooklyn, NY. 

Shantez has worked within urban education and theatre domestically and internationally over the past 8 years. Shantez has worked and performed in some of the most renowned theatres, venues and festivals in the industry including The Public Theatre, National Black Theater, Black Ensemble Theater, Signature Theater, BAAD, Trilogy Opera Company, INTAR, The Matrix Theater, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Sidewalk Cafe, MIST Harlem, Ashford & Simpson’s Sugar Bar, Village Underground, New York Theatre Workshop, New York Musical Theatre Festival and the United Solo Theatre Festival. She is also the 2022 recipient of the Lorraine Hansberry Theater Writing award and scholarship. 

Shantez is currently a visiting Stage Manager and Script Reader for Live and In Color led by award-winning director Deverand Janki (Little Girl Blue).  She is the Dramaturg and Literary Manager of The Creative Co-Lab led by Founding Associate Artistic Director Brian Keyth Wilson. Most recently, she is the Associate Producer and Assistant Director for the show sTrapped written by award-winning playwright Bryan Keyth Wilson (For Colored Boyz) and Dr. Arelia Johnson at the 21st Annual Downtown Urban Arts Festival at Playwrights Horizons. She is also the Production Stage Manager on the world premiere of Black Mother Lost Daughter by Fedna Jacquet directed by Stevie Walker-Webb (Ain't No Mo) and produced by  Jonathan McCrory (Fat Ham) with the National Black Theater and The Flea Theater in New York City.  

Contact Email: Inquiries@blackstageeverything.com