About Roberta Emerson

Roberta Emerson is an award-winning Director, Actor, Producer, and Educator. She is currently serving as the Director of New Play Development at Orlando Shakes as well as a show director for Disney Live Entertainment. She is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a BFA in Acting and Theatre Management and New York University with an MFA in Acting.

 

She has worked as an actor and director in many regional theaters around the country, has done extensive voice-over, commercial, and film work, and has been a teaching artist in both the US and Europe.

 

Most recent directing credits include Apologies to Lorraine Hansberry (You Too, August Wilson) and Beauty and the Beast. Her production of Beauty and the Beast gained national acclaim and recognition from Disney Theatricals for its use of color-conscious and identity-conscious casting, something she is very dedicated to in her work and her activism in her community. As such she also serves on multiple IDEA committees, including at Orlando Shakes, as well as Co-Chair for the Shakespeare Theatre Association.  

 

Emerson is a Co-organizer and Theatre Relations Lead for Central Florida Entertainment Advocacy whose mission is to create a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive arts and entertainment community in Central Florida, where she currently lives, with her two daughters, Ava (9) and Mia (8).

 

Roberta serves as a board member of The Arts Bridge Charity, the National New Play Network, and the William Daniel Mills Theatre Company, the latter of which she acts as the Foundations VP of Programming and Artistic Direction.

Roberta has always been an advocate for equity, diversity, and inclusion in the arts. Through teaching, directing, and social advocacy,  she has been a soldier in making sure the arts community is as diverse as we aspire to be and, most importantly, making sure that the spaces where she works become those where all feel represented and welcomed.