Ellen Sebastian Chang
Resident Artist
Ellen Sebastian Chang (she/her), is a storied figure in the performing arts, as a director and arts educator whose career spans 45 years. Her current projects include an ongoing collaboration with AfroFuturist Conjure artist Amara Tabor Smith and the Deep Waters Dance company’s House/Full of BlackWomen, a multi-year site-specific dance theater work that addresses the displacement, sex trafficking, and the creative well-being of Black women and girls in Oakland, California.
She has worked as an arts educator for 42 years: with technical direction/design classes at the Urban School of San Francisco, Magic Theaters Young California Writer’s Program, as an artist in Bay Area Public Schools via Young Audiences of Northern California and for the past 14 years with The World as it Could Be Human Rights Education Arts Program. She is currently teaching with Girl’s Project a program facilitated with East Side Arts Alliance.
Sebastian Chang was the cofounder and artistic director of Life on the Water, a national and internationally known presenting and producing organization at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center from 1986 through 1995. In the past five years she has collaborated with the HBO production "Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley"; Maya Gurantz "A Hole in Space (Oakland Redux)"; Sunhui Chang and Maya Gurantz "How to Fall in Love in A Brothel; Campo Santo and Ben Fisher’s “Candlestick” and served as the proud co-owner and general manager of FuseBOX Restaurant, created by chef Sunhui Chang in West Oakland, California.
She is a recipient of awards and grants from Creative Capital, MAP Fund, A Blade of Grass Fellowship in Social Engagement, Art Matters, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, NEA, Creative Work Fund, California Arts Council, Mazza Foundation and Zellerbach Community Arts Fund.