KenYatta Rogers

KenYatta Rogers joins UMD as an assistant professor of theater. His primary area of focus is applying embodied theater practices from the African diaspora to actor training for the 21st century.

Rogers earned an M.F.A. in acting from the University of Pittsburgh. After teaching at South Carolina State University he taught at Montgomery College for over 20 years, where he was named the 2014 Maryland Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Rogers is an actor and director with over 70 regional theater productions and over 100 voiceover, film and television credits. He works in both traditional and devised performance forms resulting in offerings as varied as a multilingual presentation of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” (combining casts from South Africa, Sweden and the U.S.) to a production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” reimagined through the lens of race and gender. Rogers directed TDPS’ April 2022 production of Stick Fly.