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About

At the Lyric we know seeing live performance coupled with training in the arts can transform a young person’s life. Our in-school and summer programs in dance, theatre, music, and creative writing are supported by the belief that every person has a unique and important story to share. Just as Shakespeare wrote contemporary, relevant dramas for Elizabethan England, increased involvement in the arts can reflect the joys and struggles of our communities in new, compelling ways. 

 

 

Meet The Team  

 

 

Denise Kumani Gantt

Director of Education

dgantt@mdlyric.org

Denise Kumani Gantt is currently the director of education at the Lyric. She serves on the events committee for Maryland Citizens for the Arts, the BAEI Advisory Committee and the Urban Arts Leadership Council. Her plays and performance works include meditations/from the ash, winner of the Artscape’s Best Play Contest; anatomy/lessons part of Penumbra Theater’s Cornerstone Project, and The Gift, which in 2011 received staged readings at ACT (Seattle) and New York’s Drama League. In January 2013, her solo work, Eve’s Lament, was part the Lekhana Literary Weekend in Bangalore, India. In 2003, her collection of poetry, conjuring the dead, was awarded the Maryland Emerging Writers Award. Gantt is a founding member of the theater ensemble Medusa Speaks, is an adjunct professor at Coppin State University, and holds an MFA in Theatre from Towson University.

 

Ebony Evans

Education Specialist

eevans@mdlyric.org

Ebony Evans is a musician, performing artist, arts instructor, lightworker, and radical activist centering her work around the freedom, agency, empowerment, and self-expression of Black women and femmes. Ebony has become a consistent leader of rallies, organizing and  protests in alignment with the Say Her Name movement to rail against the culture of misogynoir pervading our society today. Ebony holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Urban Arts Theater from Coppin State University where she received an award in her senior year for outstanding achievement in performance. Ebony has over 10 years of experience in teaching; cultivating arts programs, summer camps, workshops, classes and more. As a teaching artist she curated a successful African Folklore program at Creative Alliance that taught the importance of connecting youth to their cultural identity, how to enhance their performance skills and to recognize their purpose. In 2018 she became a Community Art Collaborative fellow at Maryland Institute College of the Art and served as Resident Artist and Education Coordinator at the Lyric Performing Arts Center. In 2021, Ebony was promoted to Education Specialist at the Lyric Performing Arts Center. Ebony’s work has been highlighted in media outlets such as; WYPR, Mic, The Baltimore Sun, The Baltimore Beat, Baltimore Magazine, Bmore Art and more.