Allison Watrous

Executive Director – Education & Community Engagement

Allison Watrous is the Executive Director of Education and Community Engagement at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, which has been her artistic home for nearly 30 years as an educator, actor and director. Allison and her team manage a wide variety of educational and community engagement programing, which serves more than 142,000 students and community members each year.

Allison is passionate about theatre, the power of arts in the community and about working with students of all ages. She is a dedicated acting teacher/facilitator and artful developer of new curriculum that explores using theatre as a springboard to teach various subjects. Allison has taught at The New Victory Theatre, The New York Film Academy, TADA!, The Buckley School, University of Northern Colorado, the National Theatre Conservatory, The International College of Beijing, University of Denver, Metro State University and Denver School of the Arts.

Acting work includes Kelly Young in Just Like Us, A Christmas Carol, John Brown’s Body and Scapin (Denver Center Theatre Company); Girls Only – The Secret Comedy of Women (DCPA Cabaret); Astronomical Sunset (Curious Theatre Company), and Savage in Limbo, Crimes of the Heart, American Notes, Talley’s Folly and Gidion’s Knot (Sis Tryst Productions)

Directing work includes Goodnight Moon, Corduroy, Elephant & Piggie’s – We Are in A Play, Little Red ( DCPA- Theater for Young Audiences) Shakespeare in the Parking Lot (DCPA Education) and Cult Following (DCPA -Off Center) Bus Stop (Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities), The Revolutionists, What the Constitution Means to Me and The White Chip (BETC), Brighton Beach Memoirs (Miners Alley Playhouse), Big Love, Constellations (University of Denver), and Failure: A Love Story, The Laramie Project, Eurydice, Wintertime, Arcadia and The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Denver School of the Arts)

Allison studied at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s National Theatre Institute, earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre at Drake University and a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts in Acting from the National Theatre Conservatory.