Margo Hall

Title: 
Continuing Lecturer: Acting & Directing
About: 

Margo Hall is an award-winning actor, director, playwright, and educator, as well as the Artistic Director of Lorraine Hansberry Theatre (LHT). She was awarded the 2021 Kenneth Rainin Fellowship in Theater and listed as one of the YBCA 100 honorees for 2020.

She was last seen onstage in Josephine’s Feast by Star Finch for Campo Santo and Magic Theatre. Other acting credits include Black Odyssey*, Fences, Twelfth Night, A Raisin in the Sun, A Winter’s Tale, American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose, and SPUNK for California Shakespeare Theater; JAZZ, Skeleton Crew, Gem of the Ocean, Fences, and Seven Guitars for Marin Theatre Company; Ah! Wilderness, Once in a Lifetime, and Marcus or the Secret of Sweet* for American Conservatory Theater;Exit Strategy and Trouble in Mind* for Aurora Theatre Company; Marcus Gardley’s A World in a Woman’s Hands for Shotgun Players; Barbecue* and MF with a Hat for San Francisco Playhouse.

Some of Margo's acting credits for Campo Santo** include Dennis Johnson’s Nobody Move, Chinaka Hodge's Mirrors in Every Corner, Jessica Hagedorn's Fe in the Desert and Stairway to Heaven, Naomi Iizuka’s Hamlet: Blood in the Brain, 17 Reasons (Why), and Polaroid Stories, the world premiere of Philip Kan Gotanda's floating weeds, Jose Rivera's References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, Octavio Solis' Bethlehem, and Erin Cressida Wilson's Hurricane. She has toured France with Word for Word as Missie May in The Gilded Six-Bits by Zora Neale Hurston and as Oceola in The Blues I’m Playing by Langston Hughes.

Margo’s film credits include Louise in Bottled Spirits, Leslie White in All Day and a Night, Nancy in Blindspotting, and the voice of Melba in Pixar’s SOUL. TV credits include Nancy in Blindspotting (STARZ), Helen in Chances (Hulu), and Marsha Watkins and Blind Witness on Nash Bridges (CBS).

Margo debuted as a theater director with Campo Santo's world premiere of Joyride, from the novel Grand Avenue by Greg Sarris, which won the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Best Original Script; the SF Weekly Black Box Awards for Best Production, Best Ensemble, and Best Director; the Drama-Logue Award for Best Production and Best Ensemble in Northern California; the Backstage Garland Award for Best Production and Best Ensemble in Northern California; and the Bay Guardian Goldie Award for Stage. She recently directed Soulful Christmas for LHT, Nollywood Dreams for San Francisco Playhouse, and Hieroglyph (a co-production for LHT and San Francisco Playhouse). Other directing credits include Thurgood and Rejoice! (LHT); How I Learned What I Learned (LHT, Ubuntu, and Marin Theatre Company co-production); Barbecue, Red Velvet, and The Story (San Francisco Playhouse); andSonny’s Blues by James Baldwin, which toured France with Word for Word. With Ellen Sebastian Chang, she co-directed the Pulitzer Prize Finalist Bulrusher by Eisa Davis for Shotgun Players. She also directed Once on This Island, Hamlet, Blood in the Brain, SPUNK, The Trojan Women, It Falls, Ragtime, and A Streetcar Named Desire for Chabot College; and Polaroid Stories and In the Red and Brown Water for UC Berkeley.

Margo completed her first writing project in 2005 with the world premiere of The People’s Temple at Berkeley Repertory Theater, which won the Glickman Award for Best New Play in the Bay Area. She was part of a collaborative team of four writers who used interviews of survivors and archival material to form a play exploring the People’s Temple movement and the tragic ending at Jonestown. The play went on from Berkeley Rep to the Perseverance Theater in Juneau, Alaska, and the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Margo was also part of the acting ensemble. In 2013, she premiered her semi-biographical piece, Be Bop Baby, A Musical Memoir, at Z Space, featuring the 15-piece Marcus Shelby Orchestra, which chronicled her life growing up in Detroit with her jazz musician stepfather who was with Motown. The lyrics and book are by Margo Hall, with original music composed by Marcus Shelby. She recently co-created and directed LHT's world premiere production of In The Evening by the Moonlight, a play by Traci Tolmaire about Lorraine Hansberry with Nina Simone and James Baldwin.


* Theatre Bay Area Best Actress recipient

** Margo is a founding member of Campo Santo, a multicultural theater company in San Francisco

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