DR. MASI ASARE is an artist and scholar working in music and theatre. She is associate professor of theatre and performance studies at Northwestern University, where she holds the McCormick Professorship for teaching excellence and directs the American Music Theatre Project. Beyond her roles as a composer, lyricist, dramatist, and academic, she works as a dramaturgical and cultural consultant for Broadway producers and leading arts institutions including the Houston Grand Opera. Masi is a sought-after public speaker who has lectured widely at venues including Princeton University, Stanford University, the Dramatists Guild Institute, The Columbus Museum, the Kenan Institute for the Arts at the University of North Carolina, and the Estill World Voice Symposium. She speaks on topics from musical theatre and popular music history to creative self-care and making a life in the arts.
She is a Tony-nominated songwriter whose work includes PARADISE SQUARE (Broadway, Chicago; Tony and Outer Critics Circle Award noms), MONSOON WEDDING (Off-Broadway, Delhi, Doha), ODYSSEY (The Acting Company national tour; SF Bay Area Critics Circle Award nom), THE FAMILY RESEMBLANCE (Eugene O’Neill Theater Center), and three shows published by Concord Theatricals—MIRROR OF MOST VALUE: A MS. MARVEL PLAY, SYMPATHY JONES: THE NEW SECRET AGENT MUSICAL, and MARIAN, OR THE TRUE TALE OF ROBIN HOOD: THE MUSICAL. Projects in development include DELTA BLUE and a commercial jukebox musical. As a composer and dramatist, she has been commissioned by Theatre Royal Stratford East, Broadway producers, and Marvel. Her voice students have performed on Broadway and in national and international tours.
Masi’s scholarly book Blues Mamas and Broadway Belters: Black Women, Voice, and the Musical Stage (Duke University Press, 2024), won the George Jean Nathan Prize for Dramatic Criticism from Cornell University, the Judy Tsou Critical Race Studies Award from the American Musicological Society (AMS), the Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award, and Special Recognition from the Kurt Weill Prize. Blues Mamas and Broadway Belters has been called “a brilliant meditation on intersectional singing traditions in modern American culture” (Dr. Daphne Brooks) and a “groundbreaking…meticulous, nuanced analysis of sound and vocal technique” (Nathan Prize committee).
A past Dramatists Guild Musical Theater Fellow and Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Fellow, Masi’s honors include the Ziegfeld Award for a woman composer of musicals, a Lilly Award, a grant from the Theater Hall of Fame, and inclusion on the “Women to Watch on Broadway” list. Her writing has been published by the Journal of Popular Music Studies, Performance Matters, TDR, The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre, Concord Theatricals, and Studies in Musical Theatre, where she is a member of the Editorial Board. A member of the Dramatists Guild, ASCAP, and the Recording Academy, she is also a Grammy Awards voter.
Masi holds degrees from Harvard and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.