Bio

Director and Co-Founder, Lifesongs

Acushla Bastible is the director and co-founder of Lifesongs, a cornerstone program of the Academy’s arts and community engagement work. As an Academy faculty member, she also creates and facilitates programs and workshops on aging, death and dying, creativity, and collective storymaking.

Acushla is a multidisciplinary performance artist – actor, stage director, educator, writer, facilitator, and animateur. Her work in the US and abroad explores the intersections between performance, collective story-gathering and -making, and fostering caring, dignified communities.

In addition to her work with the Academy, Acushla is a freelance stage director for theatre and opera. She is an artistic affiliate with Littleglobe, a diverse artist collaborative devoted to arts and social change, and is the project co-director and stage director for COAL, a musical production and storytelling project catalyzing climate engagement and leadership. She has also served as the artistic director of Angel Exit, an international performance collective based in the UK and Ireland, and as artistic associate with The Santa Fe Opera, where she directed touring opera productions and managed creative programming for students in the public schools.

In 2010, Acushla was honored for her artistic work as one of the 50 Most Influential Irish Women in the USA, awarded by the Irish Embassy and the Irish Voice newspaper. She is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. She is an alumnus of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab.