Ariana Karp (she|her) is an actor, director, educator, and cellist. She has made theatre in New York, London, and across the United States and Japan. Ariana is the Artistic Director of Incite Shakespeare Company Santa Fe, and recently taught in the Performance, Theater, and Dance department at Colby College. She previously worked as a visiting instructor in the English and World Literature field group at Pitzer College. Since 2023, with her acting and devising collaborator Andrew Codispoti, she has developed and performed the original and constantly-evolving production Shakespeare’s Duets: Turn and Change.

Ariana is an alumna of London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) with a Master’s degree in Classical Acting for the Professional Theatre. She received early theatrical training from Richard and Anne DiPrima at the Young Shakespeare Players in Madison, WI, a program that produces uncut Shakespeare with young people ages 6-18. After receiving her Bachelor’s degree in Literature-Theatre from Reed College, she returned to the Young Shakespeare Players as lead director and educator (2011-2012). In September 2019, she joined The Shakespeare Ensemble (curated by Ben Crystal) on a performance and educational tour of Japan and performed Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet in original pronunciation.

She has taught university courses on acting, Shakespeare, voice, movement, and improvisational practices in performance and completed teaching residencies and workshops for actors and students of all ages throughout the US. In the fall of 2025 she began work as a teaching artist with Marin Shakespeare Company's Shakespeare for Social Justice program in various prisons throughout California's Central Valley. She is passionate about the cultivation of radical empathy, and has extensive teaching and directing experience focused on empowering individuals and developing ensembles through ownership of Shakespeare’s language, “quick-raise” process, textual analysis, Laban movement work, improvisational practices in performance, voice and vocal technique, creative problem solving, and using movement to activate the text through the body. Ariana is the producer and curator of Tabling: The Podcast, and Radio Shakespeare Lab, available on all podcasting platforms.

Besides classical theatre, Ariana also has a passion for playing cello, something she has enjoyed doing since the age of five. Over the last seven years she has incorporated original cello and vocal compositions into her theatrical work, writing the incidental music for The Winter’s Tale, Henry IV, Part I, King Lear, Twelfth Night, Chemistry, and The Enchantment. She was also a cellist for the Brooklyn-based progressive folk rock band, Satin Nickel.

Ariana lives in Davis, California with her husband, award-winning professor and author Charlie Hankin.