Ariana Karp (she|her) is a theatre-maker who has worked as an actor, director, educator, and cellist in New York, London, and across the United States and Japan. She has been the Artistic Director of Incite Shakespeare Company Santa Fe since 2018, working as a producer, director, actor, composer, and designer. She is an alumna of London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) with a Master’s degree in Classical Acting for the Professional Theatre, Reed College with a Bachelor’s degree in Literature-Theatre, and is a veteran of over thirty productions with the Young Shakespeare Players.

Ariana is passionate about the cultivation of radical empathy. 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 has taught university courses (at Colby College, Pitzer College, and Sierra College) 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. She has extensive teaching and directing experience focused on empowering individuals and developing ensembles through using movement to activate the text through the body, the “quick-raise” process, textual analysis, Laban movement work, voice and vocal technique, and innovative staging of intimacy and violence though abstraction.

Besides theatre, Ariana also has a passion for playing cello, something she has enjoyed doing since the age of five. Over the last decade she has incorporated original cello and vocal compositions into her theatrical work.

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