Fatima Quander
Fatima Quander is an Assistant Professor of Acting in the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park; and is the 2025 recipient of the Uta Hagen Award from the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, the American College Theatre Festival at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (KCACTF) and the HB Studio. She is proud to have participated in the Folger’s year-long “Shakespeare and Black Performing Women” workshop during academic year 2025-26 and recently directed Macbeth at UMD, taking inspiration from Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower.
In addition to UMD, Quander has directed productions with FRESHH Inc Theatre Company, Transformation Theatre, and Howard Community College. As an actor, Quander has performed with Theater Alliance, Voices Festival Productions, FRESHH Inc. Theatre Company, DC Hip Hop Theatre Festival, Rep Stage, Everyman Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage Education, Theater of the First Amendment, the Folger Elizabethan Theatre, Imagination Stage, and Discovery Theater; she has also performed in house and on tour with The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and has appeared in a number of national and regional commercials.
Quander was a company member with Young Playwrights’ Theater (YPT) for many years and served as the Director of The Vanguard, FRESHH Inc. Theatre Company’s Black women’s acting ensemble, where she led master classes and workshops on theatre techniques, professions, and the business of acting. As a teaching artist, Quander works with a number of theatres and programs throughout the Washington, DC area including Signature Theatre, Folger Shakespeare Library’s McKee Fellows Program, Secondary School Shakespeare Festival, and the Summer Academy for teachers, FRESHH Inc.’s Griot Girls, Everyman Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre and Strathmore’s Social Justice Fellows Program, Poetry Out Loud, Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, Sitar Arts Center, Jr. Discovery at Georgetown University, and YPT.
Quander is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association (AEA) and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and received her MFA from Actors Studio Drama School in NYC and her BA from Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin.