BIOGRAPHY

Carter Quinn Tanis is a music and theater educator, vocalist, composer, self-taught pianist, and artistic director who strives to use their art to create safe communities for people of any race, sexual orientation, religion, and gender. 

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In 2022, they graduated from Berklee College of Music with a Bachelor's of Music in Professional Music with Concentrations in Music Education and Musical Theater Composition. Carter Quinn then continued their education at BerkleeNYC where they achieved a Master's degree in Writing and Design for Musical Theater.

At thirteen, Carter Quinn started working for their local theater, Arc Stages in Pleasantville, New York, as an assistant director and stage manager for youth musical theater productions. Since then, their passion for teaching children has only grown. Throughout high school, they continued to take on these positions, and assistant directed over twenty shows for students aged four, all the way to adulthood.    

In their second year at Berklee, Carter Quinn started their own musical theater troupe, Bechdel Theater Group, with the intention of producing shows that feature primarily non-male identifying and queer actors and characters. Each show features strong characters who were women, whose storylines didn’t revolve around their love lives. The musical theater program also focuses on the process and much as the production. Rehearsals not only include learning music and staging, but also meditations, theater games, team-building exercises, and more. This allows us to build successful shows, along with building a community of actors who are all being challenged individually with roles that defy any box they’ve been previously placed into. It creates a safe space for women and non-binary people in theater to build a supportive community with one another.   Creating communities such as these is the main reason they want to become a music educator. Through the power of sharing an art form, children can explore so much about themselves on a physical, intellectual, and creative level.