James David Hart

James Hart is an award-winning Director of Arts Entrepreneurship and Assistant Professor of Practice at Meadows School of the Arts, where he manages two minors, Arts Management and Arts Entrepreneurship. Hart is the founder and former dean of TITAN Teaterakademi (The International Theatre Academy Norway), a full-time accredited conservatory for theatre entrepreneurship in Oslo, Norway and the first of its kind in Europe. He also served as Artistic Director for TITAN’s producing entity, Teatergruppe, for six years. Before founding TITAN, Hart taught classes as a guest lecturer at several institutions, including the Yale School of Drama, New York University, the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, Tufts University, Fu Ren University in Taipei, Taiwan and University of Massachusetts at Amherst, among others. Recently, Hart gave the keynote speech, “Confluence: Music, Culture and Community,” at the 2014 College Music Society’s South Central regional conference at University of Arkansas–Fort Smith. Hart serves as co-chair for the special interest group Entrepreneurship in the Arts for the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE), and is a co-founder of the Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education (SAEE). Meadows School held the inaugural SAEE conference in June 2014. Hart is also a member of the SMU Big iDeas steering committee. Artistically, Hart has earned credit and recognition as an actor, director, writer and producer. As an actor, he has played roles at Yale Repertory Theatre, Utah Shakespeare Festival, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Dallas Shakespeare Festival, Dallas Theater Center and others. He co-founded the World-wide Art Collective theatre festival in Taichung, Taiwan. Hart earned his M.F.A. in acting from the Yale School of Drama in 1999 and graduated from SMU with a B.F.A. in theatre in 1996.