During HGO’s 2026-27 season, Masi Asare makes her company debut as the cultural consultant for Show Boat. Asare is an artist, scholar, and associate professor of theater and performance studies at Northwestern University, where she holds the McCormick Professorship for teaching excellence and directs the American Music Theatre Project. Beyond her roles as a composer, lyricist, dramatist, and academic, she works as a dramaturgical and cultural consultant for Broadway producers and leading arts institutions. She is a Tony-nominated songwriter whose work includes Paradise Square (Broadway, Chicago; Tony and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations), Monsoon Wedding (Off-Broadway, Delhi, Doha), Odyssey (The Acting Company national tour; San Francisco Bay Area Critics Circle Award nomination), The Family Resemblance (Eugene O’Neill Theater Center), and three shows published by Concord Theatricals. Projects in development include Delta Blue and a commercial jukebox musical. As a composer and dramatist, Asare has been commissioned by Theatre Royal Stratford East, Broadway producers, and Marvel. Her scholarly book Blues Mamas and Broadway Belters: Black Women, Voice, and the Musical Stage (Duke University Press, 2024) is the recipient of multiple honors including the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, the American Musicological Society’s Judy Tsou Critical Race Studies Award, and Special Recognition from the Kurt Weill Prize committee. A past Dramatists Guild Musical Theater Fellow and Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Fellow, Masi has received honors including the Ziegfeld Award for women composers of musicals, a Lilly Award, a grant from the Theater Hall of Fame, and inclusion on the Broadway Women's Fund’s “Women to Watch on Broadway” list.