Tala Manassah

Tala Jamal Manassah is deputy executive director of the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility, the national leader in school-based social and emotional learning programs. Morningside Center works for a society that is just, peaceful, and truly democratic by working in schools, hand in hand with educators, to make schools joyful, productive spaces where young people develop a rigorous sense of social responsibility. Under her leadership, Morningside Center has undertaken the largest school-based expansion of of restorative practices in the U.S. As of December 2014, the program has impacted educators from 95 middle schools and high schools throughout New York City. As a playwright, she has co-written, with Mona Mansour, The House, commissioned by NYC's Noor Theater and the American Institute for Architecture and read as part of their Building ANew series in March 2012; The Letter, a short play that premiered in November 2012 in San Francisco as part of Golden Thread’s ReOrient Festival; and After, a full-length play that was produced at Queens College in 2013. Manassah and Mansour were awarded a residency at Berkeley Rep's Ground Floor in 2013 to develop a musical play called The Wife. Most recently, they were given an Ensemble Studio Theatre/Sloan commission to write a play about 1970s Iraq.