Tim Banker
Meet Tim
As one of the first members of From the Top’s creative team, Timothy Banker has been instrumental to developing From the Top’s unique and deeply respectful method of working with young people. He has been essential to its long-term success as a nationally syndicated radio program now in its 20th year, to the production of its Emmy Award winning PBS television program, to its influential on-line video series and to the development of its leadership development programs.
Tim’s career has been marked by entrepreneurism and unified by a belief in art as a mechanism for social change and for community building. At the age of 19, Tim became a founding member of Cornerstone Theater Company, now in its 34th year, an organization that creates community specific theater events featuring both professional artists and people who live in those communities. He returned to college and studied social theory, economics and sociology at Harvard University and then continued on to do graduate work in theater directing at ART Institute at Harvard University. In his 20s, Tim was chosen to receive a fellowship as part of the National Endowment for the Arts Career Development Program for Directors and Designers administered by the Theater Communications Group.
Tim’s work as an independent theater director and writer has included an immersive site-specific theater production in Port Gibson, Mississippi portraying the Civil Rights history of that community; an adaptation of the ancient Greek drama, “Antigone” written for and performed by school kids in the community of Chelsea Massachusetts, and an award-winning production of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame” produced in both Chicago, Illinois and Memphis, Tennessee.
Tim loves mentoring young people and teaching students of all ages and has taught courses and has been engaged as a guest lecturer at organizations as diverse as Harvard Extension School, Emerson College, Hampshire College, St. George’s School, and the Virginia Public School system.
Education
Harvard College, AB Cum Laude
Harvard University, A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theatre Training
