Adam Ercolani (they/he), Program Manager of the Any Given Child Initiative, is an artist, teaching artist, and arts administrator based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. They earned degrees in Business Administration and English Literature from Misericordia University prior to completing his MFA in Performance Creation at Moravian University, and recently completed a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Lehigh University. During their time at Moravian, they trained as an apprentice with Touchstone Theatre, a professional ensemble theatre company in Bethlehem which has produced original site-specific and community-based performances for over 40 seasons. They are the recipient of the Donald and Mary Ann Hopkins Award for Excellence in Theater Arts and the Mary Ann Thompson Memorial Student Achievement Award, both from Misericordia University, and are a graduate of both the Intercollegiate Leadership Wilkes-Barre program and the Leadership Wyoming Program with the Wyoming County, PA Chamber of Commerce, as well as a member of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals’ Emerging Leadership Institute, Class of 2025.

Their artistic practice draws attention to the individual’s relationship to the self as a result of the environment they find themselves in, and stations this work solidly in the context of the community in which it’s presented. Select works include, with Touchstone Theatre: Beyond Utopia (co-creator/performer), Kitchen Chronicles (performer), Christmas City Follies XX (co-creator, performer), Pothole (creator, performer), Aloud (creator, producer), Tales of Hope & Resistance (co-creator, performer), Christmas City Follies XXI (film) (Director of Photography, co-creator, performer), An Imagined America (creator, director, producer, performer), Global Water Dances 2021 (short film) (Co-Producer); solo: Permanent, Permanent (director, producer, performer), which premiered at the Charles A. Brown Ice House in October of 2021; with the Lehigh University Department of Theatre: Passage by Christopher Chen (director). They are currently developing an immersive production of Sam Shepard’s Tongues & Savage/Love and a Lehigh Valley tour of the musical Murder Ballad.

Their research focuses on the influence, impact, and progression of autobiographical performance across mediums; Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, a restorative and empowering approach to theatrical practice; the social and political implications of participating in performance practices, with his last research work focused on Gender-Responsive Casting in contemporary theatre; and, the transformational power of arts-based instructional tools in the classroom. As a teaching artist, they have taught students in grades K-12 in a number of residency settings and programs, such as the Young Playwrights’ Lab, a playwriting program for 3rd-5th graders which builds literacy skills through playwriting and theatre arts instruction and Building Bridges, a program designed to serve students with emotional, social, and behavioral difficulties, and more.

They previously worked as the Campus Engagement Manager for Zoellner Arts Center at Lehigh University, where they focused on infusing the arts into the everyday lives of Lehigh’s campus community, managing projects like Traveling While Black, an immersive virtual reality experience about the restricted movement of Black Americans, and the Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble’s POP UP: An Artistic Adventure, a site-specific creative placemaking project. They continue to teach with Touchstone Theatre, are an Adjunct Professor of Theatre at Lehigh University, and work as a Creative Teaching Strategies Coach for the Bethlehem Area School District as a part of the Kennedy Center’s Any Given Child initiative.