Broadway Comes to Howard: Jamila Ponton Bragg Joins Theatre Arts Administration Faculty

By Chad Eric Smith, Director of Strategic Communications and Marketing, Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts

Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts is bringing another powerful connection to the professional theatre industry into the classroom with the appointment of Broadway producer and executive leader Jamila Ponton Bragg as an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Theatre Arts Administration.

For Howard, Bragg’s appointment is about more than adding an accomplished Broadway producer to the faculty. It deepens a growing relationship between the University and the professional theatre industry—and expands opportunities for students to encounter the business, leadership, and decision-making behind the stage.

Bragg has already been an active collaborator with Howard students, helping create opportunities for students across Theatre Arts—including Arts Administration, Acting, Musical Theatre, and technical theatre—to engage directly with working industry professionals, participate in professional workshops, and pursue internships and other industry placements.

“Jamila has already been functioning as much more than an industry guest or occasional collaborator with our students,” said Prof. Pat Parks, Assistant Professor and Area Coordinator of Theatre Arts Administration. “She has helped us think differently about what it means to prepare students for the theatre industry—not simply by telling them what happens in the professional world, but by creating opportunities for them to actually encounter it.”

A 2022–23 Prince Fellow in Columbia University’s MFA program and a 2023 Broadway Women’s Fund “Woman to Watch on Broadway,” Bragg has built a career at the intersection of producing, leadership, and advocacy. Through JamRock Productions LLC, her producing credits include Tony Award®-nominated Fat Ham and Gypsy, as well as Broadway productions including The Wiz, Death of a Salesman, and Pass Over.

 

Her current work includes developing Jean Genet’s The Blacks for Broadway, producing a.k. payne’s Susan Smith Blackburn Prize-winning LOVE I AWETHU FURTHER, which will have its world premiere at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., in June 2027, and collaborating with the Ntozake Shange Literary Trust on Betsey Brown. She also serves as Managing Member of the Broadway Women’s Fund, advancing gender equity in commercial theatre leadership.

Bragg’s value to Howard, however, extends beyond her résumé. She brings students into proximity with the people and processes that determine what gets produced, who gets hired, how productions are financed, and how careers are built.

That practitioner perspective will now become part of the Theatre Arts Administration curriculum through Intro to Production/Lab and Producer’s Workshop, where students examine producing across commercial and nonprofit models and explore the full life cycle of professional productions—from development and financing through production and closing.

But the larger opportunity is experiential.

Bragg, along with fellow Theatre Arts Administration faculty members Prof. Robin Y. Harris, Dr. Dominique Douglas, and Prof. Yasmin Gregg, are exploring additional ways for Howard students to gain behind-the-scenes access to professional productions and engage directly with producers, managers, artists, and other industry leaders.

“Howard students should not have to wait until after graduation to understand how the industry works,” Parks said. “The more we can put students in proximity to the people making decisions, managing productions, financing projects, developing artists, and building companies, the more prepared they are to understand where they can position themselves within that ecosystem.”

Bragg’s combination of professional experience and formal preparation in education makes her particularly suited to that work. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Duke University and a Master of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

For Howard, the appointment reflects a broader vision for theatre education—one in which students are prepared not only to enter the industry, but to understand and influence the systems that shape it.

“To step onto the campus of the Mecca and join the faculty of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts is a profound honor,” Bragg said. “Howard University has always been an epicenter for cultural transformation and artistic power. I am thrilled to partner with the faculty, mentor these brilliant students, and share the real-world practices of producing so they are equipped to claim their seats in every room where decisions are made.”

And that may be the most consequential part of Bragg’s arrival at Howard: not simply bringing Broadway to campus, but bringing Howard students closer to the rooms where the future of theatre is being decided.