Gigi Gibson Bolt began her career as an actor, performing in this country and internationally.  A rich diversity of early acting experiences prepared her to embrace the opportunity to join the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) first as Associate and then as Director of the Theatre Program, and later the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in Washington, D.C. as Director of Theatre and Musical Theatre.  Following her tenure at the NEA, she served as Interim Executive Director of Theatre Communications Group, and is currently a consultant in the area of new work, and Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

Ms. Bolt began her acting career at the University of Kansas.  Summers were spent abroad through university programs at the Sorbonne, the University of Vienna, and in the national theater academies of Poland, Czechoslovakia and the former Yugoslavia through the State Department.  She also spent three months on a University/U.S.O. tour entertaining troups across the Far East including Korea where the company presented a spontaneous show at the DMZ.  After college, in Chicago, she studied with the Goodman Theatre and at Hull House.  Her experiences, particularly in Czechoslovakia, shone a light on how essential theater can be to a community, to a country.  Six years in the acting company of the Cleveland Play House gave her a first-hand view of the management and producing challenges of running a large resident theater.  Following her tenure in Cleveland, she returned to New York.  With a young child at home and out-of-town work no longer a viable option, she accepted the offer of a position at the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), and never looked back.   

Amidst the rapid expansion of government support for the arts, she embraced the opportunity to help transform the field and support its artists.  Through NYSCA’s leadership, theaters began to pay living wages to their actors and other artists.  Ms. Bolt was a witness and contributor to the creation and growth of the country’s resident theater movement, a cross-pollination fed by a broad diversity of off and off-off Broadway theaters as well as by emerging experimental theaters also funded through NYSCA.  Her move to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) continued and expanded her relationships with artists and theaters.  Through the NEA, in addition to the direct support of theaters, she created and administered NEA/TCG fellowship residency programs for playwrights, directors and designers.  She also helped create and lead the NEA/USC Arts Journalism Institute, American Masterpieces Musical Theatre, and Shakespeare in American Communities initiatives. 

She has been awarded the Chairman’s Distinguished Service Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lee Reynolds Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women, the La MaMa E.T.C. Silver Bell award, and the Alumni Honor Citation from the University of Kansas where she was inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame.