Ashley Renée Watkins
Lincoln Center Education
Teaching Artist
ASHLEY RENÉE WATKINS is an accomplished performing artist and teaching artist, currently a member of the prestigious faculty for Lincoln Center Education (LCE) and the 92nd Street Y Center for Education Outreach. As an LCE teaching artist, Ashley Renée works with both student and adult learners as a workshop facilitator and trainer. Within the 92nd Street Y she works as a choral program and vocal skills teaching artist. As a performing artist her most prized accomplishment is being a part of the boundary pushing vocal group ACTE II. Launched in 2013, they received national attention while appearing on NBC’s hit show America’s Got Talent in 2014. The duo has performed at the Atlantic Barclay’s Center of Brooklyn, NY, the formerly named Avery Fisher Hall of Lincoln Center, Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, Radio City Music Hall, the National Christmas Tree of Washington D.C., the Apollo Theater of Syros Greece and churches, concert halls and interesting venues around New York City as well as through United States.
ACTE II has coined the hashtag #AfroOpera as they take their afro donning brand of operatic and vocally versatile singing to audiences around the world. Ashley Renée has glistened in roles such as Bloody Mary in South Pacific, Lady Thiang in The King and I, Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, La Contessa in Le Nozze di Figaro, Mimì in La Bohème, the Foreign Princess in Rusalka and Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. She attended Dillard University in her hometown of New Orleans and completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in voice and opera studies at the University of Oklahoma.