Anne Basting

Anne Basting is a theater artist and educator demonstrating the potential of storytelling and creative expression to improve the lives of elders experiencing cognitive impairment. Across a variety of formats and platforms—theater, memoir, narrative, collaborative public performance, and academic research—Basting has developed an alternative concept of aging, one that focuses on its possibilities as well as its challenges and views sustained emotional connections as critical to our well-being as we age. Anne Basting received a B.A. from Colorado College (1987), an M.A. (1990) from the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. (1995) from the University of Minnesota. She is currently a professor of theater in the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee (UWM), founder (in 1998) and president of TimeSlips Creative Storytelling, and founder and coordinator of Creative Trust Milwaukee. She is the author of Forget Memory: Creating Better Lives for People with Dementia (2009), The Stages of Age: Performing Age in Contemporary American Culture (1998), and The Penelope Project: An Arts-Based Odyssey to Change Elder Care (2016) in addition to numerous articles, plays, and public performances.