Alexandra (she/her) is a director of new work and postcolonial interpretation of classics based in NYC and the DMV.
Alex makes work that feels epic, mythic, & intimate. She’s drawn to funny and scary plays about women, queer people, & people of the Global Majority. She makes work and processes that entertain, enrich, and elicit visceral reactions, while building community for artists and audiences.
World premieres include: Popular Vote Episode 4 by Jen Jarnagin (Serials), Peach Boy by Kenjiro Lee (Pan Asian Nu Works Festival), poolsides by jose sebastian alberdi (the pebble collective @ Red Hook Lobster Pound), Blood Orange by Abigail Duclos (The Elif Collective @ The Brick Aux), The Broken Brain Breakup Game by Lee Melillo (Breaking & Entering Theatre Collective), Bard Overboard by Harris Solomon (SoHo Playhouse), and Beach Week by Diana Metzger (Round House Theatre Teen Performance Company).
She has extensive experience developing new work alongside playwrights. More here on her process.
Other direction includes: Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl with a cast of high school sophomores (Waterwell/Professional Performing Arts School), A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder with a cast of college students (Penn Singers Light Opera), an all-female cast of The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (Barnard Theatre Department), Almost, Maine by John Cariani in the round, and Boy Meets Girl by Sam Wolfson as part of a festival of one acts (Columbia University Players).
Alex has assistant directed for Amanda Denhert (Into the Woods, Love’s Labor’s Lost), Katie Willmorth (Richard II), Rachel Karp (How to Put on a Sock, Town Hall), Cara Hinh (Ola nā Iwi), and Pirronne Yousefzadeh (Cut), and has been taught by artists including Kenny Leon, Raymond O. Caldwell, Kelsey Mesa, Seonjae Kim, Nicole A. Watson, Sarah Rasmussen, Alice Reagan, and Shannon Sindelar.
Awards: Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation Fellowship (2023), VoiceMag UK’s Editors Choice Award (2020).
Affiliations: Associate Member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, PlayGround NY Directing Apprentice, Kennedy Center Directing Intensive, Directors Lab North, Consortium of Asian-American Theatre Artists.
photo by Gerrie Lim,
In addition to directing, Alex is a staged intimacy professional, a playwright, & a producer.
Alex works and trains mainly as Associate Faculty with Theatrical Intimacy Education. She was McCarter Theatre Centre’s Artistic Assistant/BOLD Fellow from 2021-2023, and in that time, she was the first intimacy professional to choreograph on McCarter’s stages for their production of Ride the Cyclone, directed by Sarah Rasmussen. She is currently the assistant to Broadway and movie intimacy professional Chelsea Pace.
Select intimacy: Mercury Store, Shakespeare and Company, McCarter Theatre Center, Arena Stage, and at undergraduate theatre departments across the East Coast, including Columbia where she was a Visiting Artist. Additional credits as intimacy coordinator for the screen.
She is the Creative Producer of Personal Pizza Party, a New York City-based theatre company dedicated to fostering community among young creatives. With 3P, she has directed, produced, and written, making art and community with other emerging artists - including directing world premiere readings of Love Interest and Slow Burn, and writing Helen in her Homeland.
In addition to English, Alex is a native French speaker, and grew up both in the United States and the United Kingdom. For her thirteenth birthday, she dragged her friends to see a show at the Globe Theatre in London (The Taming of the Shrew, if you were curious). With immigrant parents hailing from two different cultures, and her own mixed cultural and national heritage, Alex identifies as a “Third Culture Kid.”
She graduated cum laude from Barnard College with a major in theatre (directing concentration) and a minor in English, focusing on classics.
-
Fight and Intimacy Choreographer | Slaughter City (Small Boat Productions)
Playwright | Helen in her Homeland (Frayed Knot)
-
Director & developer | Love Interest by Lee Melillo [comedic drama, full-length]
Playwright | Helen in her Homeland [choreopoetic drama, one act]
Director | Seoul City Sue by Kenjiro Lee [documentary drama, full-length]
Director | Blood Orange by Abigail Duclos [horror drama, full-length]
Director | Slow Burn by Lee Melillo [comedy, full-length]
Director | Honeysuckle by Abigail Duclos [horror drama, full-length]
Director | Peach Boy by Kenjiro Lee [kamishibai puppetry TYA show, one-act]
in rehearsals for The Penelopiad
this is what
she’s currently listening to.
see Alex’s direction work in
Kenny Leon’s
masterclass on directing
produced by the American Theatre Wing
here are some things that she loves
Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, and other women who write science-fiction
beautiful homelands