Acadia Barrengos (she/her) is a New York-based director whose work excavates lost histories and engages audiences viscerally. In addition to NYC, she has worked in Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and New Jersey. Inspired by the study of epigenetics, Acadia is driven by stories that wrestle with inheritance. Her work prioritizes surprise, ensemble, and rhythm. Acadia’s work walks the line between hope and doubt and investigates the space between the pedestrian and the spectral, the bloody and the magical.

B.F.A in Directing from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Minor in Arts Entrepreneurship.

Adriana Baer has been an arts professional for over 20 years. She has held leadership roles at Profile Theatre (Executive Artistic Director) and Cutting Ball Theater (Associate Artistic Director), and has worked with companies including Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and Theatre Communications Group. Adriana has directed at theaters including Houston’s Alley Theatre, Portland Center Stage, and Artists Repertory Theatre. She has taught courses and lectured as a guest speaker at numerous colleges and universities nationwide. She holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA in Directing from Columbia University.   Adriana is dedicated to community building in the arts sector and believes in the power of creativity to enhance the local economy, cultural identity, and civic life. She is the proud founder and CEO of I’m Into This Place, a media brand focused on highlighting the vibrant arts and culture scene of Clark County. 

Alvin Tan is the founder and artistic director of The Necessary Stage, one of Singapore’s most respected theatre companies, and the co–artistic director of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival. Since founding The Necessary Stage in 1987, Tan has championed a collaborative, research-driven methodology. The company’s signature play-building process blends rigorous investigation, extensive improvisation, and collective authorship. Under his leadership, TNS has become one of Singapore’s most influential theatre groups. He was a Fulbright Scholar at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and holds degrees from the National University of Singapore, the Institute of Education, and the University of Birmingham. His contributions have been widely recognised, including the Young Artist Award, the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and the Cultural Medallion.

Director, Professor, and writer Anne Bogart has led the Directing concentration at Columbia University's School of the Arts Theatre program for over 30 years. 

Co-founder of the renowned SITI Theatre Company and the revolutionary Viewpoints acting method. 

She is the recipient of four Honorary Doctorates from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Skidmore College, Bard College, and Cornish College. She was a recipient of a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, the Richard B. Fisher Award, a USA Fellowship, a Rockefeller Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and received the 2016 Alfred Drake Award from Brooklyn College. 

Bogart is the author of six books: A Director Prepares, The Viewpoints Book, And Then, You Act, Conversations with Anne, What’s the Story, and, most recently, The Art of Resonance.

Anne Hamburger is the Founding Artistic Director of En Garde Arts, established in 1986. Widely credited with pioneering the site-specific theatre movement in the United States, Anne spent four decades redefining how and where performance happens, transforming city streets, landmarks, and public spaces into stages for ambitious, large-scale work.
Under her leadership, En Garde Arts has developed and produced groundbreaking projects with artists who have shaped the field, including Anne Bogart, Charles L. Mee, Jonathan Larson, and Reza Abdoh, while championing a new generation of changemakers such as Jared Mezzocchi, Aya Ogawa, Hansol Jung, and The Pack. Her work defines a model of performance that expands beyond traditional venues, engaging directly with the physical fabric of New York City. Recognized with 6 Obie Awards, 2 Drama Desk Awards, and an Outer Critics Circle Award. MFA from the Yale School of Drama, Anne is the proud mother of two children, Hannah and Owen.

Bill Rauch is the inaugural artistic director of the Perelman Performing Arts Center. His directing work spans community-based theater to Broadway, including the Tony Award-winning All The Way and The Great Society. New York credits include Night Is A Room, The Clean House, and Occasional Grace.

From 2007 to 2019, he led the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, directing over 25 productions and launching “American Revolutions,” which commissioned 37 plays about pivotal U.S. history, including Sweat, Indecent, and Roe.

He co-founded the Cornerstone Theater Company, directing over 40 community-based productions nationwide. His work has also been seen at major theaters, including American Repertory Theater and Berkeley Rep.

His honors include awards from Actors' Equity Association and Theatre Communications Group. He has taught at UC Irvine, USC, and UCLA, and studied at Harvard College.

Brian Kulick is a director, writer, producer, educator, and current Chair of the Graduate Theatre Program at Columbia University. He has been the Artistic Director of Classic Stage Company, where he directed Galileo with F. Murray Abraham, The Tempest with Mandy Patinkin, and The Forest with Dianne Wiest. 

Before this, he was an Artistic Associate and then Associate Producer for the Public Theatre, where he directed the New York premiere of Tony Kushner’s adaptation of A Dybbuk, as well as acclaimed productions of Twelfth Night, Winter’s Tale, and Timon of Athens at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. 

He is the author of Staging Shakespeare, How Greek Theatre Works, The Elements of Theatrical Expression, The Secret Life of Theatre, and Staging the End of the World: Theatre in a Time of Climate Crisis.

Bryan Doerries is a writer, director, and translator who serves as Artistic Director of Theater of War Productions, presenting charged performances of seminal texts, led by acclaimed actors, for audiences with something at stake to catalyze crucial dialogue about pressing, current issues. 

The company has presented projects across the United States and the world, taking place in homeless shelters, jails, military bases, hospitals, housing projects, churches, public parks, rival gang territories, but also in cultural spaces, radio, and Zoom. 

Books include The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today, The Odyssey of Sergeant Jack Brennan, All That You’ve Seen Here is God, and Oedipus Trilogy. He has received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Kenyon College, Public Artist in Residence for the City of New York, Hastings Center Fellow, and the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize. 

Tze Chien is a core member of The Finger Players and an award-winning playwright and director. His plays have been staged internationally, including in Singapore, the UK, Budapest, Taiwan, and Japan. His published collections with The Necessary Stage and Epigram Books feature critically acclaimed works such as Charged and PIE. In 2015, Charged was named by The Business Times as one of the top ten plays of all time in Singapore. He has also written for films and television, with credits on Singapore networks such as Channel 5, OKTO/Arts Central, and Vasantham. In recognition of his contributions to the arts, he was awarded the Young Artist Award by the National Arts Council in 2006.

He is currently the Festival Director of the Singapore International Festival of Arts. 

He is a Board Member of Trustees of the University of the Arts Singapore, and serves on the Industry Advisory Group for LASALLE College of the Arts.

Copeland Woodruff is Director of Opera Studies at Lawrence University Conservatory of Music. He's been on the directing and production staffs of New York City Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Chautauqua Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre, Yale Opera, Atlantic Coast Opera Festival, and Opera North. He has taught at the Juilliard School, Oberlin Conservatory, Academy of Vocal Arts, Temple University, University of Memphis, Universität Bamberg, Harrower Opera Workshop, La musica lirica (Italy), and Festival of International Opera of the Americas (Brazil).

Copeland has directed 100+ productions, including the 2013 world premiere of Raise the Red Lantern at the Tianqiao Theatre in Beijing. His productions have earned 17 National Opera Association Best Opera Production Awards and 9 awards from The American Prize. He is the first recipient of The American Prize’s Charles Nelson Reilly Prize in Directing.

Copeland is a proud member of AGMA. He holds degrees from USC and Indiana University.

Irina is an award-winning multi-hyphenate theater maker whose various hats include director, scenographer, experience designer, professor, playwright, and artistic director.

Raised in Moscow in an intercultural household with a Ukrainian mother and Georgian father, Irina creates work that grapples with social issues, exploring identity, displacement, and belonging. Her work centers on site-specific performances and socially engaged projects with community members to address issues like immigration, polarization, conflict, and peacebuilding. Irina launched SpaceBridge, a workshop and performance uniting 19 refugee and American children, most of whom had never been on stage, transforming their stories into a fully realized Off-Broadway production. 

Irina is an associate professor at the New School of Drama, where she co-developed a new MFA program in Contemporary Theatre and Performance. 

Joe Deer is an award-winning director and choreographer of more than 200 productions spanning Off-Broadway, London, regional, international, and university stages. A Distinguished Professor of Musical Theatre emeritus at Wright State University, he led the Musical Theatre Initiative and founded the school’s Musical Theatre Program, whose alumni now appear on Broadway, national tours, and international stages. He founded the Musical Theatre Educators Alliance and received its Career Achievement Award. A sought-after master teacher, he has taught worldwide at institutions such as Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Danish Academy of Musical Theatre, Royal Welsh College, Sheridan College, Scuola del Teatro Musicale, and leading U.S. programs including Carnegie Mellon, UNCSA, and CCM. He is also affiliated with The Muse Machine and The Human Race Theatre Company. Deer is the author of Directing in Musical Theatre and co-author of Acting in Musical Theatre.

Kareem has directed at MCC, Atlantic Theater Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre, New Dramatists, The Civilians, Cincinnati Playhouse, Geva Theatre, The Magic, Berkeley Rep, and others. He is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. His plays include Fountains of Youth, Dodi & Diana, American Fast, A Distinct Society, The Triumphant, Pareidolia, The In-Between, and The Yacoubian Building, produced at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Writers Theatre, Noor Theatre, Target Margin Theatre, Theater Alliance, and more. His work has been developed at Atlantic Theater Company and the Denver Center. Kareem has received fellowships from Sundance Theatre Lab, Stratford Festival, Banff Playwrights Lab, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Old Globe, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Second Stage, Soho Rep, Lincoln Center, and NYTW. He is a NYSCA/NYFA Playwriting Fellow, a two-time Capital Rep New Play Award winner, and a recipient of the Joanne Woodward/Paul Newman Playwriting Award. 

Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol is a flock of artists.  Since 2003, we have been developing projects as a mechanism to connect work and life, to blur and redraw boundaries. 
Things are what they are, but they can also be otherwise.

Abroad, among many others, we have worked at Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Schaubühne (Berlin), FIBA (Buenos Aires), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), Festival d’Automne (Paris), Theater Spektakel (Zurich), FTA (Montreal), HAU (Berlin), Kammerspiele (Munich), Santiago a Mil (Santiago), Theater Biennale (São Paulo), DeSingel (Antwerp), Festival Internacional (Caracas), FAEL (Lima), Belluard International (Fribourg), Cena Contemporânea (Brasilia), TBA (Portland), FIAC (Salvador de Bahía), Festival de Otoño (Madrid), RADAR (Los Angeles), Temporada Alta (Girona), Dialog Festival (Wroclaw), Centro Cultural España (Guatemala), BAD (Bilbao),  among many others.

Matt Torney is an Irish-born theatre director and the Artistic Director of Theatrical Outfit in Atlanta, where he leads one of the Southeast’s most respected regional theatre companies, Theatrical Outfit. 

He has directed extensively across the U.S. and internationally, working on both new plays and bold reimaginings of classical texts, with a practice grounded in rigorous collaboration with actors and a strong visual partnership with designers. His productions have received numerous award nominations, including multiple Suzi Bass and Helen Hayes Award nominations.

Before joining Theatrical Outfit, Torney served as Associate Artistic Director of Studio Theatre in Washington, DC, and as Director of Programming for Origin Theatre Company in New York. He was also an Associate Director at Rough Magic in Dublin for eight years.

Mei Ann Teo is a queer Singaporean immigrant and multidisciplinary theatre maker whose work spans music theatre, reimagined classics, intermedial forms, and documentary performance. Their directing credits include SKiNFoLK at The Bushwick Starr, Ruth Tang’s Building A Character at Wild Rice’s Singapore Theatre Festival, and Madeline Sayet’s Where We Belong, premiering at Shakespeare’s Globe before a major U.S. tour. They directed the North American premiere of Walden at TheatreWorks Hartford, winning multiple Connecticut Critics Circle Awards. International work includes the world premiere of Dim Sum Warriors in Shanghai, touring 25 Chinese cities, and the acclaimed Lyrics from Lockdown, which toured internationally and across U.S. institutions. Teo has received the Josephine Abady Award and the Lily Fan Director Award, and has led programs at Musical Theatre Factory, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and now Pink Fang

Mikhael Tara Garver has been a pioneer in leading the experiential field. She has worked across brands, arts organizations, social justice organizations, and civic organizations.   

Garver was Artistic Director of Uma Productions and a director on American Repertory Theater’s Production of Sleep No More.

She has built award-winning experiences for AMCTelevision, The National Park Service, Bloomberg, Serino/Coyne, BBDO, Hormel, Tentrr, & Smirnoff. Additionally, Garver created the advanced program in Making, Directing, and Leadership for NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She has spoken and taught on Arts and Democracy at the North Carolina School of the Arts, Yale, Columbia University, Harvard, DePaul, Montclair State, and others.

Natalie Hennedige is founder and artistic director of CAKE, a Singapore-based performance company creating interdisciplinary works across diverse spaces. At the core of CAKE’s methodology is commitment to interdisciplinarity and collaboration. The company works across theatre, dance, music, visual arts, film, and multimedia to generate hybrid forms that resist categorisation. 

A director and writer, Natalie works with performers and artists across disciplines and cultural contexts, shaping highly constructed, heightened worlds that interrogate complex states. She is the recipient of the National Arts Council Young Artist Award and the JCCI Singapore Foundation Culture Award. She served as Festival Director of the Singapore International Festival of Arts (2022–2025).

Pirronne Yousefzadeh directs theatre that speaks to the moment and uplifts Global Majority communities with joy, buoyancy, and theatrical imagination. She is Associate Artistic Director and Director of Artistic Partnerships at the Playwrights’ Center, and previously served as Producing Artistic Director of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and Associate Artistic Director/Director of Engagement at Geva Theatre. She is also a founding member of Maia Directors.

A NYTW Usual Suspect and New Georges Affiliated Artist, she is an alumna of the Drama League Directors Project, SDC Denham Fellowship, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, Soho Rep Lab, and NYTW’s 2050 Fellowship. She has taught at UT Austin, Rutgers, and Bard Early College, and guest-directed at Yale, Juilliard, Fordham, and UMN. She holds an MFA in Directing from Columbia University.

Robby Lutfy (he/him) was awarded the 2019 Craig Noel Award for Director of the Year. He was the 2012-2013 William R. Kenan, Jr. Directing Fellow at The John F. Kennedy Center as well as the 2014-2015 National New Play Network Producer-in-Residence at Marin Theatre. 

He directed 20 shows and produced 39 others at Cygnet Theatre, where he was the Associate Artistic Director for seven seasons. At Cygnet, he was the head of new play development, where he commissioned 20 plays by writers including Miranda Rose Hall, Herbert Siguenza, Nathan Alan Davis, and Leah Nanako Winkler. 

He has taught classes at San Diego State University, Grossmont College, UNCSA, and UCSD. Robby is a graduate of the directing program under Gerald Freedman at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. 

Director and actor Shaun Patrick Tubbs' path has taken him from Wright State to Juilliard, from Miami to New York, from performing center stage to shaping stories from the director’s chair. His productions include Ragtime (Union Avenue Opera), Defacing Michael Jackson (Miami New Drama), The Tempest and Life Is a Dream (Juilliard), Sweat (Wright State University), Black Dick (New York Theatre Workshop), Independence Eve (Signature Theatre DC), hop thA A (Ars Nova), Artney Jackson (The Lark/New Black Festival), and Disgraced (Asolo Repertory Theatre).  A recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, Shaun holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and a BFA from Wright State University. He is a proud member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), Actors’ Equity Association (AEA), and SAG-AFTRA.

Simón Adinia Hanukai is a theater maker, director, and educator from Baku, Azerbaijan. He began his career in Oakland, California, as a founding member of headRush Crew and Co-Artistic Director of the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company. Over six years, he helped create nationally touring dance-theater works seen by more than 25,000 audience members annually, sharing stages with figures including Desmond Tutu, Angela Davis, Alice Walker, Neil Young, Alfre Woodard, and Martin Sheen.

Hanukai has since directed and taught internationally across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and India. His work has been presented at institutions and festivals, including La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Odin Teatret, and the New York Theatre Workshop. He is a recipient of Columbia University’s Dean’s Fellowship and NYTW’s Emerging Artists Fellowship. Hanukai is currently a Theatre Professor at Sciences Po and holds degrees from the University of San Francisco and Columbia University.

Suman Mukhopadhyay’s films and theatre explores contemporary socio-political realities through a sharply critical lens. He's directed nine feature films, including Putulnacher Itikatha, Nazarband, Asamapta, & the National Award–winning Herbert. His work has been awarded at major festivals such as Busan, Montreal, Dubai, Munich, San Francisco, Seattle, & Kerala, & he received honors from the Motion Picture Association & Asia Pacific Screen Awards. One of India’s leading theatre directors, Suman has staged work ranging from European drama to major Bengali and Indian adaptations, including Teesta Paarer Brittanto, Mephisto, Bisarjan, and King Lear. He's taught and directed at UC Berkeley, University of Toledo, Kalamazoo College, and Barnard College. He was a Fulbright fellow at Columbia University, a George A. Miller Visiting Artist at UIUC, and a recipient of the 2025 Hubert Bals Development Fund.