Alumna NJ Agwuna '18 was selected as a Director for The Drama League 2020 DirectorFest. DirectorFest is an annual festival, featuring six fully staged productions, a concert showcase of a new musical, a town hall, and conversations with prominent directors. This year, the conversations will include Tony winner Rebecca Taichman, Tony winner Kenny Leon, and the intimacy director for Slave Play and The Inheritance, Claire Warden. DirectorFest celebrates the electrifying art of stage directors – those brave, bold artists whose vision propels the musicals, plays, films, and television that transforms lives.
Each year, six directors are selected from a pool of over 400 applicants to direct for the annual directing festival. DirectorFest brings exceptionally talented directors to New York stages in vibrant new productions, giving audiences the rare opportunity to see tomorrow’s brightest stars today, at the beginning of their creative journey. DirectorFest will present productions of Michael John LaChiusa’s Hello Again and Harold Pinter’s The Lover; revivals of Appearances by Tina Howe and Marcus Gardley's The Sporting Life of Icarus Jones; The Drowning Girls by Beth Graham, Charlie Tomlinson, and Daniela Vlaskalic; the North American premiere of Pure, created by Belgian director Bakalov; and a concert of songs from the new docu-play with music, Riot Song, by Matthew Dean Marsh and Oscar Lopez. Agwuna will direct Harold Pinter’s The Lover. The festival will take place over a five week period across many venues in Manhattan.
Agwuna is a theatre and film director whose work has appeared at Theatreworks USA, the New School of Drama, the Broadway Bound Theatre Festival, The P.I.T., Urban Stages, and Columbia University. She served as an Associate Director for alumna Diane Paulus '97 at the American Repertory Theatre for The White Card a new play by alumna Claudia Rankine ’93.
DirectorFest: The 36th Annual Directors Festival will run January 10–February 4, 2020. Industry professionals may request tickets by emailing [email protected]. Tickets will go on sale to the general public December 3, 2019.
