Directing Alums Join Roundabout Directors Group 2025 Cohort

Directing alums Ghina Fawaz '25 and Ares Harper '24 were selected to join the Roundabout Directors Group, a selective mentorship program that incubates directors historically marginalized in the theatre industry.

The Roundabout Directors Group (RDG) builds a launchpad for early-career directors by providing monthly meetings with industry leaders, tickets to all Roundabout productions, networking sessions with other early-career artist groups and Roundabout leadership, artists-in-residence and alumni, feedback on professional materials like applications, websites and portfolios, a headshot session, and a professional development fund.

Fawas and Harper were selected for the seventh annual cohort. The group supports its members' holistic professional development rather than one particular project, but Fawas will continue to seek inspiration in the program.

"I’m looking forward to the inspiration this year at Roundabout will bring and to being guided by my cohort, and by the stories and voices that deserve amplification," Fawas said. "Palestinian poet Refaat Al Areer once wrote, 'If I must die, you must live to tell my story.' His words remain a compass in my work."

The Roundabout Theatre Company is a nonprofit coalition of four iconic Broadway venues, including the Stephen Sondheim Theater and the legendary Studio 54, where Roundabout moved its landmark production of Cabaret in 1998. The Roundabout Directors Group furthers the company's mission to celebrate the power of theatre, cultivate new works of the present, and educate minds for the future.

"The RDG cohort meets monthly with established artists to offer mentorship and workshops on topics such as: leadership during a global pandemic, transitioning from assisting to directing, directing for TV/Film, understanding SDC, self-producing, finding representation, and more," said the Roundabout Theatre Company. "Most importantly, RDG serves as a connection point to find community between colleagues with the hope that our members leave RDG with a larger circle of industry connections, knowledge, and a close group of peers."

Ares Harper is a director and theatremaker from Columbus, OH. Their work explores the process of “meaning-making” in both artistic and cultural ecosystems, as they believe theatre to be their classroom, playground, and laboratory. Ares is dedicated to telling stories that foreground marginalized bodies/perspectives, stories that are as evocatively epic as they are intimate, and stories that change people's lives. Ares cultivates rooms built on collaboration with the foundational principle of prioritizing joy without sacrificing diligence or rigor. Ares is a founding member of Imperium Theatre Company: "a collective of trouble-makers exploring the depths of artistic merit through our dedication to cultural education, civic engagement, and social change."

Ghina Fawaz / غِنى فواز is a Lebanese-American director, playwright, and artist. Her work blends art and activism, drawing on folklore, oral histories, and creative resistance to amplify underrepresented voices. Past works include ألف ليلة وليلة (The Thousand and One Nights), a theatrical call to action weaving folklore, poetry, puppetry, and traditional Hakawati storytelling to resist against colonialism; Antlers, a play based on interviews with people from Southern Lebanon about their experiences with occupation and liberation, weaving history into a fantastical journey through puppetry; Three Sisters, an adaptation reimagining Chekhov's Olga, Masha, and Irina as refugees trapped in an airport awaiting their flight to Moscow that never comes; and Watermelon Boy, developed in collaboration with Chaesong Kim and Anuka Sethi, part folktale, part documentary theatre, about a boy living under occupation who, after eating the seed of a forbidden fruit, transforms into a watermelon. Fawaz has also directed new works by Meg Ledford (Conservation of Matter), Andrew Reid (Here, Time Feels So...), and Dacyl Acevedo (From One Token to Another).