Arpita Mukherjee, Jenna Worsham, Mei Ann Teo, Tatiana Pandiani, and Hannah Wolf are the recipients of the 2018 National Directors Fellowship, 18 months of practical, hands-on training and mentorship that will conclude with a professional directing opportunity. NDF is presented by The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, National New Play Network, The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, and Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation.
Under the leadership of National Playwrights Conference Artistic Director Wendy C. Goldberg, the fellows will begin their training by participating in the National Playwrights Conference in July before traveling to the MFA Playwrights’ Workshop and Directing Intensive in August, and the NNPN National Showcase of New Plays in December.
In January 2019, the five directors will reconvene for a two-week Directing Symposium at the O’Neill, and the fellowship will culminate with a professional directing opportunity at an NNPN Core Member theater.
Mukherjee is the artistic director of Hypokrit Theatre Company and the festival chair for New York's Tamasha: A Festival for South Asian Performing Arts. She has directed Eh Dah? Questions for My Father at New York Theatre Workshop and Queen at Ma-Yi Theater Company, as well as readings of The Cow Swallowed its Tail by Divya Mangwani at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and The Art of Gaman by Dipika Guha, among others. She was the associate director on Monsoon Wedding the Musical at Berkeley Rep.
Pandiani recently directed Melis Aker's Field, Awakening at the Ford Studio at Signature Theatre and which will be presented at Corkscrew Theater Festival this summer. She has directed Azul, Otra Vez (BRIC), Eurydice & The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Atlantic Stage 2), Le Negrophilie (Kampala Theater Festival, Uganda), Appropriate & Assassins (Princeton Summer Theatre). She is a teaching artist at the Atlantic Theatre Company, a NYTW 2050 Directing Fellow, and the Artistic Associate at Miami New Drama.
Teo is a theatre and film maker who creates across genres and whose work has toured globally including Belgium's Festival de Liege, Edinburgh Fringe, M1 Singapore Fringe, Beijing International Festival, and the Shanghai Experimental Theatre Festival. She has directed and developed new work at OSF, where she was a Phil Killian Fellow in 2015, Chicago's Goodman Theatre, The Public Theater, BRT (Ground Floor), and was the first Asian American to direct at the National Black Theatre in Harlem.
Wolf is a director, dramaturg, and creative producer. Her recent work includes Title Loading (Fusebox Festival), The Bigot by William Glick, Dry Land by Ruby Rae Spigel, Enron by Lucy Prebble (UT Austin), and The Sky Game by Kimberly Belflower (Peppercorn Theatre). She’s directed and developed new plays with Perseverance Theatre, Superhero Clubhouse, The Civilians, Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant, Colt Coeur, and TerraNOVA Collective. She was a member of Lincoln Center Directors Lab, Soho Rep's Writer-Director Lab, and a Fulbright Research Fellow.
Director and activist Worsham recently directed Amy Herzog’s Belleville at Pasadena Playhouse, starring Anna Camp and Thomas Sadoski, Ren Dara Santiago's The Siblings Play at Cherry Lane, and Pia Scala-Zankel's Street Children at New Ohio Theatre. She is the 2017 Drama League & Boris Sagal Directing Fellow at Williamstown Theatre Festival, where she co-conceived and directed Blue Ridge with playwright Abby Rosebrock, and has worked as an associate director on the Broadway productions of The Parisian Woman and The Heidi Chronicles. Other directing credits include The First Immigrant by Martyna Majok at Williamstown, East Coast Curriculum by Lucy Thurber (Lee Strasberg Institute), and Here to Be Seen, which featured a cast of formerly incarcerated women; as well as the upcoming Agnes by Catya McMullen (59E59 Theaters/Lesser America) and Wonder Boi by Jacob Jarrett (NYMF).
