Roberta Levitow Is a Stage Director, Dramaturge, Producer and Teacher Based in Southern California

ROBERTA LEVITOW [email protected] [email protected]

Roberta Levitow is a stage director, dramaturge, producer and teacher based in Southern California.

Direction of over 50 theatre productions including: in NYC at Playwrights Horizons, Circle Rep, The Public Theater, The Women’s Project; regionally at the Los Angeles Theater Center, Hartford Stage, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The Alley, Geva Theatre, Portland Stage, River Arts Rep, The Asolo Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Seattle Rep, Denver Center Theater Company, The Sacramento Theatre Company, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Intiman Theater and many others.

Director and dramaturge in new play development for: The Tricycle Theatre, London for Eric Wainaina’s “DJ Lwanda”; the Mark Taper Forum’s New Work Festival; Playwrights Horizons New Theatre Wing; The First Stage Series at The Public Theatre; The New Play Reading Series for The Audrey-Skirball Kenis Theatre Projects; The Los Angeles Theater Center’s New Works Project; The Bay Area Playwrights Festival; South Coast Rep’s Hispanic Playwrights Projects; Mid-West Playlabs. Playwrights include: Tony Kushner, Jose Rivera, Marlane Meyer, Migdalia Cruz, Constance Congdon, Darrah Cloud, Eric Overmyer and Anna Deavere Smith.

Representative productions include: BOY GETS GIRL by Rebecca Gilman, Seattle Rep; “ART” by Yasmina Reza, Milwaukee Rep; COLLECTED STORIES by Donald Margulies, Milwaukee Rep; WAITING FOR GODOT by Samuel Beckett, Geva Theatre; THE FARAWAY NEARBY by John Murrell, Arena Stage; EVERYBODY’S RUBY by Thulani Davis, A First Stage Production at The Public Theater, NYC; HAVING OUR SAY, Berkeley Rep, The Alley and Geva Theatres; Marlane Meyer’s MOE’S LUCKY SEVEN, MIRIAM’S FLOWERS by Migdalia Cruz and LITTLE EGYPT by Lynn Siefert for Playwrights Horizons; MEMORY TRICKS by and with Marga Gomez, The Public Theater; UNCLE BENDS: a home cooked negro narrative, by and with Bob Devin Jones, Mark Taper Forum New Works Festival; HEDDA GABLER by Henrik Ibsen, Portland Stage Company; WHY THINGS BURN by Marlane Meyer, The Magic Theatre, San Francisco; Jose Rivera’s EACH DAY DIES WITH SLEEP for Berkeley Rep and Circle Rep, NYC; TALES OF THE LOST FORMICANS by Constance Congdon, Actors Theatre of Louisville & the ITI Festival, Helsinki, Finland; ETTA JENKS by Marlane Meyer, The Women’s Project, NYC; THE STICK WIFE by Darrah Cloud, Hartford Stage.

International work includes: 15 years as the Senior Program Associate - International for the Sundance Institute Theatre Program, responsible for co-design and co-implementation of Sundance Institute East Africa (a 12-year initiative of exchange and exposure between U.S. and East African theatre artists) and the Sundance Institute Middle East North Africa initiative advisor; since 2004 a co- founder and the director of Theatre Without Borders, an all-volunteer virtual network of theatre artists around the world (www.theatrewithoutborders.com); co- initiator of and participant in the “Acting Together on the World Stage Project” with

1 ROBERTA LEVITOW [email protected] [email protected] the Peacebuilding and the Arts Program at Brandeis University, beginning in October 2007; Fulbright Ambassador, 2010-2012 (Fulbright Specialist grantee 2003, 2005 2007 and 2018); Fulbright Specialist, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, April 2018; Project co-designer and co-director of Eti! East Africa Speaks!, Dartmouth College, 651 ARTS, and the Martin E Segal Theatre Center, The Graduate Center, CUNY, July 2008; Workshop Leader; East African Theatre Initiative – Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, TCG/ÍTI Doris Duke Charitable Foundation New Generations Grant; Co-Creator and Dramaturg for BENEDICTUS: An Iran-Israel-US Collaboration, Golden Thread Productions October 2007; Fulbright Senior Specialist, Department of Music, Dance and Drama, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, September 2006; Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center – Cal Arts, Rwanda, August 2007; Project Director “After the Fall: Reality and The New Romanian Theatre”, Immigrants’ Theatre Project, July 2006; Co-organizer “Arts in the One World-Considering Genocide”, Cal Arts, January 2006; Workshop Leader “Training Trainers”, Bistritza, Romania, Sept 2005; Participant “African Playwrights Conference”, University of Iowa, Sept 2004; Workshop Leader “How to Write Something New”, Bistritza/Colibitza, Romania, Aug 2004; Fulbright Senior Specialist at National School of Drama & Cinematography (UNATC), Bucharest, Romania, Mar/Apr 2004. Fulbright Senior Specialist Artist-in-Residence at Chinese University of Hong Kong, Oct/Nov 2003. American Honoree at 15th Cairo International Festival of Experimental Theatre, Sept 2003. Leader “Three Continents Workshop” Center for International Theatre Development/Towson University/Warsaw Theatre Academy Workshop in USA & Poland, May/June 2002. Leader “East African Theatre Workshop” (Kenya, Tanzania & Uganda) Center for International Theatre Development/Ford Foundation East African Office, Nairobi, Kenya and at the Bagamoyo Arts Festival, Tanzania, Sept 2001.

Affiliations and awards include: The Think Tank, Lab for Global Performance and Politics, Georgetown University; International Committee of The League of Professional Theatre Women, New York City; Coexistence International at Brandeis University Advisory Board 2006-2010; Board of Directors, Friends of the IGSC (Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center) – Rwanda; Co-planner “Arts in the One World: Considering Genocide” at CalArts, January 2006; Co-planner Theatre Without Borders Symposium April 2005; Associate Artist /Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles; Director of Special Projects & Casting Director/Los Angeles Theatre Center (staff director and co-creator of the New Works Project); Associate Director /The Denver Center Theatre Company; Artistic Director/Skid Road Theater in Seattle, WA; Conference Director, A.S.K. Theatre Projects, “Inventing the Future: Mid-Sized Theatre in L.A”; five years on the Executive Board of Theater Communications Group, including one year as Vice-President; eight years on the Executive Board of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers; awarded an NEA Directing Fellowship with Seattle Rep, two LA Drama-Logue Awards for the Direction of ETTA JENKS and GEOGRAPHY OF LUCK, and the TCG Alan Schneider Award in 1992.

2 ROBERTA LEVITOW [email protected] [email protected]

Writing by and about: "International Women Stage Directors"; "American Women Stage Directors of the Twentieth Century"; "roMANIA after 2000"; "Acting Together: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict/Volume 1: Resistance and Reconciliation in Regions of Violence." ROUNDUP, The Magazine of the League of Professional Theatre Women; “Writing the World: On Globalization,” Terra Nova Books; “Theatre in Crisis? Performance Manifestos for a New Century”; Grantmakers in the Arts GIA Newsletter; AMERICAN THEATRE Magazine; TCG Circle; Ecumenica Magazine; PARABASIS, A.S.K. Theatre Projects; South Atlantic Quarterly.

Media: Recipient of DGA/SSDC George Schaefer Observership, assigned to “NYPD Blue” and “Chicago Hope”; Assistant to Director Joan Micklin-Silver on IN THE PRESENCE OF MINE ENEMIES for SHOWTIME; Associate Producer and Story Writer for RAVEN, an independent feature shot in Juneau, Alaska; Director, radio adaptation of UNQUESTIONED INTEGRITY: The Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas Hearings for KCRW and L.A. Theaterworks; Graduate of the 7th Cycle AFI Directing Workshop for Women; Director of teleplays “How Else Am I Supposed to Know I’m Still Alive” from the play by Evelina Fernandez and “Lifetimes” (Winner of 1st Prize in the Pacific Northwest Film Festival).

Teaching and Education: 2000-2005 Visiting Professor in Drama at Bennington College; 1990-2000, Faculty for the UCLA Department of Theater’s Graduate Studies in Directing and Playwriting; B.A. Stanford University.