Lileana Blain-Cruz to Join Lincoln Center Theater as Resident Director

Lincoln Center Theater has announced that award-winning director Lileana Blain-Cruz will join its artistic staff in the full-time senior staff position of Resident Director.

In her new role, Ms. Blain-Cruz, whose LCT directing credits include Jackie Sibblies Drury's Marys Seacole, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' War and Dominique Morisseau's Pipeline (which was subsequently captured and broadcast on Live from Lincoln Center and is currently streaming on Broadway HD) will direct at least one production a year in either the Vivian Beaumont Theater (LCT's Broadway, Tony Award-eligible house) or the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (LCT's off-Broadway theater). Ms. Blain-Cruz will also work with fellow Resident Director Bartlett Sher and Producing Artistic Director André Bishop in developing and choosing LCT's programming.

"We are very pleased that Lileana has agreed to make LCT her artistic home base. The productions she has directed for us over these past seasons have been visceral, powerful, stunning and always innovative," said LCT Producing Artistic Director André Bishop. "We especially cannot wait until she brings that same incredible vision and scope to the Beaumont."

Lileana Blain-Cruz began her association with Lincoln Center Theater as a member of the LCT Directors Lab. Winner of an Obie Award for her direction of LCT3's production of Marys Seacole and a recipient of a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, her recent credits include Anatomy of a Suicide at The Atlantic Theater Company, Fefu and Her Friends at Theatre For a New Audience, Girls at Yale Repertory Theatre, Faust at Opera Omaha, and The House That Will Not Stand at New York Theatre Workshop. She won an Obie Award for her direction of The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World AKA The Negro Book of the Dead at Signature Theater. Other projects include Lucas Hnath's Red Speedo at New York Theatre Workshop, Alice Birch's Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again at Soho Rep, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins War at Yale Rep (in addition to her production at LCT3), Henry IV Part 1 and Much Ado About Nothing at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Bluest Eye at The Guthrie, Actually at MTC, SALOME at JACK, and Christina Anderson's Hollow Roots which premiered in the Under the Radar Festival at The Public Theater. She was an Allen Lee Hughes Directing Fellow at Arena Stage, is currently a Usual Suspect and Artistic Instigator at New York Theatre Workshop, and a resident director at Yale Rep. She was awarded a 2018 United States Artist Fellowship and the Josephine Abady Award from the League of Professional Theater Women. She received her BA from Princeton and her MFA in directing from the Yale School of Drama, where she received both the Julian Milton Kaufman Memorial Prize and the Pierre-Andre Salim Prize for her leadership and direction. Upcoming projects include Somi Kakoma's Dreaming Zenzille at St. Louis Repertory Theater, Iphigenia with Esperanza Spalding and Wayne Shorter, and The Listeners a new opera by Missy Mazzoli which will premiere at Opera Norway and Opera Philadelphia.