Esther M Neff

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Website: http://www.theinternationalists.org

Esther Neff is a director, playwright, essayist, and sculptor living in Brooklyn. She is the Artistic Director of the Panoply Theatre and Theory Laboratory, a Teaching Artist at BAX, and a freelance grantswriter/props artisan/costume designer/dramaturge/set designer. Esther earned a BFA in directing from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where she produced a festival for new and devised work, co-directed with Mark Lamos for the late Arthur Miller and directed numerous works including The Cuttlefish by Stanislaw Witkiewicz, Harliquino (by the director/cast), and Ubu Roi. In 2004 she went to the Royal Shakespeare Company in England to observe Nancy Meckler and the Spanish Golden Age season. She is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab and The Internationalists Directors Collective.
Recent directing projects have included CALL COLLECT CONNECT with fellow Internationalists director Dina Keller, Cultur(e)ality Part 1: Loud is the Oral Diary of the Western World (Alternating Current, BAX) with Internationalist Tess Jamias and actors Chiasui Chen and Chelsea O'Connor, premiers of works by Matthew Stephen Smith (Shiver Meek & Mute for Prospect's Dark Nights, and Daedalus/Myth with Panoply) and Joel Shatzky (Amahlia, starring Andrea Suarez and Liche Ariza). She has also directed Mother Courage and Her Children (Panoply) with music by composer Brian McCorkle, Villain Falls Unexpectedly from a Small Platform (devised, Panoply), Woyzeck (Panoply), Cloud Tectonics (Basement Arts) and How I Learned to Drive (Basement Arts). She wrote, produced, and directed the 2006 film In the Company of Eshu starring Ghanian artist Godwin Obeng. In Indiana she directed Paula Vogel's other mammary play The Mineola Twins (The New World Players) and assisted on, designed/built set and costumes for, and performed in Me Fausto a new work by Melissa James Gibson. She is the recipient of the Wandalie Henshaw Scholarship 2005-2006, McIntosh Scholarship 2005-2006, UMTA Playwright Award 2005-2006, The Sarah Emily Metzger Memorial Scholarship 2004-2005, and the Streeter Theatre and Drama Award 2004-2005. She has also run camera for Italian documentarian Mario Ducudre and written 21 plays including Moses, This Bush will Not Stop Burning, The Last Dream of Helene Weigel in which Heloise Kills the Creature, Can-Can Hearts and The Fear Birds (commissioned by Merilynne Rush in Detroit) and two radio plays commissioned by WCBN radio.

Categories: Teaching Artist, Storytelling, Sculpture, Public Art, Performance Art, Multi-Cultural, Mixed Media, Installation / Site Specific, Green / Sustainable, Environmental, Directing, Conceptual, Choreography, Activism, Visual Arts, Theater