INSERTION
PARKING LOT FAIRIES
MUSEUM
NOISES OFF
MICRODRAMAS:
508 + 90 DAYS
TODAY & TOMORROW
artist statement
I am a circus-informed and immigrant-influenced director, reveling in folktales, patterns, and embodied memory. For me, directing is community organizing: each piece I make is tactile and organic, duct-taped together through interdisciplinary investigation and emergent from the people in the room. I tell narratives that surprise, that find comfort in dimensionality. I write plays about pancakes and family dysfunction, paint life-loving snails which may-or-may not be smushed, and direct dramas with comedy improvisers.
I’ve learned to put collaborative storytelling at the center of my work and to bring shows outside of traditional venues, into places where my pieces can converse with geography and community. My schemes are two-fold: to create worlds for urgent, new work and to do it in spaces in which traditional leadership forms are dismantled through clown noses, Hall & Oates dance parties, and collective Wikipedia spirals.
BURYA
SCENES WITH GIRLS
O’NEILL + WILLIAMS
LAB WORK
BRAVING THE BARD
about
…this is where I get to speak about myself in the third person
Nadiya Atkinson (director) (she/hers) is a director and visual artist from a houseplant and immigrant household. She’s the Humanities Manager at Theatre for a New Audience where she produces the 360 Viewfinder dramaturgical publication and has worked at the O’Neill, the Vineyard, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and Signature Theatre Company. Her recent work employs tactility, bold patterns, and site-specificity to navigate her relationship with geography and community. Nadiya is a founding member of fishmarket theatre co. and holds a B.A. in Theatre with Honors from Williams College.
Training/Work Development: Complicité, Advanced Directing, National Theatre Institute, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Guapamacataro Center for Art and Ecology. Awards: Hubbard Hutchinson Fellow, Ruth Scott Sanford Fellow, Robert G. Wilmers Student Thesis Fellow.
a resume (abridged)
* Reading ✧ Upcoming
DIRECTING
CRINGE ✧ by the Three Sardines 59E59, Edinburgh Fringe (2024)
INSERTION by Sarah Groustra The Connelly Theater (2024)
BIPOLAR BADASS by Marisol Crawford Theatre Row (2024)
MUSEUM by Tina Howe Fishmarket Theatre Co. (2024)
PARKING LOT FAIRIES by Franny Weed Chain Theatre (2023)
SCENES WITH GIRLS by Miriam Battye Cap & Bells (2021)
BURYA (THE TEMPEST) adapted Shakespeare Williams College (2021)
SAVING WONDERLAND by Chad Gorn Braving the Bard (2021)
LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST by W. Shakespeare Braving the Bard (2020)
NOISES OFF by Michael Frayn Cap & Bells (2019)
SKANK by Phoebe Mattana Cap & Bells (2018)
508 | 90 DAYS by A. Herzog, L. Meriwether Williams College (2018)
WILL by Nadiya Atkinson San Diego Fringe Festival (2018)
ASSOCIATE/ASSISTANT DIRECTING
IN THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION*
by Terry Jastrow | dir. Margarett Perry | The Lark | 2019
A BOLD STROKE FOR A WIFE*
by Susanna Centilivre | dir. Margarett Perry | The Resident Acting Co. | 2019
THE LAST DAYS OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
by Stephen Adly Guirgis | dir. Shadi Ghaheri | Williams College | 2019