Elena Araoz

Elena Araoz is a stage director of theater and opera working internationally, Off-Broadway and across the country. With White Snake Projects, she directed I Am a Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams which will next perform with Resonance Works Pittsburgh.

Upcoming, Araoz will direct Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics (Barrington Stage), Marisela Treviño Orta’s new audio drama Nightfall (Audible) the world premiere of Liza Powel O’Brien’s The Great Experiment (The Flea), the world premiere of Lindsey Joelle’s Garbologists (City Theatre Company), and the virtual production of Virginia Grise’s a farm for meme (Cara Mia Theatre). Her staging of Sugar Skull! A Dia de Los Muertos Musical Adventure (Mexico Beyond Mariachi) will receive a 2nd national tour. 

Araoz’s most recent NYC productions include the Off-Broadway world premiere of Adam Seidel’s Original Sound (Cherry Lane Theatre), Mac Wellman’s A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds (New York Theatre Workshop Next Door), Maria Irene Fornes’ Mud and Conduct of Life (Boundless Theatre Company), Migdalia Cruz’s Fur (New York Theatre Workshop Next Door), Melisa Tien’s Swell created with 10 immigrant composers (HERE), Catherine Filloux’s Kidnap Road (La Mama), Octavio Solis’s Prospect (Boundless Theatre Company), and Warren Leight’s Union Square Incident for The 24 Hour Plays on Broadway (American Airlines Theatre).

Regionally, Araoz most recently directed The Migration Plays by Mfoniso Udofia, Martyna Majok, Heather Raffo, Adam Gwon, and Karen Zacarias (McCarter Theatre Center), Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare Festival St, Louis), In Between (Walnut Street Theatre), Sweat (People’s Light), and the theatre/orchestra collaboration Azaan (Oregon Symphony). 

Internationally, she directed the world premiere of Li Tong Chen’s The Power in Beijing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Prague Shakespeare Festival in the Czech Republic. Two Arms and a Noise (a physical theatre piece about the life of an indigenous Peruvian woman which Araoz originally wrote and directed as a New York Theatre Workshop fellow and which was recognized in the Latino Theatre Commons’ “plays and writers that everyone should know”) performed for the Bucharest International Theatre Platform in Romania. 

Opera credits include La traviata (New York City Opera at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House), Lucia di Lammermoor (Opera North), Falstaff (Brooklyn Philharmonic at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House), and choreography for Latin Lovers (Glimmerglass Opera)..

The New York Times has praised Araoz’s productions as “striking,” “primal,” “wild,” “stirring,” and “refreshingly natural,” The Boston Globe as “riveting,” “dreamy,” and “vivid,” and The New Yorker as “refreshing.” Time Out New York mentions, “Elena Araoz is a director with deep wells of imagination; she seems drawn to magical realist work.” She is a faculty member at Princeton University where she is leading a research project titled “Innovations in Socially Distant Theatre.”