elena araoz​
​she/her/ella

founding member
​advisory circle

Elena Araoz  is a stage director for theater and opera. This season, in NYC, she directs Hilary Bettis’ Alligator (New Georges, The Sol Project), Octavio Solís’ Prospect (Boundless Theatre Company), Dipika Guha’s Mechanics of Love, and will devise She-She-She with Virginia Grise and Hook & Eye (Ice Factory Festival, New Ohio Theatre). She will direct Naomi Wallace’s The Retreating World (Great Plains Theatre Conference) and Two Arms and a Noise (Bucharest International Theatre Platform, Romania) which she wrote and directed as a New York Theatre Workshop fellow.

Elena was named The Drama League’s inaugural Beatrice Terry Resident, where she wrote Plastic Drastic, an eco-aware musical adaptation of The Odyssey, and directed for the Rose Theatre. Other recent productions: Architecture of Becoming (Women’s Project), two Carl Djerassi plays (Off-Broadway), Li Tong's The Power (Beijing), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Prague Shakespeare Company), Mac Wellman’s Wu and Horrocks (Sleeping Weazel, ArtsEmerson), Natalia Naman’s Lawnpeople (Cherry Lane Mentor Project), La Traviata (New York City Opera, BAM), Lucia di Lammermoor (Opera North), Falstaff (Brooklyn Philharmonic, BAM), Latin Lovers (Glimmerglass Opera), Monika Bustamante’s Thirst (HERE), Naomi Wallace's The Fever Chart (Underground Railway Theatre), Jaclyn Villano’s The Company We Keep (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre) and Araoz’s acclaimed operetta War Music, which she adapted from Christopher Logue's retelling of the Iliad and devised with six performers (Aurea, FirstWorks Festival, New York Institute for the Humanities, Chicago Humanities Festival, Chorus of Westerly, New England tour).

She has worked extensively with Sir Jonathan Miller as Choreographer and Associate Director, and with Sir Richard Eyre as Associate Director.

The New York Times has praised Araoz's productions as "striking," "primal," "wild," "stirring" and "refreshingly natural," and The Boston Globe as "riveting," "dreamy" and “vivid.” As her productions are critically acclaimed for superb acting, she regularly teaches acting at universities and young artist programs. In September 2016, she will join the faculty at Princeton University, teaching acting.

Araoz is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect, a Time Warner Foundation Fellow Alum of the Director’s Lab at Women’s Project Theatre, and a recipient of the Dr. David Farrar Opera Stage Director Grant. She holds her MFA in Acting from the University of Texas at Austin.