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By Brian Robin

Direct Your Attention to These Powerhouse Directors

An adventurous and bold theatre season deserves equally adventurous and bold directors. The directorial lineup for SCR’s 2022-23 season is experienced, dynamic and exciting.

That lineup starts with Logan Vaughn, the award-winning, New York-based director who staged the 2022 Pacific Playwrights Festival’s Samples from The Lab reading of Dr. Silver: A Celebration of Life. Vaughn won Broadway World’s 2019 Outstanding Play Production award for directing the world premiere of America V, 2.1: The Sad Demise and Eventual Extinction of the American Negroby Stacey Rose. She received a 2019 Outer Critics Circle nomination for Best Direction of a Play for the New York premiere of Loy A. Webb’s The Light at MCC Theater. Vaughn’s directorial credits took her to The Public Theater, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, The Apollo Theater, the Mosaic Theater, The National Black Theatre and NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, among others.

H. Adam Harris, brings his charismatic personality to the director’s chair of this season’s Theatre for Young Audiences and Families production: Snow White. Harris recently directed Redwood by Brittany K. Allen at the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis. He has directed plays and readings at the William Inge Festival, Eugene O’Neill Center, Theater Mu and various universities. His acting credits include playing Baloo/Father Wolf in Jungle Book and Smaug/Kili in TheHobbit, both written and directed by SnowWhite’s writer/adaptor, Greg Banks. Harris has worked onstage with the Guthrie Theater, Penumbra Theatre, The Old Globe, Seattle Children’s Theatre, the New Conservatory Theatre Center and the Pillsbury House Theatre, among others. He is also SCR’s Artistic & Audience Engagement Associate.

A classically trained actor, director and educator, Hisa Takakuwa begins her second year directing SCR’s holiday tradition: A Christmas Carol. As the head of SCR’s award-winning Theatre Conservatory, she has directed numerous productions of the Junior, Teen and Summer Players, including Cinderella, Peter Pan, Into the Woods, Seussical, The Wizard of Oz, Beauty and the Beast, Oliver Twist, Annie, Nicholas Nickleby, the world premiere of Cursed, and the just-concluded Summer Players production of Matilda The Musical. She directed HenryV, Twelfth Night and Shooting Stars at the Actors Co-op Theatre Company in Hollywood. Takakuwa’s credits include stints at the Sundance Children’s Theatre, the Music Center on Tour and Indiana Repertory Theatre. Before directing A Christmas Carol, she played various roles in the production for 14 years.

One of the most acclaimed theatre directors in the country, Lisa Peterson, returns to SCR with The Little Foxes. Her SCR credits include Aubergine by Julia Cho, Culture Clash (Still) in America, The Madwoman in the Volvo by Sandra Tsing Loh and the 1996 world premiere of Collected Stories by Donald Margulies. Peterson is a two-time Obie Award winner who has directed world premieres by such acclaimed writers as Tony Kushner, Naomi Wallace, Luis Alfaro, Jose Rivera, Beth Henley and Ellen McLaughlin, among others. At Center Theatre Group, Peterson directed Lynn Nottage’s Sweat and Culture Clash’s Chavez Ravine, which won a 2015 Ovation Award for Best Production. She brings a familiarity with Hellman’s work, having directed Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, the director of Appropriate, is a major presence in the San Diego theatre scene and one of the most exciting directors in the country. Her directing credits include productions at the Old Globe Theatre, San Diego Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, the Cygnet Theatre and Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival, among others. An accomplished director of new works, Turner Sonnenberg directed numerous workshops and staged readings at the Old Globe, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, San Diego Rep, Arena Stage and National New Play Network. She is the founder and former artistic director of MOXIE Theatre, where she received the Des McAnuff New Visions Award and was named the 2015 Director of the Year by the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle.

The director of Prelude to a Kiss, The Musical and SCR’s Artistic Director since 2018, David Ivers has directed productions at many of the nation’s leading regional theatres, including the Guthrie Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Utah Shakespeare Festival—where he spent more than 20 years as an actor and director—and SCR, where he directed She Loves Me, One Man, Two Guvnors and the Pacific Playwrights Festival readings of Coleman ’72 in 2021 and A Million Tiny Pieces in 2022. A dynamic champion of new works and innovative productions, Ivers served as the artistic director at Utah Shakespeare Festival and Arizona Theatre Company and he spent a decade as a resident artist at Denver Center for the Performing Arts, acting in and/or directing more than 40 plays.

Chay Yew, the director of Coleman ’72, returns to SCR for the first time since the world premiere of Cambodian Rock Band in 2018. Yew directed it again off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre. That was one of a dozen plays he directed in New York in an award-winning career that brought Yew the 2007 OBIE Award for his direction of Durango. A nationally celebrated director and playwright, Yew directed productions at many of the country’s top regional theatres, including The Kennedy Center, Mark Taper Forum, Goodman Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Huntington Theatre, Smithsonian Institution and National Asian American Theatre Company, among others. Along with Cambodian Rock Band, Yew has directed many world premieres, including David Henry Hwang’s and Osvaldo Golliov’s Ainadamar, and Rob Zuidam’s Rage D’Amors at Tanglewood. Yew’s was artistic director of Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago from 2011-20.

About the author

South Coast Repertory

South Coast Repertory is a Tony Award-winning theatre is known for producing classics, contemporary hits and world premieres, for having the largest new-play development program in the nation and for advancing the art of theatre in service to the community. 

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