Melissa Kievman is a director currently living in Providence and a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group directing fellowship. She formerly served as Associate Artistic Director of New Dramatists, an urban writer's colony devoted to the support and development of new plays and playwrights and as associate to producer Anne Hamburger at En Garde Arts, a site-specific theater company that commissioned and presented large-scale multi-media works for spaces of architectural, historical or political significance in NYC.
Kievman has directed dozens of new plays including the London premiere of Chuck Mee’s BIG LOVE at the Gate Theatre. Off-Broadway productions include the world premiere of ANON at the Atlantic Theater by Kate Robin, WALK TWO MOONS by Julia Jordan at the Lucille Lortel and THE NECKLACE, a serial mystery, created with members of The Talking Band. Regionally, credits include Kate Walat’s MISS ELECTRICITY at the La Jolla Playhouse, SOTTO VOCE by Nilo Cruz, SEARCHING FOR EDEN by James Still and the US premiere of THE BLONDE, THE BRUNETTE AND THE VENGEFUL REDHEAD by Robert Hewitt at the Asolo Repertory Theatre, BUG by Tracy Letts and ART by Yasmina Reza at Syracuse Stage, ARNIE, LOUIS AND BOB by Katie Pearl at Trinity Rep, NICKEL AND DIMED (On NOT Getting by in America) based on the book by Barbara Ehrenreich at the Great Lakes Theater Festival/Cleveland Public Theater, the world premiere of [sic] by Melissa James Gibson at Roadworks in Chicago, THE GHOST’S BARGAIN by Laura Eason at Two River, MY NEW BEST FRIEND by Brooke Berman at Brown Playwrights Rep, Rebecca Gilman's SPINNING INTO BUTTER at the Hangar Theater, 4 SHORT PLAYS by Lee Blessing, Steven Dietz, Tracey Scott Wilson and Julie Myatt at the Guthrie Theater Lab in Minneapolis, Kelly Stuart's MAYHEM at the SPF in NYC and Peter Barnes RED NOSES at the Divadelni Ostrov Festival in Prague.
In addition to directing the development of THOSE LOST BOYS by Nick Choksi, Frankie Alvarez and co. at Ars Nova, Melissa has developed new work by playwrights Kate Walat, Brooke Berman, Melissa James Gibson, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Julia Jordan, Sarah Treem, Mac Wellman, David Zellnik, Kelly Stuart, Ann Marie Healy, Stephanie Fleischmann, Katie Pearl, Laura Schellhardt at Ars Nova, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Children's Theater Company of Minneapolis, Soho Rep, Portland Center Stage, Geva Theater, The O'Neill Theater Center, Primary Stages, Trinity Rep, Tisch School of the Arts, Syracuse Stage, Yale, ACT Seattle, Playwrights Horizons, among others.
Kievman is a member of SDC, the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, a Drama League of New York Directing Fellow, has performed with the Bread and Puppet Theater in NYC and abroad. She is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and Northwestern and on the faculty at Brown University and Brown/Trinity Rep. Her favorite project, ‘Chekhov at Lake Lucille’ occurs annually in her Rockland County back yard and is currently in post-production as a doc/narrative/musical hybrid feature-length film.