Tamilla Woodard headshot

Photo Credit: Edward Winter, photographer

Bio

         Tamilla Woodard is a resident director at Yale Repertory Theater, Chair of the Acting Program at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale and the co-founder of the site specific international partnership, PopUP Theatrics. Previously, Tamilla served as the inaugural BOLD Associate Artistic Director at WP Theater and co-Artistic Director of the Working Theatre in New York. Tamilla also served as the associate director of the Tony Award-winning Hadestown on Broadway in its premier season. Tamilla has directed at theaters nationally and internationally, including at WP Theater, Alliance Theatre, the Guthrie, Baltimore Center Stage, American Conservatory Theater, Classical Theater of Harlem, and The Atlantic Theater, among others. Recent highlights include Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale at The Folger Theater in DC; Christina Anderson’s the ripple, the wave that carried me home at Yale Rep; the site-specific work The Democracy Project at Federal Hall written by Tanya Barfield, Lisa D’Amour, Larissa FastHorse, Melissa James Gibson, Michael R. Jackson and Bruce Norris; Gab Reisman’s Spindle, Shuttle, Needle for Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks and Lynn Nottage’s Sweat at the Guthrie.

         Tamilla is represented in film and other media by the concert film Weightless by The Kilbanes, Where We Stand (Steppenwolf NOW), Theater for One’s Here We Are series by Nicole Salter and Delanna Studi, The Parsnip Ship and MCC’s audio sci-fi This is Where We Go and the audio drama The House of the Negro Insane by Terence Anthony, produced by the Contemporary American Theater Festival.

         Current/Upcoming: Tamilla is currently developing new plays with Mfoniso Udofia, Donnetta Lavinia Grays, and a musical project The King’s Wife by playwright Melisa Annis and Grammy-nominated Nashville songwriter and recording artist Jamie Floyd.

         Tamilla is a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop and a proud board member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. She was named one of 50 Women to Watch on Broadway and is a recipient of the Josephine Abady Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women.