Alexandra Haddad
Alexandra (she/her) is a director of new work and postcolonial interpretation of classics based in NYC and the DMV. She focuses on horror and comedy as unique, visceral theatrical experiences, making work that feels epic, mythic, & intimate. In her process and her productions, she strives to build community for artists and audiences. Alex centers those who are not wholly represented, including women, the queer community, & people of the Global Majority.
Select directing: Grief Play (Queens Short Play Festival), Popular Vote Episode 4 (Serials), Peach Boy (Pan Asian Nu Works Festival), Eurydice (Waterwell/Professional Performing Arts School), poolsides (the pebble collective), A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (Penn Singers Light Opera), The Broken Brain Breakup Game (Breaking & Entering Theatre Collective), Bard Overboard (SoHo Playhouse, The Penelopiad (Barnard Theatre Department), Almost, Maine and Boy Meets Girl (Columbia University Players), and Beach Week (Round House Theatre Teen Performance Company).
She has extensive experience developing new work alongside playwrights. More here on her process.
Alex has assistant directed for Katie Willmorth, Amanda Denhert, Rachel Karp, Cara Hinh, and Pirronne Yousefzadeh, and has learned from artists including Kenny Leon, Raymond O. Caldwell, Kelsey Mesa, Seonjae Kim, Nicole A. Watson, Sarah Rasmussen, Alice Reagan, and Shannon Sindelar.
Awards: Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation Fellowship (2023), VoiceMag UK’s Editors Choice Award (2020). Affiliations: Associate Member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, PlayGround NY Directing Apprentice, Kennedy Center Directing Intensive, Directors Lab North, Consortium of Asian-American Theatre Artists.
In addition to directing, Alex is an intimacy professional, a playwright, & a producer.
Alex works and trains mainly as Associate Faculty with Theatrical Intimacy Education. She was McCarter Theatre Centre’s Artistic Assistant/BOLD Fellow from 2021-2023, and in that time, she was the first intimacy professional to choreograph on McCarter’s stages for their production of Ride the Cyclone, directed by Sarah Rasmussen.
Select intimacy: Mercury Store, Shakespeare and Company, McCarter Theatre Center, Arena Stage, and at undergraduate theatre departments across the East Coast, including Columbia where she was a Visiting Artist. Additional credits as intimacy coordinator for the screen.
She is the Creative Producer of Personal Pizza Party, a New York City-based theatre company dedicated to fostering community among young creatives. With 3P, she has directed, produced, and written, making art and community with other emerging artists - including directing world premiere readings of Love Interest and Slow Burn, and writing Helen in her Homeland.
In addition to English, Alex is a native French speaker, and grew up both in the United States and the United Kingdom. For her thirteenth birthday, she dragged her friends to see a show at the Globe Theatre in London (The Taming of the Shrew, if you were curious). With immigrant parents hailing from two different cultures, and her own mixed cultural and national heritage, Alex identifies as a “Third Culture Kid.”
She graduated cum laude from Barnard College with a major in theatre (directing concentration) and a minor in English, focusing on classics.