Lileana Blain-Cruz has been named resident director at Lincoln Center Theater.
Cruz has been a longtime collaborator with Lincoln Center Theater on plays including Jackie Sibblies Drury’s “Marys Seacole,” Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “War” and Dominique Morisseau’s “Pipeline.” In the role, Blain-Cruz will direct at least one production a year at the Lincoln Center’s Broadway or Off-Broadway theater and develop and select the theaters’ programming alongside Producing Artistic Director André Bishop.
“We are very pleased that Lileana has agreed to make LCT her artistic home base. The productions she has directed for us over these past seasons have been visceral, powerful, stunning and always innovative,” Bishop said in the press release. “We especially cannot wait until she brings that same incredible vision and scope to the Beaumont.”
In addition to her work with Lincoln Center Theater — where she started as a member of its Directors Lab — Blain-Cruz’s recent credits include “Anatomy of a Suicide” at the Atlantic Theater Company, “Fefu and Her Friends” at Theatre for a New Audience and “The House That Will Not Stand” at New York Theatre Workshop. Blain-Cruz won Obie Awards for her direction of “Marys Seacole” and “The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World AKA The Negro Book of the Dead.”
Blain-Cruz is currently a Usual Suspect and Artistic Instigator at New York Theatre Workshop, and a resident director at Yale Rep. She was previously an Allen Lee Hughes Directing Fellow at Arena Stage.
She received her undergraduate degree from Princeton and received a master’s degree in directing from the Yale School of Drama.
