Shakespeare Lightning Round: Tamilla Woodard

Tamilla Woodard is the director of The Winter’s Tale, which kicks off Folger Theatre’s 2023/24 season on October 24. She is the co-founder of the site-specific international partnership, PopUP Theatrics. She proudly served as the co-Artistic Director of Working Theater in New York for the last year and was the Associate Director of Tony Award-winning Hadestown on Broadway in its premier season. Prior to joining Working Theater, Tamilla was the BOLD Associate Artistic Director at WP Theater. Tamilla has directed at theaters nationally and internationally, including at WP Theater, Baltimore Center Stage, American Conservatory Theater, Classical Theater of Harlem, The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts with TheaterWorksUSA, and The Cleveland Public Theatre, among others. Recent highlights include Working, A Musical at the Alliance Theatre, the Lucille Lortel and Audelco nominated world premiere of Donetta Lavinia Gray’s Where We Stand at WP Theater and Baltimore Center Stage, the Drama League nominated interactive digital immersive American Dreams by Leila Buck for Working Theater in collaboration with ASU and 9 theaters and performing arts organizations across the country, Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls at A.C.T.’s Geary Theater, and the critically acclaimed immersive off-Broadway production of 3/Fifths, by James Scruggs. Currently, Tamilla is represented online by the concert film WEIGHTLESS by The Kilbanes produced by WP Theater; Where We Stand for 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 Contemporary American Theater Festival.

Tamilla is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, where she currently chairs the acting department. Recently named one of 50 Women to Watch on Broadway, Tamilla is also a recipient of the Josephine Abady Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women.