ANDREA ASSAF

ARTISTIC & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Andrea Assaf is an award-winning playwright, poet, theatre director, performer, educator and cultural organizer.  

Her seminal theatre work, Eleven Reflections on September, has been featured at Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) as part of the National Asian American Theatre Festival (produced by CAATA, 2016); La MaMa ETC and The Apollo Theatre in New York City (2015); The Kennedy Center Millennium Stage as part of the 2015 Women’s Voices Theatre Festival; Straz Center for the Performing Arts, The Carpetbag Theatre, and Pangea World Theater where it was commissioned as part of the Alternate Visions Festival (2011). The show has toured internationally to Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT) in Mexico, and the Grotowski Institute in Poland (2009). During the pandemic, Eleven Reflections on September was re-imagined as a digital film, commissioned by the Carver Community Cultural Center, which has garnered 20 Official Selections at international film festivals, with awards and recognitions including Best Experimental Feature at the Silk Road Film Awards Cannes (2021), Best Social Justice Film at the NY International Film Festival (2022), and more. The project is currently being re-created as a large-scale, city-specific, community engaged series, Eleven Reflections on the Nation. First commissioned by The Carver Community Cultural Center, 11Reflections: San Antonio premiered in 2021; 11Reflections: San Francisco, co-produced by Golden Thread Productions and BRAVA Theatre Center premiered in 2024; and 11Reflections: NYC is forthcoming in Fall 2026, in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11.  

Other original works include: DRONE, co-commissioned by the Arab American National Museum, Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) New Orleans, and National Performance Network (NPN), currently in development; Outside the Circle (co-created with Dora Arreola and Samuel Valdez), commissioned by the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center, Jumpstart Productions, NPN, and Pangea World Theater where it premiered (2012); Fronteras Desviadas/Deviant Borders with Mujeres en Ritual Danza-Teatro (2005), which toured internationally in Mexico, Nicaragua, and Canada. Additional directing credits include: The Seasoned Woman by Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson with Lubana Al Quntar (premiered in May 2024); Speed Killed My Cousin by Linda Parris-Bailey (The Carpetbag Theater, national tour 2014-19); 9 Parts of Desire by Heather Raffo (University of South Florida, 2015), breaking letter(s) by Suhier Hammad (New WORLD Theater, 2008); Parang Sabil: Ballad of the Kris by Kinding Sindaw (Beckett Theatre, 2007), and more. Andrea has also created and directed numerous community-devised works with veterans, refugees, and youth.  

Awards and recognitions include: 2024 Joyce Award for DRONE, in partnership with the Arab American National Museum; 2024 Venturous Playwright nomination for DRONE; Best Experimental Feature (Director, Eleven Reflections on September), 2021 Silk Road Film Awards Cannes; 2020 Pushcart Prize Nomination; 2019 NEFA National Theatre Project for DRONE; 2019 & 2014 Doris Duke Building Bridges grants, 2019 & 2011 NPN Creation Fund Commissions, 2017 Finalist for the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism (Split This Rock Poetry Festival); 2010 Princess Grace/Gant Gaither Theatre Award for Directing; 2007 Hedgebrook Residency for "women authoring change;" 2004 Contacto Cultural (U.S.-Mexico Foundation for Culture) as artist-in-residence with Mujeres en Ritual Danza-Teatro; Urbana Queer Slam winner, Urbana Collective/Bowery Poetry Club, 2002; Best Play Award, CounterClockwise: Arts in Action Playwrighting Contest, NYU, 2001; and more. 

As a poet, Andrea has been featured at Split This Rock Poetry Festival, the Bowery Poetry Club, Hedgebrook, the 2003 People’s Poetry Gathering NYC, Bluestockings Women’s Bookstore, and more. Her poems have been published internationally, including: Transcriptions in Sinister Wisdom (Vol 113): Radical Muses, 2019; Soy Mujer Cuando… in Building Womanist Coalitions (ed. G. Lemons), University of Illinois Press, 2019; Traveling (re-print), Pacifica: Poetry International: Contemporary Tunisian Poetry (eds. K. Hamdy and L. Rice), 2015; Portrait of a Daf Player, Autumn Stream in Northern Climate, and Dreaming in Mizna: Prose, Poetry and Art Exploring Arab America, 2013; this woman, this sea in Scarf Magazine (London), 2013; Steps to Leaving, Hedgebrook News (Issue 23), Winter 2007; Globalicities (excerpts from the play), Up From the ROOTS, Alternate ROOTS 2003; Play, Down, and The Cheetah (Spanish translations by Laura Jáuregui), Alforia XXVI: Revista de Poesía, Mexico, 2003; and more. Other publications include articles and book chapters for the national arts field, such as: The Fire in the Center: Directors on Directing & Ensemble Creation (co-editor and contributor, forthcoming from Routledge, 2025-26); “Co-Creating Democracy: Aesthetics in Action,” chapter in Democracy as Creative Practice: Weaving a Fabric of Community Life (eds. Tom Borrup and Andrew Zitcer, New Village Press, forthcoming 2024); Civic Dialogue, Arts & Culture: Findings from Animating Democracy (co-authored with P. Korza and B. Schaffer Bacon), along with numerous articles by Animating Democracy, including "Inroads: The Intersection of Art & Civic Dialogue" and other writings included case study compendiums published by Americans for the Arts. 

Andrea is considered a thought-leader in the national arts field, who has impacted the development of several national networks. She was a founding Board member of the Consortium of Asian American Theatres & Artists (CAATA), and is currently a founding Board member of the Middle Eastern/North African Theatre-Makers Alliance (MENATMA). Andrea is also the founding Artistic Director of Art2Action Inc., and a founding co-director of the National Institute for Directing & Ensemble Creation (co-organized by Art2Action and Pangea World Theater). She has been an Artist-in-Residence at the University of South Florida (USF) School of Theatre and Dance (2014-18 and 2020-21) where she taught, directed, and co-created a General Education course on Community-based Arts Practice with Dora Arreola. She has been a Trainer with Equity Quotient (EQ), an UpROOTing Oppressions Facilitator for Alternate ROOTS, and a Master Teacher for YoungArts (Writing/Performance, 2018-20). She formerly served on the conference Steering Committee of Women Playwrights International (WPI, 2012-15), and has been a member of RAWI, the Radius of Arab American Writers. Former leadership positions include Artistic Director of New WORLD Theater (University of Massachusetts, 2004-09), and Program Associate for Animating Democracy (2001-04). Andrea currently serves on the Executive Committee of Alternate ROOTS.  

Andrea has a Master’s degree in Performance Studies from New York University (NYU), Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied with Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Fred Moten, Augusto Boal, Holly Hughes, Richard Schechner, and more. She also has a BFA in Acting from NYU/Tisch, where she trained at Circle in the Square and the Experimental Theatre Wing (ETW), with a special focus in Meisner Technique, which she also teaches.