Marina mcclure
Founding director
Marina McClure creates emotionally-charged theater, opera, and spectacles by fusing striking visual design and physical performance. She specializes in developing new intercultural work that creates space for exchange between artists and with the audience. Through her multidisciplinary art lab, The New Wild, she collaborates with multicultural performers to bring diverse stories (including from Iraq, Cambodia, Ukraine, South Africa, China, and Afghanistan) to American and international audiences.
Recent projects include: Letters From Home, a multimedia performance in collaboration with a Cambodian-American father and daughter team that explores the impact of the Khmer Rouge genocide on both of their artistic practices. (Independent Shakespeare; Willamette University; UCSD); Tear a Root from the Earth, a new musical that examines the legacy of American intervention in Afghanistan (BRIC, New Ohio Theatre, The Kennedy Center, Creative Capital “On Our Radar”); The Unbelievers, a collaboration between playwright Hannah Rittner and Yazidi Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad (Theatre Centre, Canada); CasablancaBox (2017 Drama Desk Nominations for Unique Theatrical Experience & Video Design, HERE Arts Center); Wing It!, a large-scale community performance for the Tony-winning Handspring Puppet Company in celebration of South Africa’s National Day of Reconciliation. Her direction of Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian’s Nocturnal Wanderer was awarded Dartmouth College’s Gurdin Prize.
Marina is a resident director at The Flea, a Lincoln Center Directors Lab alum, and a nominator for the Drama League Awards. She was the Artistic Producer of the Savannah Theater Project, a 4-month exchange between South African and American artists. She had taught performance development for undergraduate and graduate students at Dartmouth College, Brown University, NYU-Tisch and Columbia University. She teaches directing at The National Theater Institute and Willamette University, and was a finalist for the 2018 Creative Capital Award. MFA: CalArts.