I am a director, writer, and the Head of Graduate Directing and Artistic Director at the University of Memphis. I most recently directed Meghan Brown’s What Happened While Hero Was Dead at the Ashland New Plays Festival.
I direct new plays and gender-flipped classics, such as Romeo and Juliet at Opera House Arts at the Stonington Opera House; Harry and the Thief, by Sigrid Gilmer, at The Know Theatre in Cincinnati; and my own play, American Medea. Favorite past projects include As Long As Fear Can Turn to Wrath at Son of Semele Theater, What We Were, by Blake Hackler, and new plays by Gregory S. Moss, Lauren Yee, and C. Denby Swanson.
Originally from Dallas, TX, I hold an MFA in Directing from Columbia University, where I studied with Anne Bogart and Robert Woodruff, and a BA in Dramatic Arts from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I was the founding Artistic Director of SKT, Inc., a New York-based non-profit theater, and have directed new plays for the Know Theatre, Ashland New Plays Festival, and the PlayPenn New Play Development Festival.
I have served on the faculties of Marlboro College, Smith College, and Skidmore College, and have taught and directed at the American Repertory Theater Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University, The Brown University/Trinity Repertory Company Consortium, The California Institute of the Arts, the University of California at Riverside, and Chapman University. I was the 2017 Producing Fellow at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
As a feminist media critic, I write about theater, film, television, and pop culture, using the theoretical and analytical tools of the theater to reflect upon broader issues of gender and race. I have been published by The Atlantic, HowlRound, Ms. Magazine, Bitch, Slate, and Southern Theatre Magazine. Follow me @hld6oddblend and on Facebook.
Holly L. Derr 