MELISSA KIEVMAN is a director, creative producer and artEquity cohort and board member and a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group fellowship for directors. For St. Ann’s Warehouse with Yazmany Arboleda, she programmed and produced over 50 artistic and community-engaged activations for Little Amal Walks NYC. She has served as Associate Artistic Director of New Dramatists, an urban writer's colony devoted to the support and development of new plays and playwrights and as associate to producer Anne Hamburger at En Garde Arts, a site-specific theater company that commissioned and presented large-scale multi-media works for spaces of architectural, historical or political significance in NYC.
As Producer of the inaugural Brown Arts IGNITE Series, under the artistic direction of Avery Willis Hoffman, Kievman has produced over a dozen artistic activations, convenings, and multi-disciplinary offerings including The Precarity of African Spectacle Film Series with Luvuyo Nyawose; Presence: A Womanist Lovesong to Black Fathers with Mariahadessa Tallie: The International Ecoperformance Film Festival: Rhode Island Edition with Brazil’s Taanteatro Company, Kriolu Voices Sounding with Allessandra Soares and Ruby Erickson, The Our Storied Health Film and Media Series with The Pandemic Center at Brown’s School of Public Health and many others.
As a director, Kievman has directed dozens of new plays including the London premiere of Chuck Mee’s BIG LOVE at the Gate Theatre. Projects off-Broadway include the world premiere of ANON at the Atlantic Theater by Kate Robin, WALK TWO MOONS by Julia Jordan at the Lucille Lortel and THE NECKLACE, a serial mystery, created with Anne Kauffman and members of The Talking Band. Regionally, credits include Kate Walat’s MISS ELECTRICITY at the La Jolla Playhouse, SOTTO VOCE by Nilo Cruz starring Kathryn Hunter, SEARCHING FOR EDEN by James Still and the US premiere of THE BLONDE, THE BRUNETTE AND THE VENGEFUL REDHEAD by Robert Hewitt at the Asolo Repertory Theatre; ARNIE, LOUIS AND BOB by Katie Pearl at Trinity Rep, BUG by Tracy Letts and ART by Yasmina Reza at Syracuse Stage, NICKEL AND DIMED (On NOT Getting by in America) based on the book by Barbara Ehrenreich at the Great Lakes Theater Festival/Cleveland Public Theater, the world premiere of [sic] by Melissa James Gibson at Roadworks in Chicago, THE GHOST’S BARGAIN by Laura Eason at Two River, MY NEW BEST FRIEND by Brooke Berman at Brown Playwrights Rep, Rebecca Gilman's SPINNING INTO BUTTER starring Oscar Isaac and Joe Calarco’s R & J at the Hangar Theater. Kievman also directed 4 SHORT PLAYS by Lee Blessing, Steven Dietz, Tracey Scott Wilson and Julie Myatt for the Guthrie Experience in Minneapolis, Kelly Stuart's MAYHEM at the SPF in NYC and Peter Barnes RED NOSES at the Divadelni Ostrov Festival in Prague.
In addition to directing the development of THOSE LOST BOYS by Manik Choksi, Frankie Alvarez, Damon Daunno, Elvy Yost, Brendan Speith and Gabe Ebert at Ars Nova, Melissa has developed new work by playwrights Kate Walat, Brooke Berman, Melissa James Gibson, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Julia Jordan, Sarah Treem, Mac Wellman, David Zellnik, Kelly Stuart, Ann Marie Healy, Stephanie Fleischmann, Katie Pearl, Laura Schellhardt at Ars Nova, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Children's Theater Company of Minneapolis, Soho Rep, New Victory Lab, Portland Center Stage, Geva Theater, The O'Neill Theater Center, Primary Stages, Trinity Rep, Tisch School of the Arts, Syracuse Stage, Yale, ACT Seattle, Playwrights Horizons, among others.
Kievman is a member of SDC, Wingspace, Ensemble Studio Theater and the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. She was a Drama League of New York Directing Fellow, is a New Georges and Trinity Rep affiliated artist, and has performed with the Bread and Puppet Theater in NYC and abroad. She is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and Northwestern and currently on faculty at Brown/Trinity and the Brown MFA Playwriting program. Her favorite project, ‘Chekhov at Lake Lucille’ occurs annually in her Rockland County back yard and is currently on the festival circuit (Mass MoCa, Noorderzon, Spoleto, Under The Radar) as a doc/narrative/musical with puppets hybrid feature-length film.