Amanda McRaven (Fulbright, New Zealand; MA Community-based Theatre, Massey University, New Zealand; MFA Directing, University of California, Irvine; BA English and Drama, University of Virginia)
Amanda works on performance that is physical, heart-driven, that examines liveness and engages communities. She is an ensemblist, a Shakespeare specialist, and a guide for new and devised work.
Amanda is a Drama League Fellow, a proud associate member of SDC, an LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award winner for her direction of Meghan Brown’s The Pliant Girls, a member of Lincoln Center Directors Lab, and a Fulbright Award recipient to New Zealand, where she created and directed community-based theater projects including stories with refugee communities for The Mixing Room at Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand. She also directed for Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand.
In addition to her freelance work, Amanda is the Artistic Director of Coeurage Ensemble, LA’s pay-what-you-can ensemble theater. A fierce proponent of feminist social justice performance, she is also the founder and producer of Los Angeles Lady Arm Wrestlers: wild (real) arm-wrestling tournaments with elements of burlesque, drag, and WWE that create safe space for marginalized communities and raise funds for small LA-based non-profits that support queer, trans, youth, and arts communities.
Amanda is also a professor of Performance Studies, specializing in Community-based Performance, Spoken Word Poetry, and Performance For Social Change. She has facilitated and taught theater for California Arts in Corrections, a love that was first fostered while working with women at Fluvanna Correctional Center in her home state of Virginia.
She began her professional career in Shakespeare, as an actor and then Director of Education for the American Shakespeare Center, where she developed the company’s youth programs, in particular, expanding ASC’s flagship Young Company Theater Camp. In 2016, she co-founded Make Trouble, an advanced training program for college students that focuses on the intersection of Shakespeare, devising, and ensemble.
Her productions consistently receive critical acclaim for energetic, passionate, physical performances. In addition to her own work, she is proud to have assisted Dominique Serrand on Red Noses at The Actor’s Gang, Daniel Sullivan on Hamlet at South Coast Repertory, and Bill Rauch on The Clean House at Lincoln Center Theater and on Two Gentlemen of Verona at OSF
