Anne Cecelia DeMelo
Director
Class of 2022
(she/her)
Bio:
Anne Cecelia DeMelo is a director and writer working across the mediums of theatre, opera, and film. She directs and develops multi-disciplinary civic performances that deconstruct systems of power and investigate new modes of being together.
Recent work includes the writing and direction of her MFA thesis production Power/Trip (Carnegie Mellon 2021), as well as the direction of Joe White’s absurdist electro-pop opera The Wagging Craze (Ars Nova 2019/upcoming at Prague Fringe 2022), Amy Gijsbers van Wijk’s fantasia feminine octagon (LPAC 2019), and Max Mondi’s House of Karen (Signature Theater/ Columbia University 2018). Anne’s 2016 production of Ellen McLaughlin’s The Trojan Women at The Flea Theater was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Adaptation.
Associate/assistant direction includes the world premiere and international tour of Du Yun’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Angel’s Bone (Beth Morrison Projects, dir. Michael McQuilken), the world premiere of Taylor Mac’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated A 24-Decade History of Popular Music at St. Ann’s Warehouse (dir. Niegel Smith), and The Purple Lights of Joppa Illinois at Atlantic Theater Company (dir. Adam Rapp), as well as major multimedia productions for BAM’s Next Wave Festival and the Prototype Festival.
Anne is currently completing her graduate study as a John Wells Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research centers on processes of adaptation and translation, political performance in Latin America, and hybrid music-film narratives.
