Bio:

Sofia Osborne is Director/Actor and Life Long Learner. They are most interested in using their privilege to center historically underrepresented groups in theater, especially queer women and non-binary actors through stories and plays that have space for identity conscious casting.

Sofia began directing at St. Helena High School in order to create more opportunities for women onstage in her hometown community, starting with a summer production of 12 Angry Jurors. They fell in love with the idea that theater can start conversations within a community and can lead to social change even on a micro level. Sofia’s next project, a mainstage production of The Laramie Project allowed her to work with many debut actors and empower them in their roles, while challenging the status quo as it related to the LGBTQ community at their high school. 

At Carnegie Mellon School of Drama studying for a BFA in Drama in the Directing Option, Sofia dove into the acting training directors receive for the first two years of the program. Sofia also interned with Francis Ford Coppola the summer after their freshman year as the script supervisor on project “SJ S22.” She was then cast as Jamie in a capstone production of Athena and learned to fence for the role. Sofia was asked to continue taking acting classes at CMU to enhance her directing practice their junior year. She also studied Acting abroad from January-July 2023 at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, performing in a production of The Welkin and Comedy of Errors as well as a self written and directed one-person show. In Wales, they learned the true importance of failure on the journey towards success.

While studying abroad Sofia and dramaturg Matthew Blankley worked together remotely to cut the script for Macbeth to a 90 minute play, solve the puzzle of creating character tracks for an ensemble of 6 actors and begin a design process. Sofia’s BFA Directing Capstone production of Macbeth cast only women and non-binary actors in order to examine the characters further without excusing their actions with masculinity or gender roles. Sofia was also interested in giving people with different gender identities the opportunities to play such beautifully flawed characters and find power in owning the language.

Sofia aims to explore alternate universes in theater and film that experiment with what the future could be and highlight the inequities and dilemmas of our present. Sofia has intimately experienced the theater’s ability to provide catharsis, release, and empowerment for the artists and the audience when it can navigate the extremes of human existence onstage in order to make sense of the world offstage. Sofia’s art often plays with time and the politics of actors’ bodies onstage through an embodied rehearsal process rooted in impulse and connection within the ensemble.