From: Houston, Texas. LA Opera: La Traviata (2024).

Shawna Lucey is an American theater and opera director based in New York City. She completed her undergraduate degrees in theater and Italian at the University of Texas at Austin. After working in the Barnard and Columbia Theater department, as well as at the world-famous Bread and Puppet Theater, she moved to Russia in order to pursue a master’s degree.

Her first project in Moscow was directing and designing a puppet version of Primo Levi’s If This is a Man, performed at the Moscow Art Theater and toured within Russia. During her five years in Russia, she pursued work with theater institutions while completing her MFA in directing and movement from the Boris Schukin Theatre Institute of the Vakhtangov Theater in Moscow.

She has since worked at the Santa Fe Opera, Houston Grand Opera, the Gran Teatre del Liceu, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Bolshoi Theater and Schauspiel Hannover. She has assisted esteemed directors, including Stephen Lawless, Lee Blakeley, John Caird, Peter Schumann and Francesca Zambello. 

Upcoming directing projects include a new production of Tosca for the San Francisco Opera, Falstaff at Dallas Opera and The Pearl Fishers at the Santa Fe Opera.

Learn more at ShawnaLucey.com.