About
Marina Montesanti is a theatre director and Tony Award–nominated co-producer with Iconic Vizion Productions (The Broadway League, Dana H, Is This a Room, Kinky Boots). On Broadway, she co-produced Fat Ham and A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical. Upcoming: immersive Into the Woods at Camp Pouch.
Selected Directing Credits: The Visit (Musical - Lenfest Center for the Arts); In The Bronx Brown Girls Can See Stars Too (Vassar College, Guest Artist; Lehman Stages, Guest Artist); Lizzie (Musical - CAP21, Guest Artist); Dear Mr. C (New Musical - University of the Arts, Guest Artist); I Hope This Letter Reaches Mictlán (Lenfest Center for the Arts); Uncle Vanya (Columbia University); EXIST (New Musical - Schapiro Theatre); Savana Glacial (Irondale Theatre); Derecho (La Tea). Workshops: Plays by Celine Song, Tom Stoppard, Caryl Churchill, Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller, Anton Chekhov, Aeschylus, Euripides, Athol Fugard, Jo Bilac, Amalia Oliva Rojas, and Noelle Viñas.
Assistant/Associate Directing: 1776 (A.R.T.); Beba’s Mambo (in development, Associate to Sergio Trujillo); upcoming Associate Director to Rachel Chavkin on Eugene Onegin: A Bluegrass Musical by Sarah Gancher.
Montesanti has collaborated with Roundabout Theatre Company, Gibney Dance, BAM, Signature Theatre, The Metropolitan Opera, and Third Rail Projects, among others. She has been recognized as an SDCF Charles Abbott Fellow, TPOC Broadway member, MAESTRA Music mentee, NYCLU Ambassador, LMCC Creative Engagement Grant recipient, Town Stages Resident Artist, Egg & Spoon’s Incubation Series, and Latine Musical Theatre Lab Awardee. She was also a mentee of Peter Brook at BAM.
Her directing work has been attached to new plays and musicals honored with the Jonathan Larson Grant, Hansberry Lilly’s Award, Kennedy Center National Playwriting Award, Leah Prize, and Creative Capital. She has also taught for the Musical Theatre BFA program at CAP21.
Education:
MFA in Directing, Columbia University School of the Arts; BFA in Dramatic Arts, The New School for Drama.
Union: Member, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC).
PRESS
Philosophy
I’m excited by theatre where the boundaries of reality dissolve, different orders of time coexist, and space transforms—activated only by the collective imagination. I’m drawn to work that invites the audience to surrender to the logic of the play, where anything might happen.
As a director, I seek out plays and musicals that transcend tragedy—where shattered memories and tumultuous circumstances become catalysts for personal liberation and empowerment. I return the story to the character who was wronged—or to the one history refused to see—reclaiming their dignity through storytelling.
I am drawn to the theatre that listens to the ancient while whispering to the future. I trust simplicity—stripping away what isn’t essential so that what remains feels inevitable, alive, and charged by the power of the ensemble.
I’m especially taken by the scripts that resonate across cultures—often through laughter—and carry a cyclical sense of warning to them.